Implications of a Combined Model of Social Identity Complexity Theory and Isidentification Theory

The adoption of social identity theory (SIT) by organizational behavior researchers has been rather fruitful. Recognizing that organization identification is a special case of SIT has allowed a vast, mature literature to be applied to organization topics. SIT was born out of Tajfel’s (1979) remarkable experiments demonstrating that even the slightest priming of group membership leads to prejudice. “Blue eyes, a preference for the paintings of Wasily Kandinsky over those of Paul Klee, and calling some people overestimators and others underestimators were sufficient to produce a preference for fellow group members and to elicit discrimination against outsiders” (Huddy, 2001:132). SIT has itself been extended with self-categorization theory, which focuses on the cognitive aspects of identification (Turner, 1987). The two theories have since grown nearly indistinguishable from each other and will essentially be treated as one throughout this paper.