The Dynamics of Place and Organizational Identity in a Homeless-Serving Organization

In this ethnographic study of a homeless-serving organization, located in a Western Canadian city, we ask, ‘how do place-oriented environmental disruptions influence organizational identity change?’ We capture the organization’s response to a geographical disruption that created a push for the organization to move out of its home of three decades. Findings generated through a rigorous inductive analysis reveal that place is a strong yet overlooked aspect of organizational identity. In particular, upon expericning the push ro relocate, members experienced a strong sense of affiliation with the organization’s place (a phenomenon we term, ‘organizational territoriality’), leading them to defend their place. In this process, Better World’s identiy changed such that the organization emerged as a stronger and more promiment entity. We offer two primary contributions through this study. First, we establish the very material notion of place as a fundamental aspect of organizational identity, thereby extending our existing understanding of organizational identity. Second, we develop the concept of ‘organizational territoriality,’ and theorize that place informs members’ sense of organizational identity through organizational territoriality.