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http://oss.sagepub.com/Organization Studies
http://oss.sagepub.com/content/31/4/481The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0170840610372205
2010 31: 481Organization StudiesSierk Ybema
Talk of change: Temporal contrasts and collective identities
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Talk of change: Temporal contrasts andcollective identities
Sierk Ybema
Abstract
While temporality is generally acknowledged as a critical ingredient in processes of iden-tity formation, studies of identity talk usually assume collective identity is essentially
about establishing or facilitating a sense of temporal self-continuity. These studies do notdetail how organizational actors might recast their identity narratives and reflectively puttogether stories about a changing or changed identity. The ethnographic research pre-sented in this article reports how the editors of a Dutch national newspaper constructedtheir newspapers identity in temporal discontinuity talk, discursively constructing a con-trast between the old and the new, between legacies from a common past and plans forthe future. As the organizational identity literature is primarily focused on talk of tempo-ral continuities, I draw on studies of organizational change and nostalgic and postalgicnarratives in order to develop an understanding of the temporal dimension of collectiveidentity talk that does not rule out, but incorporates, discontinuity and change.
Keywords: discourse, identity, nostalgia, organizational change, time
At the end of the meeting to discuss the newspapers profile, some editors, a
columnist and a news commentator of de Volkskrant, a Dutch national newspa-
per with left wing ideological roots, stay and talk, while eating egg or salmon
rolls. The news commentator sitting next to me grabs the text of the staffs offi-
cial identity statement laid down in the editorial statute in 1975, which I had
brought along. Waving it in the air, he calls out to those sitting around: Here!
Listen! and begins to read, adding comments as he goes along.
De Volkskrant is a national morning paper that sets itself the task of keeping itsreaders informed as honestly and exhaustively as possible.
He editorializes: Okay, nothing wrong with that.
He continues: It originated from the Catholic labour movement. Partly for thatreason
He pauses for a moment and then repeats, cynicism in his voice: Partly for thatreason! He looks up from the text with a mocking smile.
He continues reading, now in a ceremonial manner: Partly for that reason itwants to be progressive and, especially, to stand up for the oppressed and perse-cuted. In particular, it aims at promoting developments that hold out promise fora more humane society.
With a sneering voice, he says: Not humane. No: more humane.
Everyone laughs.
article title
OrganizationStudies31(04): 481503ISSN 01708406Copyright TheAuthor(s), 2010.Reprints and
permissions:http://www.sagepub.
co.uk/journalspermissions.nav
Sierk YbemaVU University
Amsterdam, TheNetherlands
www.egosnet.org/os DOI: 10.1177/0170840610372205
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Members of the editorial staff seem keen to ridicule the 23-year-old statement of
principles. In 1981, at the end of his book on de Volkskrants history, the social his-
torian Hemels had given an assured reaffirmation of the newspapers identity, stat-
ing that the identity declaration in the editorial statute was an essential and
connecting element between the past, present and future of de Volkskrant. Fifteenyears later, in 1996, the historian van Vree closed his account of de Volkskrants
history on a less certain note. Like a modern prophet of doom he foresaw a com-
ing crisis and a fundamental change when he spoke of the loss of a traditional
social, political and cultural anchor that would cut the paper loose from one of its
lifelines (van Vree 1996: 202). And now, the official representation of the papers
identity its supposedly central and abiding values was being treated as a fos-
sil, a curiosity from the past having seemingly little or nothing to do with the edi-
tors current beliefs or concerns. If indeed the editors think that the formal
statement is no longer valid, as the scene sketched above seems to suggest, what
does the newspaper the key symbol of the editorial staffs collective identity stand for today in their eyes? Or, more generally stated, if through processes of
change an institution is somehow cut loose from its former lifelines, how does its
collective identity become represented in members everyday discourse?
Social theorists commonly theorize identity in terms of self-continuity (e.g.,
Ezzy 1998; Giddens 1991; Jenkins 2004) and organizational identity researchers
likewise report how organizational members experience or re-create a sense of
sameness across time (e.g., Clegg et al. 2007; Ravasi and Schultz 2006). Instead
this study describes organizational members sense of a changing or changed
collective self. The language-focused, time-sensitive analysis of identity shows
that the Volkskrant editors cultivate a sense of separation from the past, whilesimultaneously disputing the meaning and direction of the identity change by
authoring divergent, conflicting narratives of it. As discontinuity and change are
relatively under-explored issues in the identity literature (Carlsen 2006; Corley
and Gioia 2004), collective identity studies have not yet detailed how organiza-
tional actors discursively enact identity change. For the analysis of the varieties
of identity talk in this case, I will therefore draw on organizational change liter-
ature that describes actors temporal, i.e. nostalgic and postalgic, sensemaking.
This literature helps to theorize the varieties of temporal talk described in this
case, thus extending the analysis of organizational actors temporal self-under-
standings and including their experiences of instability and discontinuity.
The theoretical argument set out in this article is inspired by an ethnographic
case study of the editorial staff ofde Volkskrant, one of the major national news-
papers in The Netherlands with, at the time of the research, a staff of about 240
members and a subscription base of more than 300,000 (permission was granted
to name the organization). After summarising the theoretical approach, I explain
the research methodology used in the case. I then turn to the empirical findings
that illustrate how the editors construct, deconstruct or reconstruct their collec-
tive identity in everyday organizational discourse. Focusing specifically on tem-
poral talk, I describe and analyse the narratives of collective identity change
adopted by the editors. Implications for theorizing organizational identity are
discussed in the final section, in which I develop a situation-sensitive, contex-
tual understanding of identity change talk.
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A temporal perspective on collective identity change
Although change is a central topic in organizational studies and scientific inter-
est in matters of organizational identity has increased markedly over the past
decade, the combination research into the formation, transformation, and loss
of collective identities has not enjoyed similar attention. Various organiza-
tional theorists have proposed research into identity change (e.g., Hatch and
Schultz 2002), but debates on whether organizational identities are enduring
(e.g., Albert and Whetten 1985) or dynamic (e.g., Gioia et al. 2000) have, thus
far, tended to be weighty in significance but fairly abstract in detail (Corley et
al. 2006: 93), paying relatively little attention to identity as processes of trans-
formation (Carlsen 2006: 132). In particular, the temporal dimension of identity
change is understudied (Corley and Gioia, 2004: 204). While temporality is
generally acknowledged as a critical ingredient in processes of identity forma-
tion, less attention has been paid to how temporality is socially constructed, and
deployed hegemonically, in the authorship of collective identities (Brown 2006:
741). Existing research into collective identity change tends commonly to focus
on the interplay between internal and external images of the organizational self
(e.g., Dutton and Dukerich 1991) or on its differentiating qualities that serve to
distinguish supposedly unique collective selves from others (e.g., Garcia and
Hardy 2007), while not systematically exploring how temporal resources, i.e.
the past, present and future, are utilized and deployed within organizational and
managerial discourses to disrupt, transform, develop, discover, or restore a sense
of collective self. This article seeks to fill this gap and develop our understand-
ing of how organizational actors recast their self-narrative, authoring a version
of their collective selves as changing or changed.
