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Social movement scholarship points to the significance of collective identity in social movement emergence. This chapter examines the relationship between structural identities, such as race, gender, and sexuality, and the collective identity of student activist conferences in order to analyze how groups succeed or fail at engaging difference. Utilizing ethnographic participant observation at two student activist conferences – one of majority Black students and the other of majority white male students – this chapter employs an intersectional framework in analyzing the resonance of organizational collective action frames. This chapter finds that cultural resonance, frame centrality, and experiential commensurability are all important factors in engaging difference, and that the utilization of political intersectionality in framing may shape frame resonance. This framework that applies intersectionality to framing contributes to social movement analysis by recognizing how structural identities shape collective identity and group mobilization.

The authors theorize the role that identity, and especially collective identity, plays in the creation of new institutions. The authors begin by reviewing the literature on social movements, focusing on identity movements; from this, the authors extract and explore the role of identity in collective action and institutional formation. The authors propose that identity and lifestyle movements create institutions that furnish the necessary cultural tools to support and enact a given identity. As an example of this process, the authors examine Martha Stewart’s cultivation of a lifestyle-driven brand. The authors discuss the implications of their work on social movement theory and institutional theory.

In this paper, we explore the conditions under which organizations that compete in both market and non-market domains might engage in collective strategy. We study low-power FM radio activists in the U.S., who employed a collective strategy both within and across geographic communities to gain the right to broadcast in low-power broadcast spectra. By comparing and contrasting two stages of the micro-radio movement, we argue that, under certain conditions, for collective strategy to be viable, organizations competing on the dimensions of both ideology and resources must recognize themselves as members of an identity group, based on their common struggle against a stronger, more salient enemy. We highlight the role of collective strategies in the processes of organizational ecology, and discuss the generalizability of our argument.

Existing research indicates that collective identity is critical in sustaining social movements, especially in the face of significant opposition. We extend this literature by analyzing the ways collective identity evolves and develops over time to combat external barriers and obstacles. Drawing from a unique dataset on activists in the post-communist Czech environmental movement, we analyze how women rallied around their gendered identity to protest against nuclear power. Our analysis focuses on the case of the South Bohemian Mothers (Jihočeské matky), an organization that rallied specifically around the protection of children and healthy communities. The activists faced extensive obstacles including: post-communist patriarchal institutions and sexism; the South Bohemian Daddies, a male-dominated pro-nuclear countermovement; and pervasive anti-environmentalist sentiments. Our results highlight the complex and evolutionary nature of collective identity and the role it can play in sustaining activism in the face of external challenges.

Sociologists often treat groups and organizations as if they had collective intentionality – that is, a collective impetus for action that exists semi-independently of the members of the group. At present, however, we lack a sound understanding of how collective intentionality is achieved or maintained. Furthermore, although organizations provide a well-defined and distinctive setting for an empirical and theoretical investigation of collective intentionality, organizational intentionality in its own right has received little attention. In this chapter, we seek to address the relationship between collective intentionality, organizational identity, and organizational decision-making, using the potentially powerful method of meta-ethnography: the comparison, contrast, and synthesis of multiple ethnographies.

The main issue of stakeholders’ inclusion nowadays is the establishment of relationships between policy actors and creation of a supportive environment for stakeholder participation to allow a straightforward stakeholder inclusion with a meaningful contribution to policy making. The concept of a collective identity describing how shared values, shared activities and a shared identity lead to social cohesion between a large number of people, could suggest a hint for stakeholder empowerment. We argue that a proper inclusion leads towards empowerment of stakeholders only where efforts to build collective identity are allocated. Otherwise, stakeholder inclusion is only about static participatory governance where knowledge collection predominates over knowledge sharing and co-production. The goal of the present chapter is to trace formal governance networks as a participatory governance mechanism and analyse stakeholder perspectives to be empowered to act in a formal governance network presuming that the network structure creates an environment where a collective identity is being built.

The formal governance networks of 2013 led by the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Education and Science were reconstructed on the bases of documents available in the organisations. The structure of the governance networks of 2013 is analysed as a precondition for an organisational collective identity to form.

The structure of the governance networks leads us to the conclusion that stakeholders are expected to be knowledge providers instead of being knowledge co-producers.

