Managing Conflicts Through Strength of Identity**

Zusammenfassung

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Identity, in management sciences, comprises a newly popular research topic. This article assesses identity aspects based on intra- and inter-personal constructs, as well as conflict and the management thereof in a selected international automotive organization in South Africa. It introduces the recent theoretical research and presents selected qualitative research findings from a case study. The aim of this article, therefore, is to investigate managerial identity aspects, as well as their strengthening and weakening impacts with regard to conflict and its management. According to the research findings, managers construct identity and conflict which are simultaneously connected to strengthening and weakening internal and external impacts. These impacts influence the way in which managers resolve organizational conflicts and contribute, either positively or negatively, to their management. Multiple managerial identity aspects provide creativity spaces and flexibility in managing conflicts, whilst complex conflict and challenges in conflict management are connected to weakening identity aspects.

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Auszug

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Managing Conflicts Through Strength of Identity**

Introduction

Global trends, international co-operation and intra-national changes result in South African managers' exposure to a high level of diversity derived from multiplicities in cultural origins, racial constructs and differences in identity construct. These major impacts result in managers working in the new South Africa experiencing identityrelated conflict.

Identity is at present a popular research topic that has gained interest in management sciences and organizational studies (Albert et al. 2000; Albert et al. 2000a; Gioia et al. 2002; Hatch/Schulz 2002; Pratt/Rafaeli 1997; Whetten/Godfrey 1998). It is viewed as an overall topic in management and organizational studies. Identity includes according to Layes (2003: 17) the interests, roles, attitudes and value orientations of a person, which need to be integrated and which change in their degree of importance, depending on the context and the situation. These facets are driven by identity motives which "create a tall order" (Ashforth 2001: 56-57) and which are largely complementary, enacting the identity may address multiple motives simultaneously.

Identity is defined as a psycho-social construct, and is bound to both internal and external impacts: inner processes, such as self-reflection, as well as inter-personal communication and social interaction (Lindgren/Wâhlin 2001: 357) influence the (reconstruction of managerial identities. Managerial identity is defined as the way managers "construct versions of their selves" (Clarke/Brown/Hope Hailey 2009: 323) within their work context and the organisational setting. Managerial identities are therefore influenced by the interplay between organizational discourses and organisational identity and the individual manager (Sveningsson/Alvesson, 2003). Organizational identity is commonly viewed as the form by which organizational members define themselves as a social group in relation to the external environment, and how they understand themselves to be different from fheir competitors (Dutton/Dukerich/ Harquail, 1994). Even though the managerial and the organisational identity include individual and social constructs, the organisational identity punctuates the social identity aspects within the organisation, while the managerial identity emphasizes the individual, intra-personal construct. It is assumed that an organization's members shape and are shaped by this organizational identity and that managerial identities interlink managers across different managerial levels in the organisation (Humphreys/Brown 2002).

Organisational identity concepts gain interest through the growing complexity of organisation patterns and fragmentation and increase the importance of inter-related managerial identity constructs which might lead to a sense of individual coherence, organizational belonging and organizational identity, as assumed by different authors (e.g. Alvesson 2000; Dutton et al. 1994). The coherence of the individual is thereby defined as "the integrity of the individual's experience of personality" (Bütz 1997: 104) which becomes mainly important in the changing and complex organizational discourses and which contributes to the creation of identity.

Keupp (1988: 425) argues that the increasing multiplicity of organizational patterns results in die individual identity being viewed as a "patchwo...

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