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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007

JIT 06-207 WHO AM I TODAY? MULTIPLE ORGANISATIONAL IDENTITIES IN A THIRD PARTY CALL CENTRE WORK ENVIRONMENT

Paul McGrath1,* E-mail: [email protected] Donna Marshall1 E-mail: [email protected] 1

UCD School of Business

University College Dublin Dublin, Ireland

Working paper. Please do not quote without the author’s permission

*

Corresponding author

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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007

WHO AM I TODAY? MULTIPLE ORGANISATIONAL IDENTITIES IN A THIRD PARTY CALL CENTRE WORK ENVIRONMENT Abstract: Organizational identity is typically portrayed as either that which is central, distinctive and enduring or fluid and relatively unstable. Drawing on some preliminary empirical data from a third party outsource and support service call centre what I propose here is an advance on the conceptualisation of organizational identity, a view that suggests the need to perceive both stability and local variability. In so doing the paper offers a bridge to develop some common ground between the increasingly polarised views on the nature of organizational identity.

INTRODUCTION This paper reports on the initial investigations and proposed research plan in relation to an empirical study into the presence, nature and management of multiple organisational identities

of

global

contact-service

outsource

providers

and

their

wider

interorganizational network. An earlier version of this paper was presented at EGOS in Bergin, Norway in 2006 (McGrath et al, 2006). The paper aims to make a distrinct contribution to theory development presenting a view of consistent and distinctive organisational identity (Albert & Whetten, 1985) in parallel with/fused with a multiplicity of contingent, local team and customer identities. The paper also outlines a future research plan to investigate these issues more fully and identifies some perceived difficulties and challenges to be faced in undertaing this project.

While the literature and understanding of outsourcing in general and IT outsourcing in particular continues to grow and deepen, the social, organisational and individual employee aspects of this dynamic remain under researched. In studies on successful outsourcing the vital importance of managing relationships with key trusted suppliers is frequently emphasised (Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2005). Within this dynamic and frequently virtual context, “soft” concerns have emerged as important, in particular issues of culture and identity (Brannen & Salk, 2000; Krishna & Sahay, 2000; Walsham, , 1998, 2

First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007

2002; Sahay et al, 2003). A focus on a third party outsource provider provides an unusually rich and complex context in which to explore the issue of organisational identity and its management along a virtual supply chain. In this virtual workspace there is no particular need for the person on the other end of the phone to be where the caller might think they are, or indeed who they might think they are.

However, such

organisations and their employees routinely purport to represent themselves as the client organisation to the customers who call them, hiding or masking their own personal and corporate identities. A call centre agent may work on a single client account or most likely, in order to maximise resources, will be trained to deal with multiple accounts, identifying him or herself differently according to the provenance and intended contact of each call handled. Thus we see with the disaggregation of the supply chain, an associated distortion of time, place and, potentially, of organizational identity. As such this relatively under-researched context presents an opportunity to explore a range of concerns around the complexities of attempts by management to deliberately develop and manage plural organisational identities as a route to competitive advantage, of employee experiences of this process and of the attempts of external clients to influence this process (Walsham, 1998; Sahay et al., 2003).

CALL CENTRES A call centre is a physical or virtual operation within an organisation in which a managed group of people spend most of their time doing business by telephone, usually working in a computer-automated environment’ (Call Centre Association, 1998).

They are the

“voice” or virtual face of an increasingly large number of organisations, the direct contact with the customer albeit a contact mediated by information and communication technology. While there is a substantial body of research focusing on the use of integrated information and communication technologies to frame, monitor and control performance within call centre organisation (Frenkel et al, 1998, 1999; Taylor & Bain, 1999, 2000; Houlihan, 2002), many other aspects of this unusual work context remains relatively under researched.

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Call centre activity is generally divided into ‘inbound’ customer initiated call handling, and ‘outbound’ customer solicitation, most call centres carry out both activities, but under separate and specialised organisational arrangements. A significant trend within this industry is growth in third party or outsourced call centres. This tendency can be seen as arising from a range of reinforcing factors (globalization, technological advancement, new strategic thinking around the notion of the value chain and core competences concentration, outsourcing, near sourcing and off-shoring). Outsourced call centres tend to service a mixture of both long-term and short-term clients. In the case of long-term clients, the outsourced centre may, as part of its contract, undertake to manage its staff to reflect in some way the organisational identity of the third party client. In addition it is assumed that call centre employees in working closely with a client firm and their customers may, through shared working practices and norms, absorb some of the organisational identity of the client firm. It is this dynamic that is the primary focus of investigation in this paper. For ease of clarity the following nomenclature will apply for the remained of this paper: (a) “the operative”: the call centre employee (b) “the client”: the firm employing the call centre to provide services on their behalf (c) “the customer”: the individual or firm being supplied the service by the call centre

