Organizational Identification Scale

The Organizational Identification Scale is Mael and Ashforth's widely used measure of the extent to which people define themselves in terms of their organizational membership. It rests on the social-identity reformulation of identification that Ashforth and Mael advanced in their 1989 Academy of Management Review article, which defined organizational identification as a perceived oneness with an organization and the experience of its successes and failures as one's own. Their 1992 Journal of Organizational Behavior study, using alumni of a college, introduced and validated a concise self-report scale and tested a model of its antecedents and consequences. The scale treats identification as a self-definitional, cognitive construct distinct from organizational commitment, which is more attitudinal and exchange-based. Validated as essentially unidimensional, the instrument links organizational antecedents such as distinctiveness and prestige to outcomes such as support and advocacy. It became the standard measure of organizational identification in the field.