Temporal self-understandings when the self is defined through a compari-
son of the I or the we at different periods of time can be a highly significant
sensemaking device. In Charles Taylors words: In order to have a sense of who
we are, we have to have a notion of how we have become, and of where we are
going (quoted in Giddens 1991: 54). Stressing the symbolic and constructed
nature of the labels we use to interpret time, studies of ethnic groups, social
movements, nations, local communities (e.g., Cohen 1985) and organizations
(Gabriel 1993) show that narratives of the past often present a highly selective
rendering of historical facts, projecting a present-day point of view onto past
events. Even detailed descriptions of a shared origin are continuously revised to
serve situational interests and to match the mood of present times (Douglas
1987: 69). Because of the subjective nature of our experience of time (Cunliffe,
Luhman and Boje 2004: 262) and the plasticity of the past, present and future
(Elias 1992), time lies relatively open to (re-) interpretation, projection, and
exploitation. It provides people with a particularly rich reservoir of meanings for
identity work (Sveningsson and Alvesson 2003), because it can be squeezed
and expanded, made to seem episodic or linear, and imposed upon to create
beginnings and endings which, in turn, define eras of supposed progress and
regress, order and chaos (Brown 2006: 741).
However, empirical studies of the discursive enactment of collective identities
in organizational settings seem to suggest that organizational members adopt a
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single temporal template: one that constructs a linear sense of self-continuity.
Ravasi and Schultz (2006), for instance, describe how Bang & Olufsen handled
identity threats by looking back into their corporate history, presenting revised
claims not as radically new but rather as a rediscovery of values and attitudes
that were already part of the collective heritage of the organization (Ravasi andSchultz 2006: 449). In a similar vein, Clegg, Rhodes and Kornberger (2007: 508)
show how business coaches construct their professional and organizational iden-
tity as temporally fixed, actively seeking to achieve endurance in the precarious,
ill-defined context of an emerging industry. Organizational members may even
discursively construct continuity in the face of radical change, as Paalumkis
(2000) case study suggests. She describes how members of a recently privatised
organizational unit assume a straight line of events running from past to future in
order to celebrate their present success as a continuation of cherished traditions
that are bound to bring a bright future. Apparently, the certainty of who we were
is often a prerequisite for the certainty of who we are and who we will be.These studies support the widespread assumption that narrative identity can
be equated with a subjective sense of self-continuity (Ezzy 1998; see also, e.g.,
Czarniawska 1997: 48), along with the claim that organizational members have
an intrinsic desire to sense and experience coherence and continuity (Weick
1995: 20), thereby seeing their organization as having an enduring essence in
order to avoid psychic pain and discomfort, [to] allay or prevent anxiety,
resolve conflicts, and generally support and increase self-esteem (Brown and
Starkey 2000: 104). Yet, although collective identity narratives may often artic-
ulate enduring features (Albert and Whetten 1985) and facilitate the collective
experience of temporal continuity (Brown 2006: 741), it is a mistake to assumethat collective identity is invariably or necessarily coincident with peoples
sense of consistency over time. This assumption rules out the possibility of iden-
tities enacted through talk of discontinuity and change.
Some organizational identity researchers have explicitly drawn attention to
identity change, while, ironically, still testifying to the importance of consis-
tency over time for members organizational identities by showing the confla-
tion of change and continuity in narrative texts (e.g., Chreim 2005). Gioia,
Schultz and Corley (2000) have coined the term adaptive instability to describe
that we use the same labels over time to describe core elements of identity
(p.75), while the meaning associated with these labels changes (p.64). From
this theoretical vantage point, maintaining a sense of continuity (p.65) through
the continued use of the same organizational symbols is assumed to bridge the
past and present and to allow new applications to be undertaken under the
umbrella of persistent labels and values (Chreim 2005: 587), thus providing a
sense of familiarity and facilitating the acceptance of change (p.586) (a simi-
lar continuity-change conflation is described in studies of managerial discourse
that deploys a myth of the organizations Golden Age to bring about change (see,
e.g., Strangleman 1999; OConnor 2000)). While these studies have been impor-
tant in stretching the conceptual boundaries of the identity concept and opening
up the field of identity research for studying change, they also persist in repro-
ducing an understanding of identity as maintaining a sense of continuity with a
past self to alleviate the pain of change.
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Some studies invite us to stretch the conceptual boundaries even further by dis-
cussing labels-based identity change (Fiol 2002) in combination with meaning-
based identity change (Corley and Gioia 2004) and describing managerial
attempts to promote attractive notions of a clean break from past identities
(Llewellyn 2004). The empirical research presented here also highlights a situa-tion where the critical self-questioning about who we are as a collective elicited
discursive responses that did not enact a continuous or enduring notion of iden-
tity. In fact, in this case, talk of temporal discontinuities dominated the discursive
arena, demonstrating how organizational members can establish an idea of radi-
cal change by depicting one period in time positioned in strong contrast with
another. How, then, do we theorize this talk of discontinuity and transformation?
Since the identity researcher is theoretically biased and/or empirically inspired to
note narratives of enduring rather than changing identities, collective identity
studies offer limited conceptual guidance for such an exercise. Therefore, we may
seek inspiration in the literature on organizational change and, in particular, instudies that analyse actors narratives of change during organizational upheaval
(e.g., Buchanan and Dawson 2007), focusing specifically on both retrospective
and prospective sensemaking (Carlsen 2006) and sensebreaking (Pratt 2000)
practices. Although they lack an explicit theoretical focus on temporal identities,
in-depth studies of organizational change highlight, first of all, members iden-
tity-defining discontinuity talk. As an expression (or invocation) of an emotion-
alised and politicised reality, change talk seeks to construct a symbolic distinction
between, for instance, the indulgent management style of Old Doug and the
punishment-centered style of a new manager (Gouldner 1954), the genial atmos-
phere and good relationships in an organizations founding years and its com-mercialism and professionalism of today (Ybema 1997), the old-fashioned
values of a companys past and the newer, fresher ideas that it is bringing in
today (Parker 2000: 177), thus engaging in collective identity talk that provides a
sense of the new replacing the old, manufacturing a sense of distance between
then and now (Llewellyn 2004: 963).
