The way we were: organizational identity formation and evolution in emerging domains

By drawing from the organizational identity literature, we claim that organizations that belong to the first cohort of entrants in an emerging domain establish a tie with the identity of other organizations in related domains, after which they model their own identity. We also claim that these organizations will not be able to release themselves from this kinship, and that changes of their identity over time will be constrained by the changes of their reference identity. We will develop our theory by collecting evidence from an in-depth case study of the Italian national gay and lesbian organization between its foundation and 2009.