Organizational Persistence in Highly Institutionalized Environments:

Abstract

Despite growing academic interest in understanding the conditions under which resilient organizations adapt to challenging circumstances, little attention to date has been paid to the role played by ‘soft’ factors such as identity as an enabler or property of resilient behaviour. In this chapter, we propose that different forms of legitimacy contribute to the framing of acceptable identities affecting the endurance of central elements over time, thus shaping resilience. By splitting up forms of legitimacy and by analysing elements of organizational identity separately, we provide a novel framework that enables a deeper understanding of identity formation processes in complex environments on the one hand and their links with resilience on the other. Through a historically based analysis of a Nordic university over a 40-year period, we demonstrate the complex, dynamic relationship between external legitimacy, identity adaptation and resilience in the context of organizational transformation. By establishing a link between identity, legitimacy and resilience, the study provides critical insights into the conditions affecting organizational persistence within highly institutionalized organizational fields, such as higher education.

The research question being addressed is:

• What is the relationship between organizational identity and resilience, and does it manifest itself empirically in the organizational field of higher education?

Geschwind L., Pinheiro R., Stensaker B. (2022) Organizational Persistence in Highly Institutionalized Environments: Unpacking the Relation Between Identity and Resilience. In: Pinheiro R., Frigotto M.L., Young M. (eds) Towards Resilient Organizations and Societies. Public Sector Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

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• First Online17 November 2021
• DOI
• Publisher NamePalgrave Macmillan, Cham
• Print ISBN978-3-030-82071-8
• Online ISBN978-3-030-82072-5