IDENTITY IN ORGANIZATIONS Issues of identity have assumed increased significance in contemporary working life where traditional hierarchical and technical means of control are deemed insufficient in prescribing behaviour in detail (Alvesson, 2000). As environments become more complex and organisations are becoming reliant “…on the heads and hearts of their workers” (Albert, Ashforth and Dutton, 2000) a strong identity is deemed vital. A strong organisational identity with high member identification purportedly has the ability to define the company externally for clients and competitors, as well as internally for employees and can allow a firm be more flexible and adaptive to change. (Fiol, 2002). It is deemed to be an essential contribution to coherent organisational action (Whetten, 2006:220).

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Identity as a construct has been operationalised at several levels of analysis - individual, group, organisational, institutional and society (Foreman & Whetten, 2002). In this paper the primary focus is the organisational level as a distinguishable defined construct. However, I openly acknowledge the multilevel nature of the identity construct and in particular the reciprocal relationship between the organisational level and the potential multiplicity of individual identities (Pratt & Foreman, 2000; Fiol, 2002); however disputed that interrelationship may be (Gioia et al. 2002). Whetten (2006:219) treats organizational identity as an analogue of individual identity with identity fulfilling parallel functions for both individual and collective social actors. Conceptually, the paper is positioned somewhere between Albert & Whetten’s (1985) seminal and relatively fixed conceptualisation of organisational identity and the more dynamic, negotiated and potentially unstable notion put forward by Gioia, et al., (2000). This issue will be elaborated upon further in the discussion section below.

The main reference point to organisational identity here is the work of Albert and Whetten (1985). They propose a three criteria definition of organisational identity: central character, distinctiveness and temporal continuity (p.265). Whetten (2006), in his elaboration and strengthening of his 1985 paper with Albert, defines the concept of organisational identity as “…the central and enduring attribute of an organization that distinguish it from other organizations. I refer to these as organizational identity claims, or referents, signifying an organization’s self-determined (and “self”-defining) unique social space and reflected in its unique pattern of building commitments.” Albert and Whetten saw organisational identity as containing three components: 1. An ideational component equating to members’ shared beliefs regarding the question “Who are we as an organisation? 2. A definitional component characterised in terms of that which is central, enduring and distinctive. 3. A phenomenological component where identity related discourse was most likely to be in evidence in association with profound organizational experiences. To make sense of this complex tripartite formulation, a holistic approach encompassing all three components is required. A central issue in this contribution is for an

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organisation, through it identity discourse, to avoid becoming “indistinguishable, unrecognizable, unknown (Whetten, 2006:224). In the case of Techno we will see an organization which, to engage in a virtual network, must become distinguishable, recognizable and known as someone else (the client organisation). Whetten (2006:225) cautions against just looking at lower level traits, practices and competencies in isolation in attempting to identify legitimate identity claims. He sees central, enduring and distinctive identity attributes as a hierarchical array nested in cultural knowledge. The highest level concerns adopted social forms, social categories, group memberships, the middle established ties with organizations and institutions and the lower unique organizational practices, competencies, traits, practices and services. A strong identity will have coherence across all three levels and investigations of identity must look at all three levels particularly the top level (p.225).

Relating to this view, what will be explored here in the context of an outsource third party call centre is a range of identity producing attributes and practices. The focus will be on the apparent dual need to be distinctive as an organisation (in terms of market recognition, strategic direction and staff identification and retention) and yet, at the same time, seemingly indistinguishable from its multiple clients in terms of customer interaction. This situation poses interesting questions as to what it means for employees of the call centre to “act-in-character” (Whetten, 2006:233). Do they or do their managers provide consistent identity referents to guide behaviour?

In contrast to the Albert and Whetten view, Gioia at al., (2000) focus on what they see as the illusion of the durability of (organizational) identity. Building on the reciprocal interrelationship between organisational identity and image and differentiating between the concepts of an enduring identity (no change over time) and as opposed to an identity with a sense of continuity (shifting interpretations and meaning but enduring labels for core beliefs and values), they see the key challenges of management as the ability to manage and balance a fixed identity in the light of shifting external images. Such a view comes closer to engaging with the scenario faced by call centre organisations, and yet, still does not go far enough in explaining the situations facing the call centres under

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investigation here. In this paper I wish to highlight how these particular organizations and their employees are concerned with the simultaneous portrayal of multiple and adaptable perceptual representations of the identity of other organizations and draw out some tentative implications for this for thinking about organizational identity in a global context.