Secondly, these studies show that, instead of one single kind of temporal dis-
continuity talk, change can be discursively enacted in at least two different forms.
One form that is frequently reported is usually referred to as organizational nos-
talgia (Gabriel 1993). Nostalgia is the composite feeling of loss, lack and long-
ing (Pickering and Keightley 2006: 921). It tells a tragic story (Beech 2000) in
which a specific kind of temporal comparison is drawn: one that longs for, and
mourns the loss of, a Golden Age (Davis 1979). Although romantic invocations of
the past are sometimes deployed for managerial and/or marketing purposes to
legitimise new plans and policies (e.g., Strangleman 1999; OConnor 2000;
Ravasi and Schultz 2006), nostalgia often represents a discursive resource to be
mobilized in the context of threats to cherished identities employed to demonize
the present by those who seek to resist change (McDonald et al. 2006: 1098). It
is the emotion of those who feel they have fallen victim to the new reigning pow-
ers, those who stand for the preservation of the old and time-honored paths
(Gouldner 1954: 85) and seek to shore up a cherished, and insecure sense of self.
A second, radically different form of temporal discontinuity talk relevant
to identity theory replaces the good past/bad present contrast of nostalgia
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(Davis 1979: 15) with a bad past/great future contrast. While the nostalgic
voice is typically heard in the organizational underlife (Goffman 1961) or the
unmanaged organization (Gabriel 1995), organizational actors in the manage-
rial upperlife tend to have a clear preference for forward-looking concepts, such
as planning, mission, vision, or goal-setting (Bate 1997: 1155). As prevailing dis-courses on change leadership in the general management literature characteristi-
cally invoke an alluring and challenging destination (Oswicket al. 2005), it is not
surprising that managers often frame their own actions in terms of an epic plot
(Beech 2000): highly optimistic, packed with adventure, and projected to end
with a golden age (Brown and Humphreys 2006: 135). As self-proclaimed
saviours involved in a rescue operation, these managers launch new campaigns,
introduce innovations, and conquer new markets, seeking to create a resolute dis-
junction with the past in order to escape a present that bears the stamp of previ-
ous generations. This way, they manage to open up a present-future field of desire,
promise and purpose that allows organizational members to see themselves asprotagonists in some sort of progressive drama (Carlsen 2006: 146). In addition,
again following rhetorical strategies of the organizational change literature
(Oswicket al. 2005), change-oriented managers often enforce their argument for
change as a prerequisite for organizational survival, implicitly sounding a rather
apocalyptic warning to secure their search for better futures (Wolfram Cox
1997: 640). In the words of a young manager (Parker 2000: 178): if you dont
gear up to change, youre going to get left behind. The idealisation of the future
and disdain for the past, and the concomitant condemning of the past-in-the-
present/future, might be termed managerial postalgia (Ybema 2004). If nostal-
gia is an odd mix of present discontents and sweet memories (Davis 1979: 29),postalgia is a mixture of bleak pessimism with huge optimism, of dystopian anx-
ieties over decline or disaster with utopian desires for advancement, growth, and
success. It conjures up images of desirable and undesirable future selves.
The Volkskrantcase demonstrates the relevance of both of these forms of tem-
poral discontinuity talk in the formation of organizational identities. More gener-
ally, it shows how our putative past, present and future can be rich reservoirs of
meanings for promoting, contesting, appropriating and negotiating a change of
identity. The subjectivity of these temporal representations makes for an interest-
ing analysis of the specific contents, contours and contexts of organizational
actorsidentity change talk. So, I ask, how do Volkskranteditors discursively con-
struct temporal discontinuities to establish a sense of collective identity change?
Research approach and methods
An ethnographic case study of the editorial staff of de Volkskrant inspired the
theoretical argument set out in this article. A reflective interchange between the-
ory and data (in deskwork) and between research participants views and my
own interpretations (in field conversations) characterized the interpretive
process. During a period of seven months of fieldwork in 1998, I adopted the
role of simultaneous insider/outsider (Hammersley and Atkinson 2005). By
shadowing central figures in the editorial staff during the everyday production
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of the newspaper, as well as attending meetings and receptions and joining edi-
tors during lunch and evening drinks, I endeavoured to build rapport with the
editors and become familiar with their everyday talk. At the same time, I tried to
ensure a more distanced view by reiteratively reflecting on first impressions and
my developing interpretations in order to preserve some of the initial surprisethat I had as a newcomer to the field (Ybema and Kamsteeg 2009). Having read
some of the literature that theorizes identity in terms of continuity, distinctive-
ness and cohesion, I was puzzled to find that editors identity talk seemed to
fail, for it did not portray a clear, distinctive, and historically consistent col-
lective identity. This confusion or breakdown in my understanding (Agar 1986:
20), while trying my patience, inspired my own critical dialogue between theo-
retical assumptions and empirical impressions (Alvesson and Krreman 2006).
The research process was characterized by the interchange among findings
stemming from different sources and methods, comprising field observations,
document analysis, informal conversations, and formal interviews. In the firstweeks of my fieldwork, I frequently observed and took notes during regularly
scheduled newsroom meetings and informal gatherings in order to get insight
into the identity themes that recurred in discussions about the newspapers edi-
torial policies and its character and external image. Since identity discourse
was commonly present in everyday discussions about actual practices and news-
paper contents, I then started focusing my attention by closely following debates
about particular identity-sensitive (and heavily discussed) issues, such as the
journalistic profile of the new weekly Volkskrant-magazine or the changing
contents of the front page. I attended three plenary meetings and four discussion
sessions on the papers profile (sessions lasted about two hours and were orga-nized over a period of four months), each chaired by one of the four chief edi-
tors and attended by a different group of 8 to 15 editors. I also analysed different
kinds of texts, including marketing reports, internal company documentation,
and annual reports published from 1990 to 1998; the editorial statute; the daily
paper; studies of de Volkskrants history by Van Vree and Hemels; a research
report based on data derived from a questionnaire administered to the editorial
staff; and a journalistic report based on two weeks of fieldwork in the Volkskrant
newsroom (Van Westerloo 1996). These were helpful for understanding the con-
text and contents of the discussions taking place.
