Giulia Cappellaro, Bocconi University: "Advancing the Understandings of Collective Action Through Identity Work: A Study on Collaborative Practices in the United Nations"

Location

:  TC.5.12

Time and Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 16:30

The question of how to promote institutional change is at the forefront of scholarly analysis. With the renewed interest on the symbolic aspects of institutional action, identity has emerged as a powerful mechanism to explain bottom-up dynamics. Existing research has primarily focused on social identities characterized by a set of seemingly central, distinctive and enduring attributes. In contrast, this paper advances a view on the role of weak collective identities in fostering institutional change among highly disparate actors in contexts of no overarching authority. Empirically, we investigate the generative role of the UN collective identity in promoting the implementation of a major coherence reform process - i.e., Delivering as One Reform - among the UN entities working in the field of international development. By triangulating interviews, non-participatory observations and archival data over the entire period of the reform (2006-2014), we develop a processual multilevel analysis that links the global discourse at the transnational headquarter level with the micro interactions at the local level in all the eight pilot countries - Albania, Rwanda, Viet Nam, Cape Verde, Tanzania, Pakistan, and Uruguay - that volunteered to adopt the reform initiative. Through the analysis of our findings the paper contributes to the literature on narrative identity work, collective identity legitimation and bottom-up institutionalization.

Giulia Cappellaro is assistant professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. She received her PhD in Management from the Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Her research addresses the dynamics of organizational change in the public sector and the relationship between professional groups in contexts of institutional complexity. She is also particularly interested in processes of inter-organizational collaboration in transnational settings, with a focus on the bottom up mechanisms of collective identity generation.