‘Activists in a Suit’: Paradoxes and Metaphors in Sustainability Managers’ Identity Work

Higher education institutions promote academic entrepreneurship through organizational arrangements such as innovation programs, incubators, and accelerators aimed at implementing the third mission of the university. While research has examined how these multi-professional arrangements support entrepreneurial efforts, less is known about their individual level implications which emerge as researchers are exposed to different professional values and practices. This article draws on a longitudinal qualitative study on an innovation program to investigate through what kinds of identity processes nascent academic entrepreneurs construct their professional identities and how as part of these processes they position themselves in relation to different professional domains. The analysis demonstrates three identity construction processes (hybridization, rejecting hybridization, and transitioning) and their associated identity work tactics (compartmentalizing, protecting, and reframing) at the boundaries of professional domains. Our contribution is in demonstrating how nascent academic entrepreneurs’ identity construction processes are influenced by internally and externally oriented identity work and their interactive dynamics. Moreover, the findings advance our understanding of how individuals can purposefully mould the fluidity of domain boundaries through identity work by making boundaries bridgeable, impermeable, or permeable. These findings have value for those developing organizational arrangements for the promotion of academic entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial identities.

Conceptualizing identity in processual terms as identity work has long been acknowledged within the broad field of critical management and organization studies. However, recent studies show that the process by which identities evolve is still under-explored. Although extant research has considered how discourse and other symbolic means play a part in this process, this article expands such perspectives by foregrounding the relationality of discourse-materiality in identity construction processes. Using the example of an empirical analysis taken from a case study within education in Denmark, the author examines the process of identity construction by considering the ways in which discourse-materiality works to perform identities. The author combines insights from new materialist thinking with organizational discourse studies in the development of an analytics to approach the process of identity construction – coined as identity intra-activity. In doing so, the article demonstrates how an informal middle-management positioning of selected teachers is performed within its organization. By advancing the notion of identity intra-activity, the findings enable an understanding of identity work as materialized by multiple discursive-material and embodied resources – all enacted in/through the teachers’ practices – creating a petri dish for examining the co-constitutive role of discourse-materiality and enabling new ways of thinking about identity work.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the interconnection of identity play and identity work during transitions. Design/methodology/approach – The authors have conducted a 46-year longitudinal and process-based study on film director Denys Arcand. The focus is on his contested career shift from being a political documentary filmmaker to a box-office success and maker of television commercials. Films and media interviews were largely and systematically analyzed. Findings – In order to explain how to maintain a sense of authenticity in transitioning between contradictory paths, the authors highlight how identity play and identity work appear in self-fuelling interaction through four processes (fragmenting, developing, mixing, and extracting). Practical implications – The authors suggest new ways to deal with career transitions as well as identity construction in constraining environments. Originality/value – The authors offer a theoretical framework that makes it possible to combine understandings of identity play and identity work. In particular, the authors develop on how, through play, individuals can create circumstances favourable for performing identity work in the future.

Introduction: Under the influence of economic globalization, many enterprises are seeking more markets in developing countries, and more Chinese business expatriates are being sent to work in host countries. This study explores Chinese business expatriates’ communication experience and identity work in three African countries, and their perceptions of the functions of English or the local language in transnational business communication. About the case: This article explores the following research questions: 1. How do Chinese business expatriates experience their cultural and national identity when using a foreign working language in a host country? 2. How do Chinese business expatriates evaluate the functions of a foreign language in their transnational communication? 3. What suggestions can be provided for future business expatriates and their transnational/globalizing companies? Situating the case: The process of identity construction and business expatriates’ identity work in a host space are interpreted in the context of Hofstede and Hofstede's acculturation curve. Other key concepts related to transnational business communication, including third space as defined by Bhabha, are also addressed. Methods/approach: Using a case study approach, the researchers examine four participants’ transnational business communication experiences and interpret their identity work through the data collected in the form of interviews. Results/discussion: The researchers find that the business expatriates realized the importance of English or local language communication competence in a transnational business space, although they still kept their Chinese cultural and national identity. Conclusions: This study contributes to transnational business communication by helping professionals to understand the language and cultural challenges faced by Chinese business expatriates, and offers suggestions for globalizing companies that send employees to host countries.

As research on identity has expanded exponentially, the research on identity work has followed suit. Scholars of identity work focus on the underlying dynamics of identity with the recognition that one’s sense of self at a given time and in a given context is the result of an effortful, though not necessarily conscious, identity construction process. As research on identity work has grown, scholars have identified a wide array of ways in which individuals develop, grow, change, and exit their various identities. Further, while presumably all identities may be worked upon, some specific identities—such as gender, entrepreneur, manager, or professional—have been emphasized in the existing organizational literature. In addition, while, up to this point, the emphasis in the identity work research has typically been identifying the nature of changes to the self, a growing body of literature points to the individual, relational, and organizational implications of identity work.