The spontaneous conversations continuously informed my emerging interpre-
tations, providing a more grounded understanding of the editors personal atti-
tudes, motivations and impressions concerning the newspapers identity and the
underlying meaning of the opinions on identity-related issues that they vented in
discussion sessions, formal meetings and corridors. In order to explore partic-
ular identity issues in more depth and detail, thirty-two formal (planned), semi-
structured interviews were conducted of one to two hours duration each with a
variety of the editorial staffs members (varying in age, tenure, gender, hierar-
chical position, functional specialisation and discursive position within the inter-
nal debate; ten of these interviews were conducted as a follow-up four years
after the initial ones). The interview protocol contained open questions about the
respondents general biography and tenure at the paper, background on the edi-
torial staffs structure and functioning, views of the newspapers historical
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development and current situation, perceptions of the internal and external
images of the newspaper, and (dis)identification with the newspaper. All inter-
views were recorded and transcribed verbatim; respondents read and com-
mented on interview transcripts, and I used their comments and interpretations
in the data analysis. Information derived from observations and conversationshelped me obtain an idea of the variety (and invariability) of voices that could
be heard within the editorial staff, which in turn guided the choice of interlocu-
tors and the modification of future interviews.
Iterative movement among data gathering, intermediary analysis, and theo-
retical exploration, mediating experience-near and experience-distant con-
cepts (Geertz 1973), allowed the data to speak as loudly as the theories
(Snow, Morrill and Anderson 2003: 193) so that they mutually informed each
other. The analysis first focused on uncovering the particular patterns of col-
lective identity talk within de Volkskrant, treating the field of study as a stand-
alone case (Eisenhardt 1989: 540). Repeated readings of field notes, interviewtranscripts and collected documents, each time marking phrases and passages,
provided a way to identify recurrent themes in copious amounts of data. The
themes identified in the textual data subsequently guided a clustering of con-
vergent categories and abstracting to conceptual levels of interpretation
(Miles and Huberman 1994). Presenting narrative descriptions and initial
analyses in research reports and conference papers involved going back and
forth again between raw data and emerging categories, in a process that
strengthened the interpretation and furnished the description with empirical
depth and detail. Finally, reviewing a variety of case studies of identity talk in
work organizations and other social settings described in the literature, exam-ining similarities and dissimilarities, allowed for a context-sensitive reading
of the case study and an exploration of its theoretical promises, limitations
and implications.
The central focus of the analysis and the theoretical exploration was on the
way people construct their collective identity in everyday organizational dis-
course. This framed identity as a social construct constituted through the situ-
ated practices of talking and writing (Grant et al. 2004: 3), in identity
discourse (Ainsworth and Hardy 2004), identity narratives (Brown 2006),
identity accounts (Kuhn 2006) or identity talk (Snow and Anderson 1987). A
discursive approach to the analysis of organizational identities enables a view
that puts emphasis on the situated performance and multiplicity of narratives
(Cunliffe et al. 2004), thereby avoiding the danger of treating participants
(often essentialist) claims as the true essence of an individual or a collective
(Ybema et al. 2009; Czarniawska 1997). It is insightful for understanding how
identities are articulated in everyday organizational talk and texts; how domi-
nant discourses play out in organizations; how a particular discourse relates to
other discourses; and what discursive strategies are deployed to encourage or
discourage the adoption of certain meanings (Thomas and Linstead 2002). For
the purpose of exploratory richness and theoretical refinement, the analysis of
identity discourse in this article was restricted to temporal self-categorizations.
This meant analysing those core constructs of self-categorization (Clegg et al.
2007: 500) in which editors explicitly reflect on, and actively deploy, the past,
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present and future of the newspaper in order to formulate or reformulate,
applaud or oppose a collective identity.
Narratives of de Volkskrants identity change
From shared dedication to crisis, transformation, and dissent
In the meeting described in the opening vignette, the editor-in-chief of de
Volkskrant had begun the discussion session by asking some of the papers
young talents and leading figures and the (mostly silent) researcher-author
whether the old-fashioned words of the identity statement written down in the
editorial statute still represented de Volkskrants current or desired identity. De
Volkskrant had started out as a Catholic union paper in 1919, gradually aban-
doned its Catholic origins in the 1960s, and embarked on a distinctly left wing,
social-democratic course in the 1970s, formally laid down in the statutory iden-tity statement (Van Vree 1996). In the 1990s, after more than two decades of
steady growth, revenues from advertising and readership had slowly started to
decrease. Against this backdrop, the editor-in-chief claimed that de Volkskrant
suffered from its ideological heritage that he saw as stigmatising the paper:
potential readers assumedly saw de Volkskrant as a bitingly critical newspaper
of left wing faultfinders. So, he asked the staff, perhaps it was time to recon-
sider the identity statement and refashion the papers identity anew?
The fifteen editors invited to take part in the discussion session readily agreed
that it was no longer self-evident that a newspaper would take a particular (or,
indeed, any) political stand. Traditional ideology, it was claimed, was blurringor ebbing in the 1990s. Curiously enough, however, after administering a ques-
tionnaire and holding four discussion sessions (some of whose central issues
were summarised in a report written by the author-researcher), a plenary meet-
ing was held in which it was decided (without celebration or enthusiasm) notto
eliminate the statement after all. Why? When I asked them after the meeting,
editors expressed different views. Some suggested the statement of principles
was nothing but a dead letter that left them, and most staff members, indiffer-
ent. Others claimed that some of the staff were not ready to break away from
once cherished ideals. Still others believed nobody really knew what to do with
the identity statement and they failed to formulate an appealing alternative.
While editors had different views on the reasons for the staffs decision not to
cross out the identity statement, all agreed that the lack of common consent and
clear convictions were characteristic of the editorial staff today. In interviews,
meetings and informal talk, editors frequently talked of identity change, conflict
and crisis. Invoking an image of a rupture with the papers past, they situated the
present-day disputes in time, claiming that, in contrast with the old days, a clear
and uniting perspective was missing today. The confusing, changing and con-
flict-ridden present was measured against the presumed social cohesion, stabil-
ity and ideological clarity of former years symbolized by the unambiguous
statement of principles in the statutory text.
While a stark contrast was believed to distinguish the present from a relatively
recent, more stable and secure period in the papers history, todays turbulence
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simultaneously resonated with memories of radical transformations in a more
distant past. Editors shared the belief that it had always been a typical strength
of de Volkskrant that it was able to change. The paper, as one editor expressed
it, follows the latest fashion: we always change colour exactly on time. A com-
mentator on foreign affairs, presenting the papers history as a succession of rad-ical changes: De Volkskrant has always been opportunistic and chameleonic:
Catholic in the 1960s, left wing in the 1970s and 1980s, and now were more
popular. Weve always been good in sensing the spirit of the times. Criticising
current changes, some disapprovingly named it Catholic docility or spineless-
ness; others rather called it journalistic sensitivity, shrewd positioning or
innovative flexibility. All agreed, however, that changing colours had been a
constant characteristic of the paper throughout its history.
