Researchers’ interest to identity has increased substantially in recent years. Through identity theories it possible to study work and the ways people see themselves and others in their working environment.  The previous research recognizes at least organizational, professional and group identities which can be viewed on social and/or individual level. This paper uses the concept of work identities in describing the organization’s and its members’ multiple identities.

In this study identities are studied in merger situation which is seen as a fertile research context because in merger members’ thoughts and conceptions about work are transformed. However the previous research of this field concentrates mostly on organizational level identities ignoring the professional and social group identities and the ways they behave, adjust and change in mergers. More research is therefore needed on how these multiple identities change in mergers and how employees cope with identity threats and identity conflicts which often occur in merger situations.

The empirical part shows how employees’ work identities transform in the merger of Finnish public sector social and healthcare units. In recent years the public sector employees have confronted with new professional challenges arising from pressures to cost savings, efficiency and operation rationalizing. Consequently there have been major mergers in public sector.  Mergers of social and healthcare organizations are considered challenging because of their different working cultures and values.

The field study and the empirical analysis have been implemented by means of qualitative methods to achieve a deep understanding of identity reconstruction. The empirical data is based on 28 employee interviews and document data. The research setting is longitudinal.  The empirical part of the paper uses discursive analysis to study how people construct and describe their identities in speech and to follow how these identities change.

This study aims to answer how work identities transform in organization merger and how changes in work descriptions affect on employees’ identities and their adjustment to a new post-merged organization. It suggests that changes in identities affect radically to employees commitment, work motivation and may lead to resistance to change and maladjustment to the new working environment. It investigates how employees make sense of the changes of work and how they adjust their identities to public sectors demands of integrated multi-skilled nursing work.

This study supports the conception that employees cope through changes with their membership in groups. Employees hold up of the old pre-merged group structures and identities and these structures encourage them to resistance. Identity conflicts arise when the old work identities are contradicted with the expectations and values of the new organization. Changes and conflicts in identity cause long-term adjustment challenges because identity changes foreground the fundamental questions of work-related self and the meaning of work.