One insidious, almost fully unobtrusive form of control is the organization's attempt to regulate employee identity and identification. Alvesson and Willmott explore how employee identities are regulated inside of an organization so that their self-images and work processes and products line up with management goals and objectives. Identity regulation is the "intentional effects of social practices upon processes of identity construction and reconstruction". The authors suggest that when an organization and its rules and procedures, particularly in training and promotion, become "a significant source of identification for individuals" the organizational identity is then at the core of that individual's "(self-) identity work". The conscious effort, either by the organization or the individual, to align self-image with organizational goals is organizational identification, and OI can bound an employee's decision making in a way that keeps it "compatible with affirming such identification".
