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Identity, Identification, and Relationship Through Social Alliances

Ryerson University, bergeri{at}ryerson.ca

Peggy H. Cunningham

Queen’s University, pcunningham{at}business.queensu.ca

Minette E. Drumwright

The University of Texas at Austin, mdrum{at}mail.utexas.edu

The authors studied social alliances, a type of corporate societal marketing initiative. Their research finds that social alliances are an important means whereby employees identify more closely with their organizations while gaining a greater sense of being whole, integrated persons. Furthermore, this integration allows both organizations and their members to align their commercial identities with their moral and social identities. As organizational members struggled to resolve conflicts within their own identities, they were aided by social alliances, which in turn led them to identify more with their organizations. Unlike previous research, the findings suggest that the kind of connections referred to by the informants went well beyond the cold, rational associations described in previous research to emotional attachments that appear to be critical to organizational identification. The results also suggest that participation in social alliances may result in multiple forms of identification: intra- and interorganization identification.

Key Words: social alliances • corporate identity • corporate societal marketing • cause-related marketing • corporate social responsibility • nonprofit marketing

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