When people lose their jobs in organizations, they may continue to define themselves, at least in part, based on their attachments to their former workplace. Social identities that are based in the former employer and occupation may provide a sense of valuable identity continuity during a period of transition, or they may serve to highlight the sense of discontinuity that accompanies involuntary job loss. This dissertation examines whether the strength and cognitive structure of work-based social identities relate to important outcomes for people who have lost their jobs in organizations.

Organizational scholars typically consider how the relative strength of organizational and occupational identification relates to outcomes like job satisfaction and performance for people who are stably employed. I extend this research in several ways. First, by focusing on the strength of different social identities, researchers ignore the impact of the structure of these identities relative to each other. Specifically, research on social identity complexity suggests that one social identity may serve as a primary, superordinate identity, in which the other is embedded, and that social identities may be integrated or segregated to different extents. The structure of social identities matters because it has implications for how people respond to negative events in their work lives. Second, I focus on periods in which people's identities may be in flux, that is, when they have experienced involuntary job loss. Employment transitions are an appropriate context in which to study the effects of social identity structure because they are a potentially unsettling time in people's work lives, where membership in the organization and occupation is not always one and the same, and where identity issues are likely to be especially salient.

I draw upon theories of social identity and self-complexity to develop and test hypotheses about how the structure of organizational and occupational identities relates to well-being and reemployment success among people who have lost their jobs. I conducted a longitudinal field study of 1,191 working adults, 72 of whom had been fired or laid off, to test the hypotheses. The results of the study partly supported the hypotheses. Identities based in the former organization did affect individual well-being and reemployment success. In addition, the structure of organizational and occupational identities relative to each other made a difference in the extent to which these identities related to well-being and reemployment success for those who had lost their jobs. This work contributes to theories of social identity and multiple identities at work by showing that organizational and occupational identification can help or hurt those making employment transitions, depending on how these identifications are structured. I also offer a novel explanation for differences in employees' reactions to involuntary job loss, career transition, and organizational change, that is, their self-defining attachments to their former organizations and occupations.