Research Focus
In an increasingly globalized, digital, and networked world, definitions of individual and organizational level identities, values, relationships, and memberships are changing. I study how people and organizations conceptualizations of personal, role, organizational, and environmental boundaries affect organizational relationships and resources. My current research draws on identity, institutional logics, and stakeholder theory perspectives to examine these issues. I study people’s self-definitions over time, and how the identity process affects relationships within and across organizational boundaries. I also look at how fringe members such as second-tier stakeholders contribute to understanding organizational knowledge, identity, network and reputation. Lastly, with dual-earner households increasingly becoming the norm, I look at the organizational impact of members’ romantic ties to their significant others as another source for understanding the impact of the network beyond the traditional boundaries of an organization.
Current Projects
■ Once a leader, Always a Leader?: Leader Identity Work Before and After Retirement – This project, funded by a $100,000 Army Research Institute grant, contrasts the retirement experience of high-level Spanish executives who cannot legally work after receiving a pension and U.S. Army Officers who often retire young and who expect to re-invent themselves as private or public sector workers.
■ Anticipated Nostalgia Versus Mindfulness: Implications for Organizational Change Interventions – This project seeks to explore both the unique characteristics of anticipated nostalgia as well as potential uses for an anticipated nostalgia intervention within an organizational change context, as opposed to mindfulness.
Select Publications
■ S. Wittman. Lingering identities. Academy of Management Review 44(4), 724-745 (2019).
