A New Role for Place Identity in Managing Organizational Change

In an extension of organizational identity research, we draw on place identity theory (PIT) to argue that employees’ identification with their place of work influences their perceptions of large-scale organizational change. To determine how different types of employees respond to threats to their sense of place identity, we conducted 34 interviews with senior and middle managers, supervisory and nonsupervisory staff, and external stakeholders at a public hospital undergoing change. Groups of employees at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy experienced a stronger sense of place and belongingness and greater disruption to their place identity than those at higher levels. We discuss how place identity operates as a component of social identity as well as the responses managers can make to ways in which employees with different place identifications deal with change.

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