How Organizational Identification is Formed: Organizational Signals and Managerial Ethics

Organizational Identification (OI) plays a central role in shaping employees’ attitudes, behaviors, and attachment to organizations. While prior research has extensively examined the consequences of organizational identification, considerably less attention has been devoted to understanding how identification itself is formed. Addressing this theoretical imbalance, the present study conceptualizes organizational identification as a focal outcome shaped by credibility-based organizational and supervisory cues. Drawing on social identity theory, we develop and test an integrative multilevel model that examines the joint effects of organizational-level legitimacy signals—corporate reputation and corporate social responsibility—and supervisor-level relational mechanisms—ethical leadership and perceived supervisor support—on organizational identification. Survey data were collected from employees working in privately owned organizations in Mongolia, a post-socialist and transitional economy characterized by institutional change and evolving managerial norms. Regression analyses indicate that ethical leadership, perceived supervisor support, corporate reputation, and corporate social responsibility each exert significant positive effects on organizational identification. Importantly, the findings demonstrate that organizational-level and supervisor-level antecedents operate in combination rather than isolation, underscoring the multilevel and credibility-driven nature of identification formation. By positioning organizational identification as a focal outcome rather than merely a mediating mechanism, this study advances organizational identification theory and extends social identity theory to an underexplored institutional context. The findings further highlight the strategic importance of ethical leadership, relational trust, and organizational legitimacy for fostering durable employee attachment in emerging and transitional economies.

کلیدواژه ها:

Organizational identification ، Ethical leadership ، Perceived supervisor support ، Corporate Social Responsibility ، Corporate Reputation