Nested Identification in Community Enterprises: Exploring the dynamics of temporal nested identification processes among volunteers in the Finnish community enterprise Livonsaari
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2019
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Creative Sustainability
Language
en
Pages
89+21
Series
Abstract
One hot topic in the sustainable development debate is the call for alternative business models, focusing not only on financial but also on social and environmental values. A widely underappreciated and underexplored organizational form in this debate is community entrepreneurship. As academics suggest that volunteerism is a crucial element for the existence of community enterprises, this study delves into the organizational structures of community-based enterprises with a particular focus on identification dynamics of volunteers within a community setting. Thus, based on the concept of nested identities, the following intensive single case study, which was conducted in a community-based enterprise (CBE) in the Naantali municipality in Southern Finland, sheds light on identification processes of volunteers and how they, over the course of a seven months program, identify with other individuals, workgroup relationships and the community within a given organizational setting. Our study follows the principles of an ethnographic research design and builds generalizable theory for the two phenomena community enterprising and volunteerism. As an inductive-abductive approach was used for the data analysis procedure, this study furthermore provides empirical validity and contributes to existing theories on temporal nested identification processes. Through our research study, we have generated three key theoretical insights on temporal nested identification processes. First, the identification process appears to be negatively affected when an organizational setting does not enable individuals to pursue their motives within a given time frame. Second, the workgroup target seems to play an integral role in the process, which we found to be tightly connected to the temporality of the volunteer program. Last, our findings suggest that a continuously strong identification with the organizational target appears to have a positive effect on other identification targets over time. Additionally, our findings give reason to suspect that external factors that occur during a timely limited program shape identification dynamics. While events and interactions spur identification in the short-run, the accumulation and mismanagement of tensions appears to impinge on processes in the long-run.Description
Thesis advisor
Kibler, EwaldFarny, Steffen
Keywords
community enterprises, sustainable development, temporality, nested identification processes, organizational identification, volunteerism