Organization‐specific prosocial helping identity: Doing and belonging as the basis of “being fully there”

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2166
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Author: Linn Van Dyne,Steven M. Farmer
• Date: 01 July 2017

Organization-specific prosocial helping identity:

Doing and belonging as the basis of “being fully

there”

STEVEN M. FARMER

1

*AND LINN VAN DYNE

2

1

W. Frank Barton School of Business, WichitaState University, Wichita, Kansas, U.S.A.

2

Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A.

Summary Identity theory and social identity theory focus on doing and belonging, respectively, but neither provides a

complete picture of being “fully there”at work (Kahn, 1992). This three-wave lagged field study links these

two perspectives by proposing that beneficiary-specific prosocial helping identity, met expectations for

prosocial helping, and their interaction predict the strength of a contextualized, organization-specific prosocial

helping identity (OSPHI) targeted at those same beneficiaries and that OSPHI leads to positive employee

work outcomes. Results provide strong support for the model and demonstrate that beneficiary-specific

prosocial helping identity had indirect relationships with intent to stay with the organization, experienced

work meaning, and emotional exhaustion (negative), via OSPHI, only when met expectations for prosocial

helping were weak. We discuss the value of OSPHI as an important construct that reflects the psycholog-

ical state of “being fully there”at work and predicts subsequent employee work outcomes. Copyright ©

2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: prosocial identity; organization-specific prosocial helping identity; met expectations; doing and

belonging; “being fully there”

“Identity is peopleˈs source of meaning and experience.”

Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity, Castells, 2010, p. 6

Identity and identification are “root constructs”in organizational science (Albert, Ashforth, & Dutton, 2000, p. 13)

because “every entity needs to have a sense of who or what it is, who or what other entities are, and how the entities

are associated”(Ashforth, Harrison, & Corley, 2008, p. 326). Identity theory emphasizes the meanings that people

apply to themselves based on the roles they assume (Burke, 1991). These identities reflect what Houser-Marko and

Sheldon (2006) called the “self as doer”because roles beget action. Someone with a volunteer identity volunteers

(Van Dyne & Farmer, 2005), and someone with a helping identity helps (Farmer & Van Dyne, 2010). Social identity

theory and its close relation, self-categorization theory, on the other hand, focus on the meanings people apply to

themselves based on group membership (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell,

1987). These identities reflect social categorization of the self as part of a larger collective (Hogg & Terry, 2000).

In contrast to identity theory, which focuses on the self as doing, social identity theory focuses on the self as

belonging. This sense of belonging can focus on the group (e.g., Van Knippenberg & van Schie, 2000), the

organization (e.g., Mael & Ashforth, 1992), or other collectives.

These perspectives on identity and roles (doing) versus social identity and membership (belonging) are important

because each has provided conceptual and predictive utility (Hogg, Terry, & White, 1995). Doing and belonging are

not necessarily mutually exclusive. For instance, social identity theory and membership do not preclude doing that is

*Correspondence to: Steven M. Farmer, W. Frank Barton School of Business, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, U.S.A. E-mail: steven.

farmer@wichita.edu

We thank A. Grant for the helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and we thank E. Kok for the help with literature searches.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 18 September 2015

Revised 3 November 2016, Accepted 5 November 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 769–791 (2017)

Published online 7 December 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2166

Research Article

based on role. Nevertheless, given the strongly established traditions of each theory, they are not usually considered

together as joint bases of identity. Considered alone neither provides a complete picture of the integrated self or what

Kahn (1992, p. 321) described as “being fully there”at work, physically, cognitively, and affectively. Kahnˈs (1990)

vivid description of how individuals employ their preferred selves at work—sometimes with full engagement and

sometimes with disengagement—shows variability in the extent to which people identify with their roles and

variability in the extent to which they identify with their groups. Acknowledging the importance of both aspects

of identity, Pratt and Ashforth (2003) defined the alignment of work as doing and membership as belonging as

work-identity integrity. This parallels Kahnˈs (1990) description of an authentic, preferred self that reflects

transcendence and a sense of wholeness in a situation. Being fully there (Kahn, 1992) has important implications

because it describes a unique self-concept that includes the self as doer and the self as belonging in the context of

a specific situation.

Unfortunately, research on identity as role-based doing and as membership-based belonging has occurred in

primarily separate streams. This is understandable given complexity of the self-concept and the ric h research on

identity theory and social identity theory. Nevertheless, the divide is artificial and problematic because it prevents

a more complete understanding of how individuals can have an integrated sense of self as doer and member in a

specific situation.

In response to this limited understanding and lack of integration of identity and social identity processes, we

developed a model that focuses on a unique identity that includes both “doing”and “belonging”aspects of self-

concept. Going beyond prosocial identity, defined as “the aspect of the self-concept that is concerned with helping

and empathizing with others”(Grant, Molinsky, Margolis, Kamin, & Schiano, 2009, p. 322), we offer a framework

for thinking about how the generalized concept of beneficiary-specific prosocial helping identity can develop into a

more contextualized self-concept that includes the self as doer and the self as belonging within the context of a

specific organization.

We define organization-specific prosocial helping identity (OSPHI) as an embedded, situated form of prosocial

identity that reflects the richness of self as doer and the self as member. When this happens, the organization and

helping beneficiaries associated with the organization become part of the prosocial self and are internalized as

specific aspects of prosocial identity. Specifically, OSPHI is defined as a prosocial helping identity directed specif-

ically at beneficiaries associated with a particular organization.

OSPHI differs from prosocial identity because it is contextually embedded in a specific organization and does not

include helping across groups and organizations in general. OSPHI differs from organizational identification

because it is the sense of self derived from helping specific beneficiaries in a specific organization and is not based

on, nor derived from, identification with the organization in general. OSPHI reflects the centrality of beneficiary-

specific prosocial helping to an individual in a particular organization. In contrast, organizational identification

can exist independent of specific experiences with an organization (Mael & Ashforth, 1992). Examples of OSPHI

include an employee who is focused on helping the organizationˈs customers but may or may not identify with

helping others in general and an individual who has an identity as a volunteer for a specific organization such as

the March of Dimes but may or may not identify with other charitable organizations such as the American Cancer

Society.

Drawing on the prosocial literature, we include the employeeˈs beneficiary-specific prosocial helping identity

(Farmer & Van Dyne, 2010) and met expectations (Wanous, Poland, & Premack, 1992) for prosocial helping in

the organization as predictors of OSPHI. Beneficiary-specific prosocial helping identity reflects an aspect of self-

concept that applies across situations, and met expectations for prosocial helping reflect the extent to which that

aspect of self-concept is fulfilled in a particular context. Thus, our predictors of OSPHI include the self in general

via beneficiary-specific prosocial helping identity and the self in context (Farmer, Van Dyne, & Kamdar, 2015)

via met expectations for prosocial helping in that context. For outcomes of OSPHI, we draw on Kahn (1990) to

identify psychological states that reflect physical, cognitive, and affective aspects of work based on the extent to

which an employee has invested and immersed the preferred self in the prosocial role of helping specific

organizational beneficiaries. In sum, we develop and test an initial model of OSPHI (Figure 1).

770 S. M. FARMER AND L. V. DYNE

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 769–791 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/job