By introducing positioning theory to the analysis of organizational identification, in this paper I attempt to move its current conceptualizations out of a domain that is problematically associated with functionalist and cognitive framings. Instead I suggest a critical-discursive understanding of organizational identification which takes note of the limiting, complex and potentially shifting attachments that people can have towards an organization. More concretely, by showing six positioning practices that former management consultants engage in for expressing different forms of identification towards a past or present working context, this paper indicates the emancipatory potential that lays within these positioning practices as they invite different subject positions that either help to reinforce or escape imperatives for organizational identification.
