Being and Becoming: Reconciling the Temporal Mismatch between Organizational Identity and Strategy by Providing Identity with a Future

Organizational strategies and identities are tied tightly to each other: what an organization decides to do (strategy) depends significantly on who it is taken to be (identity). This relationship however very often involves a "serious mismatch", with strategy traditionally focused on the future and organizational identity largely rooted in the past (Ravasi, D., M. Tripsas, and A. Langley. 2020. "Exploring the Strategy-Identity Nexus." Strategic Organization 18(1): 6). This temporal discrepancy can become problematic when executives seek to enact a different future for their organization. While the strategy field has taken a recent "history turn" which extends strategy's temporal reach to the past, organizational identity scholarship has yet to take a deliberate and detailed reciprocal turn toward the future. This essay explores what an explicit "future turn" for organizational identity might entail. It also assesses how reconciling the temporal dynamics of strategy and identity in senior executive conversations can be seen as central to the development of innovative and effective new strategic directions.