Managing the dual identities of corporate consulting: a study of a CEO’s rhetoric

Abstract

The management of multiple organizational identities is an important issue in contemporary organizations. However, relatively few researchers have examined how organizations and their leaders control or cope with this ambiguity. This paper contributes with an empirical description of a Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO’s) efforts to handle multiple identities. It is based on a case study of a corporate consulting unit with dual organizational identities – a staff identity and an external consultant identity. The paper shows that the CEO’s rhetoric focuses on creating an identity hierarchy, highlighting the identity of external consultant. The distinctiveness of this identity, in comparison to the parent organization, is emphasized by using the IT consulting industry as a prototype for the self‐categorization of Telco Consulting. In combination with the secondary staff identity, a loosely coupled relation to the parent organization is constructed. One conclusion that may be drawn from the study is that the two identities emerge in part through the effects of internal contrasting.

Citation

Sandberg, R. (2003), "Managing the dual identities of corporate consulting: a study of a CEO’s rhetoric", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 215-225. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730310478084