Multiple Organisational Identities The issue of multiplicity of individual identities, identity differentiation and multiple organisational identities has been flagged in a range of literatures for some time (Albert & Whetten, 1985; Cheney, 1991; Alvesson 2000; Golden-Biddle & Rao, 1997, 2005). Albert and Whetten’s (1985) identification of holographic and ideographic forms is a seminal reference point. Thus, while organisational identity as a construct has been clearly acknowledged as having multiple components and the presence of multiple organisational identities acknowledged conceptually, empirical studies into the realities of multiple identities in organisations are rare (Foreman & Whetten, 2002:631) and it largely continues to be treated a single, enduring and holistic phenomenon within an organisation (Corley, 2004:1146).

Recent theoretical and empirical contributions have begun to stress the variable reality of organisational identity across different parts of an organisation and the issue of how organisations or their members resolve contradictions and conflicts arising from competing identity claims (E.g. Pratt & Rafaeli, 2004). Within this interpretative tradition we also find a range of empirical work primarily focusing on the problems associated with the imposition and management of a strong singular sense of identity within an organisation in the face of competing social identity claims or demands. A strong subtheme within this literature is the idea of managers using identity as an unobtrusive means of domination. A good example of this type of work can be seen in Humphreys & Brown’s (2002) interpretative and ethnographic account of senior manager’s attempts to redefine the identity of an institute of higher education. Their work interesting in illustrating the evolving, inter-woven, multi-level, contested and negotiated nature of organisational identity. Somewhat similar issues are explored and/or expressed in the

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work of Alvesson (2000) and Fleming & Spicer (2004) though the latter work has a focus on culture rather than identity.

A more overt managerialist approach to the topic can be seen in the conceptual work of Pratt & Foreman (2000). While carefully qualified, both conceptually and contextually, they propose an identity management scheme at both the level of the individual and the organisation. They see organisational identities as a property of the collective (p.19) and , drawing on Albert & Whetten (1985), see an organisation as having multiple organisational identities when it holds different conceptualisations about what is central, distinctive and enduring about the organisation as a whole (2000:20). Pratt and Foreman believe that an “optimal level” of identity multiplicity can be reached by manipulating the number of identities within the organisation and the level of convergence or divergence between these multiple identities. Using these two critical factors (identity plurality and synergy), they develop a classification scheme for multiple organisational identity management responses. The four main “pure” response types are: 1. Compartmentalisation: maintenance of existing identity pluralities but no effort at increasing synergy 2. Deletion: the shedding of undesirable identities 3. Integration: the fusing of multiple identities into a new whole. 4. Aggregation: Maintaining identity plurality while forging links and synergy between them. Their classification scheme is presented as a means of integrating much of the current individual and organisational-level research around the management of multiple organisational identities. It is argued here that the case of Techno throws up a different issue of plurality not captured by Pratt and Foreman (2000).

The final contribution on multiple organizational identities I want to consider here is that of Sahay et al., (2003). With their focus on the global outsourcing of software development their context is the closest to the call centre setting outlined here. Drawing on Castells (1997, 2001), Giddens (1990) and the work of Hatch (1997) and her view of culture, identity and image as three inter-related parts of an organizational system of

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meaning and action, they envisage identity “…not as a shared belief held in common by organizational members but, instead, in terms of managers’ actions in situated practices that tend to reproduce patterns or forms at the institutional level.” (2003:106). While seeing the relevance of this perspective on identity (i.e., culturally contextualised and constantly changing through the situated practices of actors feeding back upon patterns at the institutional level) in the current case, I want to present a different take, one emphasising both continuing distinctiveness in parallel with a situated changing plurality.

METHODOLOGY The broad research question underpinning this proposed piece of research concerns the dynamics, processes, practices and procedures within call centres for constructing, managing, and changing organizational identities and the effect these identity differences have on the organisation and individual employees. The approach underpinning the work is exploratory and interpretative. The theoretical assumptions held in relation to organization identity is that it is something socially constructed and negotiated at various levels within an across organizations, is enduring but changeable though not necessarily unstable and finally, as currently conceptualized, is not necessarily strongly connected with the formation or change of individual identity and subjectivity.

