Does Organizational Identification Matter For Academics? A Case Of Management Scholars In South East Europe

This study explores the relationship between organizational and professional identification. By using a sample of management professors and junior faculty members from universities in South East Europe (SEE), we investigate the differences in the way that academics identify with their profession and with the institution in which they are employed. Also, we investigate how the respondent's (1) age, (2) gender and (3) tenure relate to both organizational and professional identification. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether there are significant differences between the organizational and professional identification and examine those differences in relation to certain individual characteristics. Organizational identification was measured using a validated six-item and five-point scale originally developed by Mael and Ashforth in 1992. The survey was distributed to e-mail addresses of 334 university scholars in six SEE countries during June and July of 2018. Academics in general, and economics/business school professors in particular are often considered as individuals with a strong sense of professional identity, which give a greater importance to their profession rather than the institution that they work for. Our findings suggest that there is difference in the levels of professional and organizational identification. We explain this through the fact that an academic's career in this region is almost always tied to a single institution. Next, we propose that certain individual characteristics are likely to foster organizational identification, as well as identification with an individual's profession. To further strengthen our argument, we conducted interviews with academics of different tenure and different institutions. Such a mixed method approach enabled us to triangulate theory, quantitative and qualitative data, and enabled us to present a more holistic understanding of professional/organizational identification in general, and identification among academics in particular.