ORGANISATIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTIFICATION: A SOCIAL IDENTITY STUDY OF A POST MERGER SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITY

ABSTRACT Based on the principles of the Social Identity Theory this qualitative study examined how organisational identification and professional identification relate to each other in times of an organisational merger. To understand the relationship between these two constructs this study focussed on the perceptions of academic staff members of a post-merger South African university. The method of research consisted of a combination of semi-structured interviews, a focus group session and document analyses. The most striking result is that for most of the academic staff members who have experienced a decrease in organisational identification as a direct result of the merger, their focus of identification has shifted towards their profession. In other words, their professional identification is enhanced as a result of a decrease in organisational identification. This decrease in organisational identification can be explained by the negative influences of perceived pre-merger status differences and dominance. However, it appears that the amount of identification that is needed to legitimate the effort one puts into a job needs to come from some form of identification; either organisational identification or professional identification. Previous research only focussed on the influence of an increase in organisational identification on professional identification and vice versa. What is renewing about the results of this study is the fact that professional identification can even compensate for a decrease in organisational identification as well