The methodology for the research will begin with a detailed case study involving observation and in-depth interviewing of a third party service provider call centre, at work. Within this case study one encounters multiple clients and multiple customer groups being serviced by an independent third-party call-centre. Consideration of this peculiar organisational arrangement throws up a number of questions that the research project wishes to explore: 1. For call centre operatives: Are there consequences to presenting themselves as “other” or exhibit multiple organizational identities? How do they manage? Do they resist? With whom does their primary identification lie? Do they see themselves as fundamentally part of the third party organisation, or as subcontracted employees of the client organisation?

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2. For call centre management:

how do they develop, manage and maintain

multiple organizational identities within their employee base? Is it an aspect they sell as part of their service contract? What shapes the choices they make? Are there concerns of over dependency on a strong client? How do they protect against this potential loss of identity? 3. For the third party service provider: are they aware of the organisational identity of the vendor organisation and how is it managed? Is the identity of the client organisation appropriated in any way or is a standalone ‘home’ organisational identity in operation? How does the identity manifest in physical and symbolic terms? What are the boundaries and clashes of identity that might show themselves? 4. For the client organisation: Are they concerned with and how do they ensure that the call-centre employees understand, embrace and exhibit the requisite organisational identities and core values in their dealings with customers? Do they try and “socialise” the call centre (Albert & Whetten, 1985:273)? Might they be concerned with loosing their identity to a potential competitor? 5. For the customer: are they aware of masking of or dislocation of identity in interactions with the supposed client company, and does it impact on their relationship with that client company in any way?

Exploring these concerns from the perspective of each stakeholder offers an opportunity to assess the dynamics and consequences of a move to a more virtual form of multiple organizational identities.

The data which is presented below is based on eight detailed, semi-structured interviews with employees of the firm. These employees were located in two client contract teams. Two senior team managers and four senior technicians were interviewed (see figure 1 below). Interviews were taped and transcribed and, so far, subject to loose textual analysis. Sample size is not a consideration to date given the initial, exploratory nature of the study.

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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007

THE CASE: The TECHNO Call Centre This case started life as a study of subcultures within the Irish facility of a third party outsource and support services partner for technology companies in the computer, telecommunications, financial services and e-business sectors (herein called Techno). 1 As the study continued, its potential to throw light on issues of organizational identity became apparent to the author. The firm originated in the USA, has a global presence, in excess of 10,000 employees and normally provides services within its own dedicated premises. At an international level, clients and industry groups have recognized the firm for sustained quality, contributions to the industry, and overall service excellence. The Irish operation has won a number of domestic and European industry awards of excellence and has over 500 employees. Techno talks about its clients as “service partners” and offers to provide high quality yet highly differentiated customer services and technical support customised around client needs. The firm operates a team structure with team size varying on the nature and specifics of each particular contract. Figure 1 is illustrative of a typical contractual team structure. Figure 1

Structure within a Contractual Team Service Delivery Manager (SDM) ↕ Senior Team Manager (STM) ↕ Team Manager (TM) ↕ Mentor/Product Engineer ↕ Senior Technician ↕ Technical Support Representative (TSR)/Customer Agents

1

This study was initially part of a Masters degree disertation completed by Mr. Stephen Barratt under the supervision of one of the authors.

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The SDM is primarily responsible for liaising with the client taking specific strategic responsibility for the contract. The STM supports the SDM co-ordinating up to 10 subteams within a specific contract. The TM is directly responsible for the operational performance of his or her individual team and is supported by a mentor who will provide call handling support and training to individual TSRs. Senior technicians are notionally a grade to recognise and reward quality TSRs with more than 2 years experience within the firm. Team size varies with the needs of the contract but would typically contain around 14 TSRs. The global firm has predictable manifestations of a strong culture firm (e.g. charismatic leader, strong vision and mission stressing adaptability, commitment and responsiveness) and maintains a strong international brand identity of service excellence. The firm has a values team composed of a representative of each contract that meet weekly to explore and develop underlying values held true within the firm. Themes consistently communicated and reinforced by the firm were knowledge development, service excellence, integrity and employee development. The firm has a sophisticated socialisation process and places strong emphasis on staff retention (retention rates currently at the low rate of 5%). At the higher end of technological service delivery (product engineers and team managers) there is much talk of “trust networks” with core knowledge and technology being transferred from the client to Techno. These interviewees saw their customer service and technical delivery skills equal to or superior to those of the supply firm and identified a strong direct connection with the client. As one team manager put it in referring to a service call to the top level of technical support: “Then we have to fix it. There are no if and buts about it. We have to fix it in some way whether the customer gets their money back or we replace the PC. So basically the ball is with us. They can’t go any further than that technically.” So while all interviewees were aware of an identifiable set of cognitive interpretations of what was important and distinctive in terms of the identity and culture of Techno (though with some individual variation and expressed levels of commitment) there was also a distinctive identity differentiation based on client work. These company contracts were

