Identifications Boosts Conflicts, a managerial paradox. A critical and complex perspective in managing business organizations' identities dynamics

In business organizations people are often engaged in groups within which they can identify themselves: they may feel similar by generation, by role, by sex, in opposition with other groups with different traits, implementing a divide between people involved in different identifications. Power, control and conflict dynamics between social groups are widespread in our business organizations. A growing interest is witnessed in studying these dynamics from a Critical Management Studies (CMS) perspective. These studies are unified by an anti-performative stance, and a commitment to reflexivity; they observe how the dominance of a positivist and reductionist epistemology averts the enaction of a ‘critical reflexivity’ both in management and organizational studies and practices. According to these stance and commitment, our aim in this paper is to start a critical reflection in organizational and management studies upon the business widespread practice of identification with its conflict effects, suggesting the possibility to address these dynamics from a complex perspective. We start focusing on the identication and identity issues in business organizations and their general application in management practices; in the second part of the paper, we explore from a critical perspective the implications deriving from these managerial practices and how these practices may foster conflicting relations with their inclination toward a positivist and reductionist approach. Finally, we consider what constitutes a new perspective, founded on addressing power, control and conflict dynamics from a complex point of view to overcome possible conflicts between groups and generations in business organizations.