Searching inside and out: Organizational identification relationships and information-sourcing among managers and knowledge-workers

This paper, examines the effect of three forms of organizational identification relationships - identification, disidentification, and ambivalent identification - on information-sourcing from within one's work unit and outside the firm. Data obtained from three diverse Israeli firms indicate that identification increases the likelihood that individuals will source information from both within the work unit and outside the organization, and disidentification has a curvilinear relationship with external information-sourcing and no effect on internal informationsourcing. Ambivalent identification positively influences external information-sourcing but not internal information-sourcing. Additionally, results show that the effects of identification on external informationsourcing are more pronounced for non-managers than for managers.