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typically talked about in terms of the Company A “floor” or “contract”. Another area of the building was called the Company Z “embassy” with restricted access and high levels of secrecy about ongoing work activities reflecting the priorities and security requirements of the client. One manager expressed this differentiation succinctly “There is a “Techno” culture, but then employees also have their own contract culture, you know in Company X (those dealing with the company X account) it’s very much the Company X way……. I will talk to managers on general break and they are talking about Company X culture, its just oozing out of them, which is a good thing because nothing makes the client more comfortable and confident than them seeing an outsource partner almost be like them.”

These subcultures or sub-identities were presented as something that senior management wouldn’t really be aware of due to their differing strategic concerns. As another team leader explained: “Senior management would all the time see themselves as Techno. Across the board, mentors and people like that wouldn’t notice it so much. At the end of the day it’s actually the agents who specifically deal, day in and day out with the clients.” A sample of some of the comments made about different clients and the variation in execution of the service contract include the following: “Company X (the supply firm) would be very organised. There are loads of little groups and they are very measured. I mean the Company X contract would be very organised and measured because that’s the way the client is.” Another operative commenting on the same client referred to the more measured and careful approach he adopted towards his work and customer interactions compared to his previous client. He explained: “You are dealing with high end technical calls. On the cultural end of things what you’ll find is that Company X is more relaxed, its not as busy, people have more time to talk about and do things, people have more time to walk about and do things, not non-work related , but we would get a lot more time testing.”

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On his previous client he had this to say: “Company Y is a very, very busy contract. There is more pressure there to be honest in terms of calls… the volume…there is a lot of volume coming through, a lot of calls. So there is less time to actually think about the problem.” This pressure of volume resulted in minimal testing and detailed problem analysis within this account. A team manager of the Company Y contract talked about this part of the call centre being volume driven, “…very dynamic, very busy and sometimes a little bit erratic.” However, he attributed this behaviour within the call centre to the client. He explained: But that’s pushed on them by the client behaviour. Company Y is dynamic and erratic because that’s the way they are. They (company Y) make decisions like that. They don’t want to get caught up to much in bureaucratic procedures.”

REFLECTIONS AND UNCERTAINTIES The exploratory case study recounted above paints a tentative but processual, dynamic, multiple and contingent picture of organizational identity. In Techno one sees a complex picture of a call centre with an espoused and seemingly strongly held and shared strong global organizational identity. So far the operative interviewed do see themselves as employees of Techno and appear proud of and associate strongly with the firm’s values of supply excellence. This core organizational identity runs in parallel with a range of active client firm sub-organizational identities that have a meaningful impact on the nature and quality of agent interactions with clients and associated work practices. Based on this limited data the proposition here is that these distinctive contractual sub-identities affect employee practices and become an aspect of their enacted organisational identity in a real and meaningful, but temporal, way. For the duration of a customer interaction, the operative becomes the client. The exact nature, direction and dynamic of this client socialisation process is as yet unclear and remains to be fully investigated. Some interviewees mentioned annual client conferences and regular performance and technical reviews as important in this regard. My sense at this early stage of investigation is that these employees, when dealing with customers, are engaging in a form of cultural acting

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(Hochschild, 1983). In this regard, Goffman’s (1990) use of the dramaturgical analogy in explaining the structure and dynamics of social interaction is particularly relevant. Goffman (1990:246) talks about the individual as a performer (a fabricator of impressions) and a character (a mix of the self psychobiological elements in turn influenced by interactions with the contingencies of staging performances). He sees social establishments as providing the means for producing and maintaining selves (p.254). While characterising social interactions as forms of theatrical performance, ones not to be taken too seriously (p.246), Goffman sees these performances, with their back and front area dimensions, as potentially having serious impact on the reputation of the performer and as important arenas where the legitimacy of organisational arrangements are tested. I feel that this same process is in evidence in the functioning of Techno. Such an argument does bring Goffman’s framework up from the level of the institution to the level of inter-organizational integration, something which he did not envisage (1990: 232) but, to me, does not appear unreasonable. This approach would also seem to cause problems with efforts to tease apart conceptually issues of image (with its focus on to impressions and perceptions) and that of identity (Hatch, 1997; Hatch and Schultz, ????)