The networks demonstrate that the process of sharing knowledge and values is not recognised as an important element of participatory groups and efforts made to build a collective identity are too scarce.

This paper aims to propose that the extent to which activating self-identity increases resource-saving behavior varies across these three levels of self-identities. In particular, the authors hypothesize that activating relational or collective self-identity increases saving behavior more than activating individual self-identity does. Moreover, activating relational self-identity has a stronger impact on workplace saving behavior than activating collective self-identity does. In addition, the authors suggest that prosocial motive mediates the relationship between the three levels of self-identity and saving behavior.

Workplace saving behavior such as office supply savings could help save organizational resources and build more environmentally conscious organizations. Drawing from self-identity theory, the authors examine the influences of three types of self-identities (i.e. individual, relational and collective self-identities) on workplace resource-saving behaviors.

The results obtained from a field experiment conducted in a Chinese company and an online vignette study generally support the proposed hypotheses. The authors also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

The authors contribute to the literature on saving behavior in organizations by studying an individual-level predictor from the perspective of self-identity and the research on self-identity and saving behavior by testing the mediating role played by prosocial motive. Based on the findings, the authors also propose some human resource policies to increase workplace saving behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to critically investigate how collective identity is constructed and regulated by board members and other active members of student entrepreneurship societies (ESs).

A discursive analysis focusing on collective identity construction and regulation based on focus group discussions in two student-led Finnish ESs affiliated with higher education institutions (HEIs).

ES members construct and regulate collective entrepreneurial identity based on a shared narrative of entrepreneurship and the affective state of positive energy and thinking, i.e. “positive buzz.” Being entrepreneurial was constructed as having the right kind of mentality to cope with uncertain and rapidly changing working life and to break free of old moulds of working. The shared narrative was coherent, and critical reflection on the values or risks of entrepreneurship was mainly silenced.

As ESs are a relatively new phenomenon future research could explore ESs in different cultural and regional contexts and compare the identity construction and regulation of ES student members and non-members.

Strong collective identity and sense of commitment to doing things together may mitigate the pressures of being entrepreneurial and taking charge of one’s life.

Educational practice and research could benefit from better understanding of the informal context in which entrepreneurship education takes place.

The paper contributes to the relatively new research stream on ESs as student-led entrepreneurial organizations in HEIs. The research demonstrates how ES members participate in constructing a collective and coherent identity that is regulated by shared values and a positive state of mind. This study extends the understanding of ESs from the functional perspective to viewing them as a social community. It contributes to the definition of ESs and the self-understanding of ES actors.

In a context of increasing globalization and neoliberal restructuring and with labor's power diminishing vis-à-vis employers, American workers have turned in recent years to community-based campaigns targeting local government. These mobilizations have received considerable attention from scholars who see this emerging community orientation as a significant strategic innovation. This study, alternatively, focuses on the subjective and ideological consequences of such mobilizations for those engaged in protest. In particular, it seeks to extend social movement theory regarding the transformative impact of collective action by asking: how do distinct forms of collective action bring about particular kinds of consciousness and identity among participants?

Scholars rooted in a variety of traditions – from theorists of “post-industrial” society and “new” social movements to state theorists and geographers – have suggested that identities fostered at the local level are characterized by a “defensive,” “introverted,” or “retrospective” quality. This study examines a local mobilization, the case of a living wage campaign in Chicago, which deviates from these expectations. Through an analysis of interviews with participants, I find that instead of spurring defensiveness the campaign engendered a citizenship identity that was both active and inclusive. In explaining why my findings diverge from existing theories of identity formation, my analysis highlights three conceptual deficiencies in the literature with respect to (1) the distinction between local versus transnational collective action, (2) the relationship between social movement goals/tactics and outcomes, and (3) the prioritization of “new” social movements over the labor movement. Examining the citizenship identities that developed during Chicago's living wage campaign is instructive, finally, for understanding the sources of counter-hegemonic subjectivity within a broader context of eroding citizenship rights and a dominant market fundamentalist ideology. More generally, this analysis paves the way for a more productive engagement among theories of social movements, citizenship, labor, and globalization.