Identity, Learning, and Decision Making in Changing Organizations

Drawing on research in management decision making and cognitive and social psychology, Schwenk shows how personal and organizational identity affect decision making, learning, and adaptation to change within organizations. His purpose: to help executive decision makers and others in the workplace adapt to the radical changes sweeping through the entire world of today's business. He explains how our personal identities are central to our self-schemas, the models we have of ourselves, and how self-schema impoverishment can occur when a single identity comes to dominate an individual. He then provides ways to attack the problem of knowledge impoverishment at the individual level, and in the larger context of the organization itself.

Schwenk's book is about the relationship between self-concepts, identities, and crucial decisions. It asks, how can we conceptualize the self and help individuals achieve collective action in organizations, in the context of a changing world? This is an enlightening, gracefully written book that articulates just how our individual identities relate to our organizations', and how, by taking this first step, we can create benefits for both.

Examines how personal and organizational identity affect individuals and their organizations, particularly its impact on decision-making.

CHARLES RANSOM SCHWENK is recently retired from his position of Professor of Management at the Indiana Graduate School of Business. He has consulted with firms in the U.S. and Europe on the role of biases and political factors in decision making and related matters. A resident of Portland, Oregon, he is currently on the editorial board of Strategic Management Journal. Among his own various publications is an earlier book for Quorum, Marijuana in the Workplace (1999).