Organizational Psychology

The purpose of this article: to generalize and systematize the study of organizational identification and its role in the situation of organizational change. Approach. The article considers the concept of “organizational identification” and approaches to its study: social constructionism, the theory of social identity, the theory of social self-categorization, the theory of the socialactor, including external attribution of action and external attribution of intentionality, as well as functionalist, psychodynamic and postmodernist approaches (He, 2013). It focuses separately on the foci of organizational identification (identification with the organization and identification with the working group) in a situation of change, their predictors. The focus is on the interrelation of two foci of organizational identification with factors of readiness for organizational change: organizational support, assessment of the valence of change, relevance of change, and assessment of self-efficacy. The role of organizational identification in a situation of change in creating readiness or resistance to changeis analyzed. Findings. Individual attitudes and behavior (intention to quit and extra-role behavior) and group parameters (communication climate and strategic consensus) demonstrate differences in the relationship with the two focuses of organizational identification. This gives us reason to assume that psychological readiness for organizational changes, viewed as an individual setting, will be associated with organizational identification and identification with the working group in different ways. Thus, a high level of organizational identification can both increase willingness to change and reduce it. Managers need to avoid developing a sense of threat to the employee’s identity in a situation of changeso that the willingness to change remains high. The value of the results. Outlined directions for further research lie in the following areas: an empirical test of assumptions about the positive relationship of identification with the organization and readiness for organizational change; empirical testing of the assumption about the negative connection of identification with the working group and readinessfor organizational changes; study of the contribution of identification with the organization and identification with the working group in the formation of readiness for organizational change.