Identities In Organisation: The Impact Of Identity Work On Job Performance

Abstract

This study examined the effect of identity work on job performance in Melaka (Malaysia). Identity work refers to how individuals act or behave on the ground of work based self-concept when carrying out their work. A sample size of one hundred and fifty (150) respondents from different industries was selected to participate in this study that adopted five essential notions of the contemporary identities research that cover choice, stability, positivity, coherence and authenticity of Brown ( 2015 ) in examining their influence on job performance. The result showed positive significant relationship between identity works and job performance which positivity scored for the highest contribution as compared to other determinants. This study also enlightens the notion of a harmonised identity may lead to a strong identity work development. It is believed that consistency in roles and manners may create positive atmosphere in the organisation and boost the job performance and job engagement. Understanding of the human capital well-being will bring success to the organisation in terms of sustainability and profitability, at the same time the satisfaction of the employees will be taken care of tool.

Keywords: Identity workstabilitypositivitycoherenceauthenticityjob performance

Introduction

Organisational identity becomes one of the key determinants in examining job performance because understanding the behaviour of the human resource and their attitude is important in the organisation. Nowadays, to optimise the performance of an organisation in a highly competitive world, the organisation should be aware that the main factor is the well-being of the human resource.

According to Karanika-Murray et al. (2015), a strong connection between the employees and their organisation is an important prerequisite for their attachment with their work, and one that is strongly related to attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. This study also found that the work engagement is able to mediate the relationship between organisational identity and organisational action.

Individual identity work means work based self-perspectives which incorporates organisational, occupational, and other identities, that influence the role and behaviour of the employees and how they perform their work in the workplace (Walsh & Gordon, 2008). In a simpler definition, identity work means how a person characterise themselves at work (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). According to Van Knippenberg (2000), identification make the concept of individual and group become less visible, and fit the group into the part of the self psychologically in the organisation.

There are three elements in understanding the development of identity in an organisation, which include self-identity, identity work and identity regulation (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). In an organisation, the development of employees’ identities is referring to a concept called identity work. This concept requires continuous cognitive activity that ensures an individual understanding of who they are through self-coherent, definite and positively valued (Alvesson et al., 2008). Moreover, Snow and Anderson (1987) defined identity work as series of activity that construct and maintain a consistency between individual identity and self-concept. Identity work is a significant notion to determine the most influential factors of identity construction (Walseth, 2006). Identity work is one of the areas that being focus among researchers in identity construction, identity management, identity achievement, identity manufacture, identity project and identity shaping studies (Watson, 2008). However, it is worth to note that identity work is difficult to be determined as it involves an individual and others’ interpretation on what we should be doing and who we are (Warhurst, 2011).

Through daily life routine, people actively engage in identity alteration (Kreiner et al., 2006) that indicates the individual’s conception of who and what they are (Watson, 2008). Individuals will tend to retain and express their identity work (Elsbach, 2003). Identity work is powerful for every individual as it influences individual’s commitment in designing, adjusting, strengthening and modifying their identities (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). From the social context, identity work nails down the members of organisation’s negotiation that minimise the personal and social identity barriers (Kreiner et al., 2006). In order to avoid any type of manipulation across the organisation, identity work may particularly benefits in dealing with individual that ‘actively manoeuvre’ (Sturdy et al., 2006).

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of identity work on job performance. Numerous studies were conducted to investigate identity work and job performance in organisational behaviour research. In addition, the study of work engagement and job performance has been one of the key issues studied in organisational behaviour research (Van Knippenberg, 2000). Job performance undeniably depends on the attitude of the worker and the attitude of the human resource depends on their identity work. Although, there are extensive number of research have studied about this issue, this study will fill up the scarce area in terms of the specific measurement of the identity theory within the context of this study.

Problem Statement

The more the people in the organisation feel that they are sharing the same identity, the more they are engaged to the work and this will lead to better job performance and give the benefit to the organisation. In the context of investigating identity work, there are many continuing debates on how the identities should be theorised and analysed.

According to Brown (2015), there are five significant attention of disputes of identity theory contemporarily. Namely, choice (identities are assigned to or chosen by individuals), stability (fluid or generally stable, evolutionally adaptive), positivity (motivated (or not) by a need for positive meaning), coherence (fragmented and possibly contradictory or unified and coherent) and authenticity (framed (or not) by a desire for authenticity).

