Organizational identity has emerged as a significant construct to understand the behaviour of organizations. However, researchers have noted several inconsistencies in the way organizational identity has been conceptualized so far. The concept of organizational self holds promise in reconciling these tensions. In this article, we contribute towards this reconciliation by identifying processes that may facilitate the creation of a shared understanding of organizational self. Borrowing from, and building on, theorization from Indian psychology that specializes in the knowledge of individual self, (...) we propose three processes, namely meta-cognizing, guarding and organizing, that assist organizational members arrive at a shared understanding of organizational self. Evidence from one organization’s efforts to evolve a unique identity is used to demonstrate the existence of these processes. This conceptualization is capable of addressing the inconsistencies in the organizational identity literature, and also has significant implications for practice as it may be able to suggest how organizational members can develop and preserve a unique organizational identity in the context of dynamic internal pressures and external influences. (shrink)

Scandals in companies such as Enron have been a source of great concern in the last decade. The events that led to a global financial crisis in 2008 have heightened this concern. How does one account for executive behaviors that led to such a crisis? This article argues that a conjunction of motive, means, and opportunity creates ‘an ethical hazard’ making questionable executive decisions more probable. It then suggests that corporate unethical behavior can be minimized by creating a process to (...) identify and remove such ethical hazards, and by appointing an ‘ethical hazards marshal.’. (shrink)

I am going to attempt to argue, given certain premises, there are reasons, not only empirical, but also logical, for expecting a certain division of labor in the processing of information by the human brain. This division of labor consists specifically of a functional bifurcation into what may be called, to a first approximation, "verbal" and "nonverbal" modes of information- processing. That this dichotomy is not quite satisfactory, however, will be one of the principal conclusions of this chapter, for I (...) shall attempt to show that metaphor, which in its most common guise is a literary, and hence a fortiori a "verbal" phenomenon, may in fact be more a function of the "nonverbal" than the "verbal" mode. (For alternative attempts to account for cognitive lateralization, see e.g. Bever, 1975; Wickelgren, 1975; Pendse, 1978.). (shrink)