The Importance Of Organizational Identification

Organizational Identification (OI) has been regarded as an important concept in the study of Organizational behavior and a lot of management research has been done recently. Organizational Identification is viewed as an important psychological state showing the bond or relationship that exist between the employee and the organization, hence responsible for the many key attitude and behaviours in the work environment(Edwards, 2005). Employees who identifies with the organization, develop emotional relationship with the organization and this usually leads to career satisfaction (Gok, Karatuna, & Karaca, 2015).

Some researchers argue that a strong organizational identification can be a great competitive advantage(Podnar, 2011), hence stronger identification results in increased level of career satisfaction, more extra-role behavior, with an attendant reduction in employees intension to leave and absenteeism. That is to say, employees are willing to go extra miles for the organization because of the strong organizational identification (Bartels, 2006). Employees’ belief about an organization become more positive, when their identification increases, which makes the individual become psychologically connected to the organization, thereby making the future of the organization to determine the future of the employees (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Van Dick et al., 2004).

Individuals usually identify with organization or groups so as to reduce perceived uncertainty or to have a better