This paper uses an organizational identity perspective to investigate similarities and differences between public, private, and nonprofit organizations. The analysis is focused on three interrelated identity domains: the content used by members to define their organizations; the orientation of the organizational identity (individualistic, relational, and collectivistic); the nature of members' attachment to their organizations (identification, neutral identification, ambivalent identification, disidentification). Using a sample of 256 members of organizations belonging to these three sectors we found that: the content used to describe public, private, and nonprofit organizations, although sharing numerous elements, also contains sector-specific meanings, especially in nonprofit organizations; concerning the organizational identity orientation, private organizations are seen as more individualistic and more relational than public and nonprofit ones, while public organizations score high in the collectivistic orientation; regarding the nature of members' attachment, although members of the three types of organizations exhibit the same levels of organizational identification and neutral identification, nonprofit organizations generate more disidentification and ambivalent identification among their members than public and private ones. Overall, organizational elements revealing operational practices tend to be similar, while those elements representing organizational identity tend to be different.

中文翻译：

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行业（仍然）重要吗？从组织身份的角度探讨公共、私人和非营利组织之间的异同

本文使用组织身份的视角来研究公共、私人和非营利组织之间的异同。分析重点关注三个相互关联的身份领域：成员用来定义其组织的内容；组织身份的取向（个人主义、关系主义和集体主义）；成员对其组织的依恋性质（认同、中立认同、矛盾认同、不认同）。通过对属于这三个部门的 256 个组织成员进行样本分析，我们发现： 用于描述公共、私人和非营利组织的内容虽然有许多相同的元素，但也包含部门特定的含义，特别是在非营利组织中；在组织身份取向方面，私营组织被认为比公共和非营利组织更具个人主义和关系性，而公共组织在集体主义取向上得分较高；从成员依恋的性质来看，尽管三类组织的成员表现出相同水平的组织认同和中立认同，但非营利组织比公共组织和私人组织在其成员中产生更多的不认同和矛盾认同。总体而言，揭示运营实践的组织元素往往是相似的，而代表组织身份的元素往往是不同的。