Extending the Group Engagement Model: An Examination of the Interactive Effects of Prestige, Respect, and Employee Role Identity

Social identification is an individual's cognitive connection with a group or the perceived overlap between the individual's identity and a group's identity (Elsbach, 1999). According to social identity theory, people utilize their associations with organizations to define their self-concepts (Ashforth and Mael, 1989). Because individuals are motivated by self-enhancement needs, they tend to identify with organizations that confer positive qualities upon them (Dutton et al., 1994). Consequently, people are particularly likely to be aware of status-related issues in the organizations to which they belong (Tyler, 1999). Pratt (1998) states that if organizations are to be successful, they must actively engage in fostering organizational identification among their employees. "From a managerial viewpoint, 'member identification' presents a less obtrusive, and potentially more effective means of organizational control than methods that rely upon 'external stimuli'" (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 620). That is, organizational identification effectively acts to make employees choose courses of action that are consistent with affirming their identification (i.e., act in ways that benefit the organization) (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002). Accordingly, research indicates that organizational identification is likely to foster constructive behaviors, including increased suggestions for constructive change (Fuller et al., 2006b), cooperative behavior (Olkkonen and Lipponen, 2006), and reduced turnover (Mael and Ashforth, 1995). However, changing organizational forms, increased levels of diversity, and the emergence of more nonwork identity options have all served to make identity and the identification process increasingly complex (Albert et al., 2000). For this reason, social identity theorists have suggested that new multi-faceted perspectives of social identity theory are needed. One emerging stream of research utilizing such an extended social identity theory framework (i.e., Tyler, 1999; Tyler and Blader, 2002; Tyler and Blader, 2003; Tyler et al., 1996) has focused on the extent to which different status evaluations people make about their groups shape their self-perceptions and identification with social groups such as organizations. Although it focuses upon organizations as well as groups, Tyler and Blader (2003) call their framework "the group engagement model. " According to the group engagement model (Tyler and Blader, 2003), individuals make two basic status evaluations with regard to the places in which they work--an organizational status evaluation and an evaluation of their own status within the organization. Thus, the group engagement model extends the traditional social identity theory perspective on the organizational identification process by not only including intergroup dynamics, but also intragroup dynamics. Prior research (e.g., Fuller et al., 2006b; Tyler and Blader, 2002) has shown that both of these status evaluations make unique and significant contributions to organizational identification. Research also indicates that each status evaluation has different antecedents (Fuller et al., 2006b). These findings are suggestive of the potential for the group engagement model to add general insight into how the "looking glass" self (Cooley, 1956; Mead, 1934) is created and to also add specific insight into the organizational identification process. One way to explore the potential of Tyler and Blader's (2003) group engagement model would be to introduce individual differences in identity as a moderator variable. Given that diverse people within groups and organizations hold a variety of different social and role identities (Nkomo and Cox, 1996), it seems likely that different individuals' attachment to their group or organization may be more strongly influenced by one type of status judgment than the other. That is, organizational identification is likely to be a function of status judgments and aspects of a person's identity (Tyler, 1999). …