In connection to that, our study will adapt the five identity theories that is proposed by Brown (2015) in understanding the effect of identity work on job performance. This is also intended to find out which of the variables will impact the job performance the most in an organisation that may enlighten other comprehensive studies to be conducted in Malaysia.

Research Questions

This study calls to answer the following research questions:

• Does choice affect job performance?

• Does stability affect job performance?

• Does positivity affect job performance?

• Does coherence affect job performance?

• Does authenticity affect job performance?

• Which of the 5 notions of identity theory has the most impact towards the job performance?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to measure

• Relationship between choice and job performance.

• Relationship between stability and job performance.

• Relationship between positivity and job performance.

• Relationship between coherence and job performance.

• Relationship between authenticity and job performance.

Research Methods

There are five independent variables will be examined to ensure these are the factors that influence job performance in any industry in Malaysia. Quantitative method has been chosen for this study as it is more appropriate due the huge sampling size with 150 sampling. In this study, questionnaire is using by conducting survey to 150 respondents in order to examine the association of independent variables and dependent variable. The questionnaire was distributed among employee in any industry and the data is collecting after 1 week by researcher.

The questionnaire is divided into three parts that consist of Part A, Part B and Part C. Part A contains demographic information of respondents by using nominal scale to gather the data. Part B comprise of five independent variables that include stability, choice, authenticity, coherence and positivity. There are five questions for each variables and Likert scale is using for respondents to respond for this survey. While Part C particularly discuss on dependent variable which is job performance with four questions to be asked by using nominal scale for measurement.

SPSS has been used to analyze data for this study as to attain a result. The data analysis techniques that used to analyse data by using SPSS are univariate analysis (descriptive analysis), reliability test, normality test, and multivariate analysis (multiple linear regression).

Findings

Conclusion

The result of this study recommended that identity work give noteworthy effect on job performance in an organisation in Malaysia. With the results of this study, employers in any industry may know the reasons related to the worker’s performance and may know a particular solution to overcome it. A study conducted by Walsh and Gordon (2008) proposed a conceptual model to understand determinants for identity work that can affect job performance. This study found that when individual occupation and organisation have congruent identities, the individual may build a strong identity work that ensures a consistent role, manners as well as job performance that align with the organisation’s expectations. Thus, five determinants of identity work should be given a serious attention by the employer in order to create a good environment in the organisation and employees can perform well in their work for the long-term success of a business.

Identity work plays an important aspect of the organisation's day-to-day operations as it emphasizes different identities that people work like from a leader to followers as a control structure to coordinate and make daily decisions. Identity work rules are considered as how different identities are organized to develop self-orientation and work orientation that are considered congruent with the stated objectives. The different types of identities that people bring have effect for daily decision-making within the organisation (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). Identity work plays an important part in the process of socialization and essential as a thorough explanation of why and how people engage in entrepreneurship (Fauchart & Gruber, 2011). Probably some have suggested that personality and character work are linked to every theme in the association and administration of governance issues within a business groups (Brown, 2015).

In conclusion, all the five notions of identity work are positively related with job performance with stability as the most significant determinant. This is in line with the result of previous studies that used identity work as the determinants for job performance. Neuroticism or emotional stability or is likely the main persisting identity idea in brain science. Therefore, it is very important for the company to ensure their employees are in stable emotional as nowadays many employees have suffered with what we call as depression. This is due to the too many workloads given to them which they cannot handle it and need to settle it on time. Once everything is needed on time, the employee feels stress and not stable which directly will affect their job performance. Social therapists also recommend that individuals in associations require “a generally secure and stable” comprehension of their selves keeping in mind the end goal to work viably (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999).

The contribution that this paper brings includes the focus on identity work development within the organisation. The result of this study also suggested the crucial procedures in designing the criteria for staff recruitment by applying the five elements of identity work. Potential workers is able to align their identities and the identities work that expected by other organisation members. Hence, a proper practice can be adopted to highlight to the potential workers about the policy and procedure of the company to make sure that it may suit with their identities. In addition, documented and recognised identity work will be more understandable and acceptable by the people in the organisation and this will lead to the positive workplace environment.

For the organisation, understanding the need and the factors that lead to a better performance is a critical issue for human capital management. Appropriate job specification and criteria that match with the needs and the interest among employees will build the positive identity work and environment and finally bring success to the organisation.

Our study is limited in terms of the samplings. The respondents are the employees who are working in any industry in Melaka area only. It is suggested that the future research about the effect of identity work on job performance can fill the gap by examining larger sample and includes all states in Malaysia.

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