ODA Seminar by Christina Bidmon, Utrecht University

The ODA Section invites you to a seminar where Dr. Christina Bidmon, Utrecht University, will give a presentation.

Abstract
An important and underexamined phenomenon in the literature on strategic responses to institutional complexity is situations where external pressures require an organization to make time-sensitive changes to the corporate identity. We present a qualitative, longitudinal study of luxury sports car manufacturer Porsche during the breakthrough of electric mobility and explore the discursive process of quickly ‘fitting in’ a novel product category that stands in sharp contrast to the legacy operations. We find that revisionist identity work takes place in three stages; first, by selectively dismantling parts of the existing identity, second, by re-framing the new category and, third, by authenticating the revised corporate identity. Our findings inform work on the temporality of identity construction, and on dealing with tensions and trade-offs during strategic reorientation. How incumbents revise their identity is important to understand in the context of sustainability transitions, because it helps to explain how these firms start to phase-in novel, more sustainable, product categories that threaten to replace their current, less sustainable, operations.

Everyone is welcome!