Linking pre‐ and post‐merger identities through the concept of career

This paper looks at the challenges to identity at both individual and organizational levels of analysis, posed specifically by merger‐induced change. Merger‐induced change can seriously challenge processes of identification, by disrupting cognitive alignments and emotional attachments. An extensive literature review reveals that maintaining continuity of identity from pre‐ to post‐merger is critical to successful cognitive and emotional adjustment to transformational change. Maintaining continuity is a multi‐dimensional consideration contingent not just on issues of content (image, meaning) but at a more fundamental level of identity process (maintaining distinctiveness, esteem and efficacy). It is argued, therefore, that one way in which subjective permanence can be assured is to actively manage individual careers. The literature consistently shows that for many employees, the new investment criterion (on which their contribution to an organization is predicated) is “opportunities for development”. This could be said to hold a key to maintaining and/or forging “relational” relationships in contemporary organizations. So long as employees feel that they are “developing” (e.g. learning new transferable skills, acquiring important knowledge, gaining personal credibility and confidence) and thereby increasing their employability, organisations can, to some extent, overcome employee concerns about future job insecurity by facilitating “subjective security” by furnishing maximum personal potential. In so doing, the organization can secure the human investment it needs to succeed in financial terms.