The Local Selves of Global Workers: The Social Construction of National Identity in the Face of Organizational Globalization

Abstract

This article seeks to further understanding of the significance and impact of national identity in the context of organizational globalization. Arguing against the tendency of organizational researchers to pose this identity as an objective, cognitive essence, the article claims that national identity constitutes a symbolic resource that is actively and creatively constructed by organizational members to serve social struggles which are triggered by globalization. It offers support to this claim with ethnographic field data generated from an Israeli high-tech corporation undergoing a merger with an American competitor. The implications of the article concern the need for researchers to take into account the space for choice that organizational members have in defining national identity and the interrelationships between the enactment of this identity and processes of resistance to globalization.