Losing Their Religion: Organizational Identity Hybridization of British Political Parties 1950–2015

Abstract

Our research addresses how organizations manage a shift from a single to a hybrid identity, a question that the identity literature still is grappling with. We address this question by reflecting on how organizations develop hybrid identities in response to institutional decline. Identity hybridization, we predict, takes place in stages via strategies that gradually hybridize the identity. We study how British political parties hybridized their identities in response to the decline of social-class politics over the period 1950–2015. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the identity projections of three political parties in their election manifestos provide support for our hypotheses.