Moderating role of self-esteem and social role identity in the effect of organizational prestige on organizational identification

Organizational identification helps to understand and predict attitudes and behaviors at work (Edwards, 2005: 207; Vijayakumar ve Padma, 2014: 40) and influences organizational efficiency (Gkorezis, Mylonas ve Petridou, 2012: 52). For this reason, organizations try to create conditions that may cause employees to identify with the organization. Organizational identification has various antecedents, such as organizational prestige, job satisfaction, values, role conflict, role ambiguity, socialization tactics, perception of organizational equity, attractiveness, organizational loyalty, leadership, communication, intra-organizational competition, organizational trust. Exploring the relationship between organizational identification and its antecedents can increase the understanding of the concept. According to social identity theory, individuals tend to identify themselves with high prestige organizations (Mael ve Ashforth, 1992: 107). Within this context, it is aimed to explore the relationship between organizational prestige and organizational identification in this study. Moreover, factors thought to affect the relationship between these two variables have been examined. it is also hypothesized that self-esteem and social role identity will influence the relationship between organizational prestige and organizational identification. This study aims to manifest the moderation effects of self esteem and social role identity (local/cosmopolitan identity) on the association between organizational prestige and organizational identification. In order to test the research model, data were collected from 419 individuals working in Ankara in various institutions from different sectors, and appropriate statistical analyses were run. In consequence of the analyses run, a significant and positive relationship was found between organizational prestige and organizational identification. The moderation effect of social role identities (local/cosmopolitan) on the impact of organizational prestige on organizational identification was investigated. There is a significant effect of cosmopolitan identity on the association between organizational prestige and organizational identification. On the contrary, it was seen that there was no significant effect of local identity on the association between organizational prestige and organizational identification. Then, the moderation effect of self-esteem on the impact of organizational prestige on organizational identification was investigated. There is a significant effect of high self-esteem on the association between organizational prestige and organizational identification. On the contrary, it was understood that there was no significant effect of medium self-esteem on the association between organizational prestige and organizational identification.