Editors collectively engaged in temporal talk of identity change, but they typ-
ically put forward conflicting views about how the collective identity was chang-
ing today. In my interpretation of these different views, co-constructed inconversations with research participants, the rhetoric of the staffs identity talk
can be seen as two antagonistic discourses in which past traditions and planned
innovations were valued differently. The discourse that dominated the staffs
identity discussions, described in the following section, reacted against the som-
bre negativism of leftist journalism (devaluing the past) and argued for a more
light-hearted, liberal newspaper (projecting an attractive future). It successfully
drove the counter-discourse, discussed in the subsequent section, into a defensive
posture. This discourse dismissed the frothy entertainment of todays paper
(devaluing the present/future) and favoured societal engagement and critical jour-
nalism (re-valuing and romanticising the past). Within these discourses, partici-pants use of terms such as bloody sour, open and newsy or bleak and bland
(or indeed frothy entertainment and sombre negativism) are themselves con-
tested categories; they can be seen as discursive moves in an ongoing negotiation
over the shape, direction and legitimacy of the process of change.
From bloody sour to open and newsy
One powerful voice in the discursive struggles within the editorial staff railed
against the inheritance of the newspapers left wing ideological past. In this dis-
course, editors internalised the negative image that the public was assumed to haveof the left wing Volkskrant with its preference for social issues, labelling their
own paper as predisposed, patronizing, cynical, predictable, and moraliz-
ing, imposing an overly sombre worldview on its readers. It was argued that the
steady growth of readership and lack of direct competition in the 1980s, together
with the editors missionary zeal and idealism, had grown into a false belief of
moral superiority and a rather self-assured, opinionated attitude that was indiffer-
ent to readers wishes. The negative characterization of the paper was often framed
as the publics image (they think we are like this) or relegated to the past (we
used to be like that). Recalling instances of the papers missionary journalism,
editors laughed about former taboos on covering auto racing, boxing, showbiz,the infernal din of heavy metal music or, indeed, the anachronism of an old-
fashioned statutory text. It was, however, also acknowledged that the papers
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apostolic journalism had not entirely disappeared. A foreign news editor, for
instance, wrote in the margin of a questionnaire:
Weve got to do away with our damned proclivity to change the world, to play the mis-sionary. () We never seem to have put an end to the dreadful seventies. Away with that!
Let the reader decide what he wants to think instead of being lead by a Volkskrant tellinghow it is. If we want to wreck ourselves.
The stinging self-criticism laid a foundation for plans and initiatives to change
the newspapers journalistic policies. The new staff of chief editors propagated
this past-unfriendly, change-oriented view most forcefully. In his maiden speech
in 1995, the editor-in-chief told the staff to move away from note journalism
[official news from institutions] and go search for the non-directed reality (Van
Vree 1996: 202). The abundance of union news and the umpteenth story about
welfare mothers were assumed not to appeal to the onrushing zap-generation.
On different occasions, he clearly voiced his discontent with the character and
contents of the paper that, he asserted, was bloody sour. It was his ambition torid the paper of its wornness and from the silly idea that good and bad are firmly
fixed notions. Together with a new team of chief editors, he began to emphasize
the diversity of political opinion makers by including both liberal and conserv-
ative voices, as well as popular culture, infotainment, a newsy attitude and
reports from the streets, in order to lighten the papers intellectual, left-wing
image and to bring the paper close up to its readers. A deputy chief: We are
allowed to offer amusement now. We always kept it out. We are breaking with
the idea that left-wing must be sombre, heavy-hearted.
Looking back three years after he took office, the editor-in-chief spoke in the
past tense when discussing the newspapers leftist leanings: The conscience ofde Volkskrant no longer lies on the left-right axis. We are done with that social-
political distinction. Competing on ideology is pass. He recapitulated the
newspapers identity change as follows:
When I started, the paper had a cranky overtone. It was predictable, everyone could tellwhat the opinion of de Volkskrant would be and usually that was not sympathetic.Moreover, we were too much a newspaper of political notes and union reports. Notexactly appealing to female and young readers Clearly, the paper had to change: itshould become less predictable, more curious, open and frivolous. Not sour and no taboosanymore. We no longer decide what our readers should think or read. (Public interview,Opzij, November 1998)
At the time of the research changes were well under way and heavily discussed.
Editors observed a profound change, claiming the new policies had turned for-
mer taboos into new tasks and vice versa: the new rule is: no more union news
or welfare stories; there is less politics, less conflicts, more leisure on the
first page; pictures from starving Africans are now taboo. Although these poli-
cies met with strong opposition from the staff (described in the next subsection),
editors commonly engaged in anti-past, pro-change talk. The youngest editors in
particular were in favour of street-level journalism and popular culture-coverage
(e.g., the Eurovision Song festival, the Dutch crown princes new date). In their
eyes de Volkskranthad grown into a rather elitist paper that all too often turned upits nose at the interests of the common people. They envisioned a newspaper that
would bring in low culture, while maintaining high culture but non-highbrow
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standards it needed to be juicy but good, as one of them put it. For them, this
also entailed that the staff would abandon its left wing roots and would make for
a strictly professional newspaper without a political bias.
The older generation of editors shared the critique of the politically correct
and correcting Volkskrant. Even the more vociferous opponents of the new plansand policies admitted that the paper had become too agenda-focused; dead
and stuffy; had lost its reporters character; or was politically biased: With
hindsight, we [education editors] often overplayed our hand, being guided by
good intentions. We worked along established lines for too long. Support of the
chief editors reforms was usually given rather unenthusiastically or was cloaked
in criticism, as when, for instance, it was claimed that the papers rejuvenating
cure did not come up to the staffs expectations. The paper was still sour and
smarty; still politically correct; not writing about popular culture with an
open mind yet; was still running the risk of becoming a dreary old codgers
paper. The critical support notwithstanding, the contents, direction and out-comes of the change initiatives themselves had come under fire in a counter-dis-
course that, rather than pouring scorn on the papers past, placed renewed value
on old traditions to criticise the contemporary Volkskrant.
From critical and engaged to frothy
Although all editors engaged in anti-past, pro-change talk, most of them simul-
taneously maintained that new policies of the team of chief editors posed a direct
threat to some of the most valued characteristics of the newspaper. In this
counter-discourse a divergent, oppositional view of current changes was nour-ished that claimed de Volkskrant was involved in a process called popularisa-
tion, vulgarisation or soap-ification and was slipping into tasteless,
Telegraaf-like journalism (De Telegraafis a populist paper with a wide circu-
lation). It was argued that the paper had gone from one extreme to another: for
years the paper had run down banal popular culture and now it was applaud-
ing it. One editor summarised this transition as follows (with a grim look on his
face): We used to be left wing and cynical and now we are liberal and frothy.
