The Nonprofit, That’s Us: Linking Organizational Identity and Identification in Social Mission-Based Organizations

The relationship between organizational identity and organizational identification has received limited scholarly attention. For many nonprofits, however, especially social mission-based organizations, the relationship is of critical importance. To develop new insights into this relationship, we rely on survey data from four social mission-based (“diaconal”) nonprofits. Such organizations typically employ highly dedicated people who identify with the nonprofit and its mission. We test four hypotheses regarding the relationship between perceived organizational identity and organizational identification and find that identification is enhanced by perceptions of a normative organizational identity, identity category, and institutional identity. These findings point to the need to consider the specific aspects of organizational identity that shape organizational identification in general and in social mission-based nonprofits in particular. They also highlight the need to bridge organizational identity and organizational identification literatures.