“Membership Dynamics in an Insurance Group: Ingroup (local Agency) and Outgroup (Company)”

Research context regards branch agencies of the of an insurance company: the characteristics of such organizations are the dynamics of interdependence between agencies and head office. The study comprised all 19 insurance agencies of one company operating in the province of Verona, with 61 employees and 19 General Insurance Agents (80 interviewees). Individual determinants have been codified: job role characteristics, personal details and sense of power within the organization; and the following psychosocial determinants: cohesion, entitativity and confidence. Results show that Ingroup/Outgroup perceptions are affected by a combination of individual and psychosocial elements, but there are differences if the questions are related that to local agency group or to head office. With head office, the influence of the individuals aspects prevail, whereas correlations regarding psychosocial variables are much stronger in the agencies. We have verified hypotheses in which some psychosocial variables sensitively weigh upon dynamics of organizational membership, and therefore continuous monitoring of such psychosocial elements are strategically important in the "co-construction" of an organizational culture are verified, and appear as: - work satisfaction is bound to the affective elements of membership; - evaluation of the General Sales Agents reveals a pressure to conform: the more the employee aligns him/herself to the local agency culture, the more the manager (GSA) will evaluate positively his /her agency. - there is a relationship between the parameters of productivity of the agencies and the Intragroup cohesion indicators.