ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY OF UNIVERSITY IN MERGER PROCESS

Consolidations, which are radical changes, lead to profound identity changes, which can take positive or negative forms from the point of view of the university's development. Positive changes in organizational identity lead to identification with a new, consolidated university and a sense of satisfaction with its development and faith in the possibilities of self-realization in this organization. Negative ones lead to a crisis of collective identity, cultural confusion and passive employee attitudes. At the level of individual identity, mergers can lead to identification with a new organization and a sense of self-fulfillment, or they can turn towards rejecting change and frustration of employees. University merger research, adopting the perspective of social identity, indicates that the key factor affecting willingness and, consequently, the pace of integration is the perception of prestige and the resulting degree of identification with the merger. Therefore, the key question is whether university employees will benefit from the status of a merger. If we are dealing with a strategic combination of two prestigious organizations, which is intended to enter the "world university league", there is a chance to increase the status of individual and collective organization's stakeholders. Similarly in the case of other types of mergers, if the weaker university is absorbed by a stronger one, then there is a chance of increasing the prestige. I.H. Gleibs and others confirm the existence of discrepancies in the expectations and actual results of university fusion, based on identity and prestige. The aim of this article is to identify the the issues of organizational identity in the processes of university merger. The article discusses the complexity of the organizational identity of universities merger processes. The research methodology was based on qualitative research - case studies of universities in Europe.