Editors were particularly annoyed about the chief editors plans to make a glossy
pulp of the new weekly Volkskrant-magazine and their newly instantiated practice
of putting reports about Spice Girls-mania or news about the Dutch Royal Familyon the front page. A photojournalist, for instance, looking at a report of the Spice
Girls, shook his head disapprovingly, saying: These kinds of issues that I find of no
value whatever when they blow this up out of all proportions, turning it into a
front page report These kinds of issues were widely considered trivial and cheap
entertainment, representing an unprofessional, marketing-like approach meant only
to serve a broad reading public: [Today] the paper tries to please as many readers
as possible (economy editor); We never wanted to sell as many papers as possible
(commentator). The criticism surfaced in, for instance, informal conversations: It
makes me rather cranky. Young, New, Open, Fresh. Thats all the chief editors can
talk about these days (news editor); in formal gatherings: We are cheering too
much. We go along with all the nonsense (sport editor); and in discussion sessions:
We are sliding into an overly populist paper (chairman of the editors council).
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The counter-discourse critically questioned the gains of the new plans and
policies while simultaneously accentuating their losses. Old(er) editors in par-
ticular perceived the papers popularisation in terms of loss or devaluation.
They were dedicated to writing the quality newspaper de Volkskrant had pur-
ported to be under the previous editor-in-chief, with high journalistic standards,an intellectual interest, societal engagement and a critical stance towards the
establishment. In what they saw as a frantic attempt of the new team of chief
editors to make a sunshiny newspaper, the paper was bargaining away these
former qualities:
De Volkskrant is popularising. It needs to be done light-heartedly these days. Not tooserious. Today we aim at an audience that is hardly interested in political matters and thatdoes not appreciate difficult subjects: an important report on environmental pollutiondoes not make the paper I have a little less the feeling that this is my paper. (Editor,Van Westerloo 1996)
Those challenging the chief editors plans argued that lately de Volkskrant wasmissing the curious suspicion typical of good journalism and the true inspira-
tion of an ideologically inspired approach. In comparison with the criticality
and progressiveness of former years, the new Volkskrant often came to be rep-
resented as the pale opposite. The reforms were seen as turning de Volkskrant
into a lifeless paper. It created, as an education editor put it, nothingness:
Today we lack this passion of really wanting to get to the bottom of things [that
used to be characteristic of the paper], and this has changed de Volkskrantinto a
colourless, bleak, and bland paper.
Instead of bashing the old Volkskrant, in this discursive framework it was typ-
ical to labour for a revaluation of the papers former characteristics. Editorsagreed that the paper needed to lighten up its sombre negativism, but they regret-
ted that the paper seemed to be finished with the past altogether. Instead, they
wanted to see de Volkskrant hold on to the papers social engagement with the
underdog groups in a realistic, light-hearted way. While differentiating their
sympathy for socially engaged journalism from the missionary journalism of
former times We shouldnt shout it from the rooftops they advocated restor-
ing old qualities and making the paper rebellious again, provocative, a bit
impish or less law-abiding in order to reconnect the paper with its roots as a
high-quality, intellectual, critical and socially engaged newspaper and to create
a distinct profile once more.
Analysis: temporal talk of identity change
The case analysis of de Volkskrant shows how organizational identity research
may deal with questions of organizational change at the fundamental level of
self-definition. By adopting a language-focused, time-sensitive approach to the
analysis, I described the recurrent time-related references of Volkskrant editors
to the identity of the newspaper and the editorial staff Ever since we;
When I became editor-in-chief, the paper; The paper should become
more; We used to be, now we are and demonstrated that the discur-
sive struggles over the newspapers identity are about tradition and transition,
legacies inherited from a common past and plans made for a new future. The
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editors derive a sense of collective self by comparing the collective past, present
and future; that is, by making temporal comparisons that picture the develop-
ments that the paper and the staff have undergone or are undergoing. So, in most
general terms, the research shows the significance of temporal talk about identity
change for our understanding of collective identities in organizational settings.In particular, the analysis presented here challenges the common assumption
in identity studies that identity formation is essentially or invariably about estab-
lishing or facilitating a sense of continuity. As an alternative, this research brings
into focus how organizational members draft a version of their collective self as
radically changing or changed. In the discursive construction of a collective iden-
tity, Volkskrant editors explicitly or implicitly draw contrasts between old and
new identities, following the formula, Then we used to be X (e.g., left wing
and cynical), now we are (or will become) Y (not-X) (e.g., liberal and frothy).
By accentuating differences rather than similarities between periods or points in
time, the newspapers identity is depicted as moving from one extreme toanother: from leftist to liberal, predictable to open or from passionate to
bleak. Even when editors call on the papers long-standing traditions, they
implicitly draw a temporal opposition with the present or the future by suggest-
ing that this particular tradition has been out of use and needs to be reinstated.
This is what the editor-in-chief was doing when he said that the paper needed to
become a reporters paper again (implicitly drawing a temporal contrast by
assuming this quality had been disregarded by his predecessor), or when a com-
mentator criticized present-day commercialism by exclaiming that in previous
times the staff never wanted to sell as many papers as possible. The primary
focus of the Volkskrant journalists is thus on the changing features of theVolkskrants identity rather than its enduring features (Albert and Whetten
1985). Ironically, the only enduring feature that is mentioned frequently is the
chameleonic ability to change and follow the latest fashion: We always change
colour exactly on time. It is the only enduring feature that is mentioned fre-
quently, as if change is the only stable factor. If we are to believe the way the edi-
tors talk about the collective past, present and future, change is the only stable
factor and the newspaper is in a constant state of turmoil and transformation. So,
in counterpoint to the widespread assumption that a sense of consistency across
time is at the heart of peoples self-sensemaking, this study suggests that collec-
tive identity should not necessarily be equated with the experience of continuity.
The Volkskrant editors do not conceive the identity change in one single,
unitary way. They draft two contrasting and conflicting versions of their
changing collective self by placing different value on the past, present and
future. Linguistic binary oppositions are often utilized in identity construc-
tion to set up a hierarchy and position selves and others, not simply as dif-
ferent from one another, but also as more or less good, respectable or
desirable (Ainsworth and Hardy 2004). The Volkskrant editors talk of old
and new collective identities shows a similar pattern. In their presentation of
the papers history as a non-linear, episodic, transformational development,
they not only exaggerate the symbolic distance between the past, present and
future; they also paint the contrasting extremes as an oppositional hierarchy:
one period is put up against the other as desired versus despised or good
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versus bad. By imbuing the papers history with emotions, values and beliefs,
they frame the identity transformation either in terms of a good past/bad
present or a bad present/great future contrast. The more dominant tempo-
ral discourse devalues the past (reacting against the sombre negativism of
leftist journalism) and projects an attractive future (labouring for a morelight-hearted, liberal newspaper), whereas the counter-discourse devalues the
present/future (dismissing the frothy entertainment of todays paper) and re-
values and romanticises the past (favouring social commitment and critical
journalism).
