"Employee identity, or the way in which employees define themselves relative to others, plays an important role in work organizations. Employees can define themselves as unique entities who are separate from others (individual identity), as partners in dyadic relationships (relational identity), or as members of large social groups (collective identity). Importantly, goals, values, and sources of self-worth differ across the three levels. In this talk I will describe an experimental study which suggests that organizational justice is an antecedent of the specific identity levels that employees adopt at work, and that cooperative and deviant behaviors are a function of employees' salient identity levels. I will also describe a field study in which relations of the three identity levels with various types of job behavior were examined. In both studies I provide evidence that relations of identity with its antecedents and consequences occur at implicit levels (i.e., outside people's awareness, intention, and control)."

Speaker’s brief Bio:

Russell E. Johnson ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of management in the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. Previously, he was a member of the faculty at the University of South Florida. He received his Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Akron. His research examines the role of motivation- and leadership-based processes that underlie employee attitudes and behavior. His research has been published in Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, and Research in Organizational Behavior. He is an associate editor at Journal of Business and Psychology and currently serves on the editorial boards at Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Leadership and Organization Development Journal.