Relationship Between Individual Identities And...

Our everyday behaviour, whether at work or at home is believed to be shaped through our individual identities (Watson, 2006), however the extent to which these individual identities are shaped by the organisation is questionable. This essay will scrutinize the relationship between individual identities and organisational culture, looking at whether individual identities are actually shaped by the corporate culture, whilst reflecting on whether or not experiences outside of work can also have an influence. Firstly, looking at definitions of culture and how it controls behaviour through a soft bureaucracy will allow the development of ideas of whether this shapes the individual identities in an organisation in the same way that rules would†¦show more content†¦Rather than using rules and acting as a bureaucracy to achieve the corporate goals, a culture aims to act as guidance and shape the organisation almost in the way of a soft bureaucracy. Instead of controlling employees t hrough rules, organisational culture aims to determine the behaviour of employees and implement control in a very subtle way (McAuley et al, 2014), to ensure that the values and norms are consistent and behaviours are attached to meaning that reflect and pursue the goals of the organisation. By encouraging people to become part of the culture and making goals consistent, it brings about this idea of reshaping individuals within the work place. In this context, individual identity refers to ‘a work-based self-concept, constituted of a combination of organizational, occupational, and other identities that shapes the roles a person adopts and the corresponding ways he or she behaves when performing his or her work’ (Walsh and Gordon, 2008, p47). This highlights the idea that in different organisations, individuals will act differently in line with either the rules the company sets out or its culture. 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