As organizational identity scholars have not theorized temporal talk of
change, I turn to the organizational change literature on nostalgic and postal-
gic narratives to further conceptualise the two variants of identity change talk.
From this theoretical vantage point, these temporal discourses can be seen as
a strong identification with either a beautified past or a promising future, in
combination with a critical counter-identification with present-day develop-ments. Telling an inevitably selective, simplified and slightly dramatized story,
the Volkskrant editors script the change of their newspapers identity, in retro-
spection or anticipation, as either regrettable regress or promising progress,
suggesting the paper has moved or is moving either from a Paradise Lost to the
dry lands that lie east of Eden or, alternatively, from Egyptian slavery to the
Promised Land. By refurbishing a pristine past, the nostalgic discourse imparts
a sense of identity by momentarily restoring the emotional connection with a
shared history at the same time that it cultivates a sense of identity loss by
showing how the present is disconnected from the past. This way, it warns
against new fashions and tries to reconnect a collective to former lifelinesby promoting a retro-identity (the socially engaged, critical-intellectual
Volkskrant of a previous era). In contrast, the postalgic discourse wants to cut
loose and move away from the past and is thus aimed, not at preserving or
restoring, but at disavowing so-called old identities. In order to replace tra-
ditional bricks and mortar (Pratt 2000: 486), it simultaneously fashions
invents, projects, and heralds more modern or modish identities (a young
and fresh newspaper). Whether preparing for the future or repairing the past,
both narratives construct an ideal collective self alongside an actual self that is
unsatisfactory, setting up a temporal contrast as a means to motivate, negoti-
ate, and/or challenge identity change.
From a political perspective, the nostalgic and postalgic discourse can be seen
as part of a power struggle in which organizational actors either support or
oppose the journalistic and ideological renewal of the paper instigated by the
new editorial management by praising or dispraising past, present and future
identities. Negotiating the content, legitimacy and direction of the change, both
discourses refer to, comment on, and thus implicitly or explicitly presuppose,
provoke and oppose the competing discourse. Every hurrah-word (Cohen
1985) used to promote the future-oriented identity change plans for the newspa-
per, such as young, new, open, playful, fresh, frivolous, dynamic,
was countered with typical boo-words like frothy, bleak, banal, superfi-
cial, uncritical, nothingness. In turn, the pro-change discourse re-labelled
the positive typifications of the newspapers intellectual and ideological past,
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such as critical involvement, social inspiration or high-quality journalism,
as prejudiced, elitist, predisposed, predictable or bloody sour. The orga-
nizational identity change thus emerges in relationally responsive, talk-
entwined activities (Cunliffe et al. 2004: 264), which, in this case, is a
politicised process of reality construction through the conflict-ridden interactionof two antagonistic discourses.
As competing attempts to promote and oppose particular readings of the iden-
tity change narrative and to appropriate the identity discourse for a political
agenda, both types of temporal discontinuity talk described in this case can be
seen as rhetorical strategies to make a convincing case for why change is
required or resisted. The editors nostalgic revaluation of the past was used as a
subtle means to show their resentment and to resist present-day changes, while
the political import of their postalgia lay in the fostering of an optimistic belief
that progress and improvement were possible. More implicitly, both discourses
instilled a somewhat apocalyptic fear of organizational deterioration (e.g., a neg-ative image, dropping revenues, poor quality, etc.) if change initiatives would
(nostalgia) or would not (postalgia) be followed through. Unsatisfied about a
present that bears the stamp of either former or future generations, nostalgizers
and postalgizers thus condemn particular policies and practices (attempting to
destruct or break down meaning) and infuse them with new value and direction
(trying to create new meaning). Longingly picturing a sparkling future identity
and romanticising about a cherished past identity are reflections or expressions
of present-day concerns that may be deployed as symbolic means to shed new
light on the here and now or, instead, to put it in the shade. Discourses that
dwell in the past or the future are in fact not so much about other times as theyare disputing and negotiating who, metaphorically speaking, owns the pre-
sent; that is, whose discourse authors a more authoritative version of an identity
and ultimately determines decisions on present-day policies and practices. So,
while appropriating the past or the future, one is actually battling over who is the
proprietor of the present.
Discussion and conclusions
The research presented in this article advances our understanding of identity as
a discursive product and resource, moving the theorization of the relation
between temporal categories, collective identity, and organizational change one
step further. The question I have asked is how Volkskrant editors discursively
construct temporal discontinuities to establish a sense of collective identity
change. As a challenge to the assumption that identity facilitates organizational
actors sense of self-continuity, this research shows how organizational actors
discursively enact old and new identities by invoking clear contrasts between
different periods in time. Through such clear-cut periodization (Czarniawska
1997: 116), they are able to cultivate the idea of a radical identity transfor-
mation, a rupture in the collective history in terms of B.C. and A.D.,
pre-Damascus and post-Damascus (Berger and Luckmann 1991: 179). It
demonstrates empirically that by adopting a language-focused, time-sensitive
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approach to its analyses, organizational identity research may deal with questions
of organizational change at the fundamental level of self-definition. However,
for that purpose, identity researchers need to incorporate and develop a notion
of change in their conceptualisation of identity. Because past theorizing about
identity change has given little consideration to time-based incongruities(Corley and Gioia 2004: 204), I brought in the concepts of nostalgia and postal-
gia in this study which proved to be a valuable aid for analysing organizational
actors evaluative talk of identity change. In future research, combining theo-
ries of identity and change may help to further develop our understanding of
both phenomena: an identity perspective brings into focus organizational actors
basic self-sensemaking practices, while, vice versa, the organizational change
literature may help to foreground temporal, political and emotional dimensions
of change talk.
To explore the implications and limitations of this research, I will briefly com-
pare the talk of identity change observed in this case with studies that describeorganizational members sense of self-continuity. Analytically, observing two
different types of identity talk points to the need for developing greater sensitiv-
ity to the varieties and situatedness of collective identity talk. It prompts a ques-
tion concerning the circumstances under which organizational members claim to
have a continuous or enduring collective identity and when instead they draw on
temporal talk that narrates an identity change. Relating the question to this par-
ticular case: why do Volkskranteditors engage in talk of identity shifts? Surely,
they could have ignored changing characteristics and focus on enduring features
instead, as other studies of collective identity describe organizational members
do in contexts of organizational change (e.g., Ravasi and Schultz 2006). To thisquestion there are many answers. Here, I will pursue a somewhat speculative,
contextual interpretation. By adopting a focus on varieties of collective identity
talk in different forums and different settings, we may have access to a more sit-
uation-sensitive view of the intricacies which inform the processes of identity
construction in organizational settings.
