Sustainability as an Identity Construct: (Re)Crafting Organizational Identification for Organizational Immigrants

Abstract

The study attempts to understand the complexities of identification in situations when broader organizational and institutional discourses actively challenge the skills and expertise of organizational members who are minorities, arguing that a lens of sustainability allows greater understanding of the ongoing processes at stake, rather than achieving a static outcome. By studying international female graduate engineering students, the paper examines the intersections of gender and foreignness which lie at the root of the nature of identification with the engineering profession. Analysis of data from interviews and focus groups involving 49 participants reveals that the members face barriers which create tensions regarding linkages with the organization and the broader engineering profession, which in turn threaten their engineering identities. Additional analysis shows that the members communicatively reconfirm and recombine their identities, drawing from alternate non-organizational resources which help the members sustain themselves in the organization. The findings extend our understanding of organizational identity, capitalizing on member identification and diversity through the mobilization and utilization of organizational and non-organizational resources in the organizations.