Social Identity Theory and the Organization

Social Identity Theory and the Organization
Blake E. Ashforth, Fred Mael

Victoria Romero Laura Guely Andreea Raducan Jiezhen Liu Miloslava Pavlistova

Audrey Rouziès

Social Identity Theory and the Organization

Introduction
This article is about social identity theory and how it could be implied within an organization and meanwhile help managers to use these knowledge to increase employees performance, self-esteem, efficiency and create good feelings working either within a group or individually. The authors of the paper would like to demonstrate their own interpretation of this theory using opinions and results of numerous researchers in order to support their arguments and ideas. Mr. Ashforth and Mr. Mael are also focusing on imperfections or problems that this theory may contain and areas until so far undiscovered. We would like to demonstrate in our report both descriptive and analytical point of view on the matter of Social Identity Theory and the Organization. Our work is divided in mainy parts. First section represents social identity according to the Mr. Ashforth and Mr. Mael. In second part there is explained application of the Social Identity Theory through the organizational socialization, role conflict and intergroup relations to the organization. Thirdly there is also explained how this article can improve our current knowledge in OTL. Forth section contains information how can be Social Identity Theory applied by managers in organization. Finally critical point of view as a last bit of our report shows drawbacks or imperfections of this theory.

I.

Social Identity Theory (SIT)
This theory explains how people tend to classify themselves in different categories, for example choosing a religion and following it. This classification has 2 functions: 1. Segments and orders of the social environment, providing people a mechanism to define the others. 2. Enables individuals to locate him/her