One first important context for the editors identity talk was the perceived
threat to the papers external image. The talk of identity change and crisis
in this setting was prompted by the gradual decrease of revenues from subscrip-
tions and advertising and the shared assumption of having an increasingly
negative reputation. An organizational identity may be discursively enacted
in a different manner when, for instance, an organization goes from being
derided as a low status organization to being celebrated as a highly success-
ful one, as the continuity-constructing identity talk described in Paalumkis
(2000) case study illustrates. When organizational members go from being
championed as the shining stars to being the bad kids on the block
(Feldman 1991) in the case of, for instance, a sudden economic downfall or a
scandal, this poses a threat to members long-held, preferred views of them-
selves (Elsbach and Kramer 1996; Ravasi and Schultz 2006). Interestingly,
however, case studies that describe organizational actors responses to a
threatened reputation also report temporal continuity talk (e.g., Dutton and
Dukerich 1991). More broadly speaking, a threat to a collective identity gener-
ally motivates organizational members to shore up their precarious collective
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selves by restoring the continuity of a positive collective identity, such as
when members seek legitimacy as a new company (Clegg et al. 2007); try to
impress clients or competitors (Alvesson 1994); or establish continuity in the
face of market turmoil (Ravasi and Schultz 2006) or in response to external
rankings (Elsbach and Kramer 1996). So, the negative image-discoursewithin the editorial staff of de Volkskrant provided the context for the expe-
rience of the collective identity as a problem; yet, on the basis of previous
research, one might expect editors to engage in continuity talk in order to pre-
serve their preferred views of themselves. So, the question remains why they
prefer to talk of identity change.
A close comparison of the Volkskrant case with the aforementioned organi-
zational identity studies suggests that the situation of the editors fundamen-
tally diverged from processes in which, for instance, new actors try to enter an
existing field or construct a new field (e.g., Clegg et al. 2005) or established
actors try to maintain their external position vis--vis a highly demandingand dynamic field (e.g, Alvesson 1994; Ravasi and Schultz 2004). This case
describes instead a politicised, conflict-ridden process in which established
actors internally negotiate how to restructure the old field and construct a new
stage (cf. Czarniawska 1997: 159). So, arguably, the internal conflicts over
new editorial policies and practices constitute a second, equally important
context for the Volkskrant editors identity change talk. As relatively democ-
ratic decision-making practices within the staff give them some discretion to
influence the direction of change, editors engage in talk of identity shifts, not
only in an attempt to make cognitive sense of a rather confusing transition, but
also as a rhetorical strategy to promote or oppose identity change. Outside ofthe field of organizational identity research a variety of case analyses of inter-
nally disputed organizational change testifies to this idea. These studies have
also highlighted organizational members prospective and retrospective sense-
making of change and discontinuities, some of them explicitly describing
nostalgic and postalgic discourses (e.g., Humphreys and Brown 2002;
McDonald et al. 2006), suggesting that the Volkskrant editors polemical talk
of identity discontinuities and a nostalgia-postalgia dialectic may be typical of
discursive struggles over organizational change. This might be the case in par-
ticular for a redirection of a well-established, symbol-intensive product like de
Volkskrant (symbol-intensive due to the impact of the newspapers ideological
and professional content and day-to-day performance on readers evaluations
of a newspaper and, ultimately, on its image, status and readership). More in-
depth case studies of identity formation processes during and after various
types of organizational change the adoption of new modes of management,
the introduction of new forms of collaboration, the radical restructuring of an
organization, etc. would allow for comparative analyses of varieties of iden-
tity talk across different change contexts.
Thirdly, we may presume that identity change talk is characteristic of more
backstage, self-absorbed or inward-focused processes of identity formation. The
research presented here provides ethnographic detail and depth, but, even
though the case description partly draws on frontstage material such as public
interviews and newspaper articles, gaining rapport among research participants
498 Organization Studies 31(04)
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and going behind the scenes may nonetheless have privileged self-centered,
insider-to-insider identity talk in the research, instead of the more outward-
faced or other-directed identity talk commonly described in studies of collective
identities which have usually not been conducted ethnographically. Studies
which display a more outward-faced discursive performance of identity (e.g.,Alvesson 1994) tend to cast organizational actors as security-seekers who shore
up their fragile selves by establishing or restoring a sense of continuity, coher-
ence and distinctiveness. The Volkskrant case describes instead fragments of
more inward-faced processes of authoring and re-authoring a collective identity
which may reflect some of the incoherence, self-doubt, insecurity, antagonism
or fragility evident in those moments of reflexivity when the actor interrogates
rather than secures orglorifies the self (Ybema et al. 2009: 3134). Perhaps in
these moments of self-interrogation organizational actors are more motivated
to engage in identity talk which creates discontinuities, ambiguities and conflict.
Hence, we may ask under what circumstances organizational actors engage ineither frontstage or backstage identity change talk and, more specifically,
whether discourse which manufactures and legitimates or resists identity change
is typical of relentless self-reflection and negotiation with internal stakeholders
in the back regions of an organization?
To conclude, this article shows how a discursive analysis of organizational
actors imagined selves, either hoped-for and aspired-to or feared and avoided,
and projected onto the past or the future, may hold promise for theorizing sense-
making and sensebreaking practices during processes of organizational change.
While identity talk often aspires to the construction of continuity and coherence,
this study, by describing how participants reflectively put together a story abouttheir changing or changed collective identity, shows there are alternative goals
for organizational members self-sensemaking. Future research is required to
investigate the play and role of collective identity talk in different forums, dif-
ferent settings, in more backstage as well as highly public contexts, in different
periods and over different issues. By empirically addressing the myriad ways in
which collective identities are used in talk, whether oral or written, in order to
promote, appropriate, contest and negotiate a particular truth claim or form of
self, we can advance our understanding of organizational change. For this pur-
pose, it may be instructive to take an identity perspective that is sensitive to the
subtleties in temporal talk that organizational members use to interpret and eval-
uate their present, former and future actions and to express their hopes, fears,
ambitions, anxieties, pride and shame.
Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the suggestions, inspiration and encouragement of Nic
Beech, Chris Carter, Tom Keenoy, Willem Koot, Frank Mueller, Andre Spicer,
Phyllis Vangelder, and Dvora Yanow in developing the ideas set forth in this
manuscript. I also thank Andrew Brown and four anonymous OS reviewers for
thoughtful developmental feedback that helped sharpen the arguments of the
paper considerably.
Ybema: Talk of change 499
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