Organizational Identity: a Hermeneutic Critique

Abstract

This text investigates the foundations of the conceptual field known as organizational identity. To this end, philosophical hermeneutics is adopted as an ontoepistemic framework, using the work of Paul Ricœur as a theoretical-methodological framework for understanding the concept as a text. This framework outlines a hermeneutic methodology for concept critique (HMCC) in its epistemological and ontological dimensions, contributing to the study of concepts in organizational studies. Epistemically, Ricœur's philosophy emulates and advances Dilthey's postulates, which divide the hermeneutic task into moments of explanation and understanding. For Ricœur, these moments are consistent with the interpretation of the text as a central entity of the social sciences. The explanation undertaken here is an etymological-philosophical analysis of the terms identity and organization. This understanding historicizes the conceptual field through a dialogue with the main texts of the academic-discursive research community on organizational identity. Having established the ontic and temporal limits of the concept, the ontological moment proposes overcoming these limits, based on the central concept of Ricœur's work, narrative identity, grounded in the Heideggerian ontological difference that criticizes the Cartesian dichotomy between subject and object, equating the truth of Being with time. As a result, the concept of narrative organizational identity arises as a theoretical and methodological approach for studies of organizational identity. At the end of the work, an epitome of this concept is presented.