How Time Brings Together “I” and “We”: A Theory of Identification Through Memory

Abstract

Drawing on social identity theory, we suggest a cognitive model of organizational identification grounded in memory. We argue that organizational identification takes place in working memory and that this process may be subject to influences such as frequency of interaction with other members of the organization; frequency of information received about the information; the primacy effect; and the recency effect. We encourage scholars to investigate organizational identification over time.