Relating Goffman to the case, we see a confused image of organisational identity. Backstage one sees a relatively coherent and unified set of Techno values built around excellence of service. They all know who they were in a corporate sense and all expressed a certain pride in that identity and their own abilities. Front stage, at the level of service team, one sees operative performances socialised by the client and their proscribed and perceived work requirements. This local performance is not necessarily incompatible with the Techno core identity but the operative interviewed clearly identified different clients requiring different types and levels of performances. In some instances the operative could provide a better service to the customer but this was not what the client wanted. We thus have numerous and varying performances that need to be made sense of locally. In Techno, the client corporate identification teams display is meaningful in terms of work practice (e.g. quality standards and customer satisfaction) but would appear to be more of a situated and instrumental form rather than of a deepstructure nature fundamentally altering employee perceptions of self (Rousseau, 1998). In

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their interactions which customers Techno operatives become the client. The performance is real, influenced by but hidden from the customer. However, operatives appear able to drop and move between these client-oriented organizational identities as contracts change or as they shift or are rotated across service teams. This acting out of another organization’s organizational identity is not always to the benefit of the final customer and appears to encompass motivations from the employing organization, the supply firm and the call centre agent him/herself. This more emergent identity management process is different from that proposed by Pratt and Foreman (2000). In Techno one sees client teams performing to make themselves largely indistinguishable from supply companies (the many other) in their interactions with customers. However, there does not appear to be a deliberate strategic policy by senior managers around these practices. The suggestion from interviewees so far is that senior managers are not really aware of this level of complexity. This front stage acting seem to be driven by the exigencies of simply doing the job well and keeping the client satisfied and does not seem to systematically flow up to the corporate level. In addition, this multiplicity of identities does not appear to cause any perceived difficulties for the operatives and their immediate local managers. Hence issues of power, control and resistance do not seems to be overtly complicating concerns. What is being uncovered here is a multinational firm with an apparently strong collective, distinctive and enduring sense of identity (Albert & Whetten, 1985) within which is nested multiple but distinctive and locally enacted organizational identities of client firms. This view of global sameness yet chameleon-like variability on core identity concerns in the face of customer interaction would appear to question the need for a more integrative take on the nature of organizational identity (being both fixed and fluid) than that currently prevalent in literature. It also emphasises the complex multi-level nature of the concept.

The research to date while offering some novel ways in which to conceptualise organizational identity within an increasingly dedifferentiated, outsourced, networked and virtual work context (Brannen & Salk, 2000; Krishna & Sahay, 2000; Walsham, 2002; Sahay et al, 2003) poses a number of conceptual uncertainties in terms of

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deepening our understanding of organizational identity and seek counsel on these concerns: (a) how can we consistently and insightfully operationalise the organisational identity construct as we progress along the supply chain? (b) How can we empirically differentiate organizational identity from organizational culture? While one can develop abstract conceptualisation of the differences between the concepts of organizational identity, culture and image (Hatch and Schultz, 2002; Gioia et al, 2002), in the field these concepts appear too interlinked and interdependent to be effectively deconstructed. To this end the author is unclear as yet as to whether or indeed how the organizational identity perspective extends our understanding of organizations beyond the related metaphors of image, reputation and culture (Gioia et al., 2002). (c) Should one focus on identities that are consciously held and problematic (Pratt & Foreman, 2000:21) as a means of sidestepping the possibility of universal organisational identities/global identities of all service firms that span interorganizational networks? (d) How might the inter-connection between multiple organizational identities and the development of individual identity and subjectivity be explored? Is this likely to be a fruitful and meaningful avenue of research? (e) Would similar services provided by a non-Western call centre throw up different dynamics and cross-cultural management difficulties? (Walsham, 2002). How might this be explored?

REFERENCES Albert, S., Ashforth, B. & Dutton, J. E. (2000) “Organizational identity and identification: Charting new waters and building new bridges” Academy of Management Review, 25(1): 13-17. Albert, S. and Whetten, D.A. (1985) “Organizational identity”. In L. L. Cummings and B. M. Staw (Eds.) Research in Organizational Behaviour, 14: 179-229. Alvesson, M. (2000) “Social identity and the problem of loyalty in knowledge-intensive companies,” Journal of Management Studies, 37(8): 1101- 1123.

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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007

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