Name Muhammad Faisal Kaimkhani Group 14

Q1: Why do people want to utilize a social identity when interacting with other people?
And why might people choose to identify with a low-status group?

People want to utilities a social identity in order to show their knowledge, status, power,
prestige emotions and distinctions in a given environment. In certain level an individual
identification is rest on comparison and distinctions between in- group members and out-
group member’s conceptual components motivated by an individual underlying self
esteem. (Tajfel1972.p293,J.C Turner 1972,Hogg 2000c) One's identity is comprised of
both one’s own internal identity and an open social identity. People want to show theirs
attributes as a member of a certain group with in which one falls such as one’s
nationality, his political affiliations, organization work group etc in an organization level
social identity plays a tremendous role in shaping of characteristics of an individual in a
complex networks of intergroup relations in terms of self esteem and prestige.
People some time give more emphasis on their professional and organizational identity
than ascribed identities which in my sense shows one’s affiliations and trust in an
organization. People want to peruse their Self identity in order to gain positive self
esteem in an organization. Self identity helps any one in reducing uncertainty in order to
gain self enhancement which help them in avoiding the risk to their prestige. (Hogg
2001)
People can choose to identify with low –status group for job satisfactions,
organizational commitments and against high level employees with low job satisfactions
and organization commitment. People with low-status group consider that their status
position is legitimate outcome of procedures response positively to any kind of merger
than their counterpart high level which response more negatively due to high level of
legitimacy. People with low level status in organization have low level of in-group
organization bias than high level.(Turner J,C 1978 and Brown) An individual thinks that
lower Status groups has more in commons than high ones`` it is the group with which an
individual most commonly interacts and through which other members of the
organization interact with him or her``(R.M karamar,1981,pp.204-205).

Q2: The phenomenon of salience is treated in the period of the chapters included in the
readings.
a: What is meant by salience?
b: Discuss how the salience of different social identities could deliberately affected in
order to ensure that employees hold a strong positive organizational identification?

Salience is the pronounced features of identification ranked in salience hierarchy drawn

on the basis of identity theory and social identification theory.(Tajfel and Turner,1986)
Salience shows the relative position of an individual in an organization according to their
internal and external norms. An individual has two relevant salience norms in an
organization according to their identities and position in an organization which may be
subjective importance for any higher level identities to situational relevance to low level
identities. Salience is the feature of an individual identification which shows an
individual’s goals, values and key attributes to enact the identity in an organization.
(Brewer 1995,M E Brown 1969.R.M Kramar,1991,Lawler1992)
There are generally two social identities in any organization or group which are
higher order identities and lower order identities. Salience of these two social identities
can deliberately affected in the case of external enemies picking fights which got inroad
due to distinctive physical proximity between higher level identities employees with low
level and these distinctive can be overcome by responsible manners such as
interdependence, communication channels etc.Suppose there is an issues in an
organization related to social stereotypes and historical inequities may threatened
members demography. There may be some sort of unjust ice to the people while in the
process of hiring, promotion and in giving rewards by targeting demographic salient
categories of any individual members which may result in fostering backlash and
resentments against the different categories members which are the laudable historic
wrongs.(e.g Day,Cross,Ringsies and Williams,1999) The salience of lower level identity
in any organization may be affected if higher level identity not admitted or appreciate its
premium qualities in any organization for instance a supervisor may be ordered to
perform acts that are contravene the percepts of her prayer group.(Barnent and
Miner,1992) If there is not greater overlap in between identity and generalization of
identification so that salience of different identification in any organization or group will
not be correlated to each other. There may be a clash if any marketing company is not
hiring its team on the basis of marketing salience such as an individual having multiple
identity can respond to an issue on the perspective of his gender and ethnicity.(Hogg and
Terry 2000)

Q#3: Westenholz reviews five different stories on various attempts to introduce industrial
revolution in Scandinavian companies. which of these approaches stories seem ,in theory
most promising to you encouraged the development of the shared social identity
(organizational identity) among workers and managers in an industrial organization? Use
also contributions in Hogg and terry to peruse your line of argumentation.

The major factor of Autonomous work group is that it provide social identity to an
individual by empowering them in decision making according to their status and role and
framing standards for quantity and quality on the basis of feedbacks from internal or
external sources. The formations of unions in the Scandinavian countries is the result of
this theory which help then in eroding the long tradition of interest based bargaining and
injustice laws and regulations and thus Autonomous work group theory created physical
proximity between connected tasks and groups.(inspired by Lewin experiment)
I will personally like Autonomous work group theory of development
of industries in scan avian countries because it give liberation to people from
unnecessarily restrictive traditions,ideologies,assumptions,power relations and identity
formations which is a key hurdle for any organization in prosper and distort opportunities
for autonomy which provide satisfactions to people’s wants and need .Sweden also
experiencing at any how the critical theory in order to give expansion to its industrialized
network and a key model to other Scandinavian countries. Autonomous work group also
helps in transforming the pillar of bourgeois theory into practical theory which in return
help in construction of self in an individual. The major factor behind the success of
critical theory is the democratic dialogue whish researcher tried to implement in
Scandinavian countries which give boost to the idea that everybody should take active
part in dialogue and give their points of views. (The critical organization theory by Mats
Alverson) The best example of Autonomous work group is the story of Volvo in Sweden
which involved employees in the implementation process at small and highly varying
degree. In my opinion critical theory provide an open approach to top management while
interacting with employees and help them in generating innovative ideas and avoid
backlash between lower level identities with high level identities. Critical theory give to
the win win situation in any organization to both employees and management because it
bond them in co-ordination and help them in decision making, task distribution,
formation of internal and external leadership and implementation of individual
operations.(Fordest concept with Thomas sandberg)

References
• Hogg, M.A. & Terry, D.J. (2001) “Social identity theory and organizational
processes”. Philadelphia, in Hogg, M.A & Terry, D.J. (2001)”social identity
processes in organizational contexts. PA: Psychology press.

• Ashforth, B.E. & Johnson, S.A. (2001) “Which hat to wear? The relative salience
of multiple identities in organizational context”. In Hogg, M.A & Terry, D.J.
(2001) social identity processes in organizational context. Philadelphia, PA:
Psychology press.

• Ashforth, B.E. & Johnson, S.A. (2001) “Which hat to wear? The relative salience
of multiple identities in organizational context”. In Hogg, M.A & Terry, D.J.
(2001) social identity processes in organizational context. Philadelphia, PA:
Psychology press.