Drawing from in-depth interviews of cleaners employed in the cleaning industry in India, the study examines the ongoing process of constructing a positive identity among dirty workers. Cleaners respond to the intense identity struggles emerging from caste stigma, dirty taint, and precarity by constructing ambivalent identities. Cleaners’ identity work is constituted by the very identity struggles they encounter, and their efforts to negotiate stigmatized identities further create identity tensions. Apart from accenting the paradoxical duality inhered in identity work, the findings show how caste/class inequalities are reworked in a neoliberal milieu and reproduced in identity construction processes. The findings call attention to caste as an important social category in organizational studies that has implications for work identities, dirty work, and precarious work.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the construction of a professional leadership identity of an outsider appointed to implement organisational change within the academy of a professional football club. Data were collected through field notes, informal observations and meetings, formal academy team meetings, in-depth interviews with three co-workers and four semi-structured in-depth participant interviews, which were subjected to an iterative analysis. Findings highlighted how the appraisal of others and their appraisal of the participant were affected by employment vulnerability, and that ‘identity work’ when leading organisational change was intertwined with micro-political literacy and micro-political action. This study furthers understanding of the development of a leadership identity as a fluid and fragmented struggle, by demonstrating that the process of identity construction is emotional work and is entwined in a complex interplay of micro-political literacy and action, and employment vulnerability.

Conceived as the meanings that individuals attach to their selves, a substantial stockpile of identities-related theorizing, accumulated across the arts, social sciences and humanities over many decades, continues to nourish contemporary research on self-identities in organizations. Moreover, in times which are more reflexive, narcissistic and liquid the identities of participants in organizations are increasingly less fixed, less secure and less certain, making identities issues both more salient and more interesting. Particular attention has focused on processes of identity construction (often styled ‘identity work’), how, why and when such processes occur, and their implications for organizing and individual, group and organizational outcomes. This has resulted in a burgeoning stream of research from discursive, dramaturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive, and psychodynamic perspectives that (most often) casts individualsâ efforts to fabricate identities as intentional, relational, and consequential. Seemingly intractable debates centred on the nature of identities â their relative stability/fluidity, whether they are best regarded as coherent or fractured, positive (or not) and how they are fabricated within relations of power â combined with other conceptual issues, continue to invigorate the field, but have led also to some scepticism regarding the future potential of identities research. As the chapters in this handbook demonstrate, however, there are considerable grounds for optimism that identity, as root metaphor, nexus concept and means to bridge levels of analysis, has significant generative utility for multiple streams of theorizing in organization and management studies.

Conceived as the meanings that individuals attach to their selves, a substantial stockpile of identities-related theorizing, accumulated across the arts, social sciences, and humanities over many decades, continues to nourish contemporary research on self-identities in organizations. Moreover, in times which are more reflexive, narcissistic, and liquid the identities of participants in organizations are increasingly less fixed, less secure, and less certain, making identities issues both more salient and more interesting. Particular attention has focused on processes of identity construction (often styled ‘identity work’), how, why, and when such processes occur, and their implications for organizing and individual, group, and organizational outcomes. Seemingly intractable debates centred on the nature of identities—their relative stability/fluidity, whether they are best regarded as coherent or fractured, positive (or not) and how they are fabricated within relations of power—combined with other conceptual issues, continue to invigorate the field, but have led also to some scepticism regarding the future potential of identities research. As the chapters in this handbook demonstrate, however, there are considerable grounds for optimism that identity, as root metaphor, nexus concept, and means to bridge levels of analysis, has significant generative utility for multiple streams of theorizing in organization and management studies.

Adopting a post-structuralist analytical framework, this article fuses two seminal notions, Alvesson and Willmott's identity regulation in organizations and Collinson's emphasis on insecurity within processes of identity construction, to unravel subjectivities and the production of identity in two global, corporate management development programs. Drawing on interviews and observation in the settings, the article contrasts discursive practices in the two programs. It then examines the micro-processes of program participants' identity work in each context, using as a heuristic tool Collinson's theory of conforming, dramaturgical and resisting selves. Contributing to critical studies in management education, this framing draws attention to the dynamics of power in shaping identities within management development. The study suggests new notions of how identity regulation and insecurity interact, relating to two `ideal types' or models of management development emerging in the fieldwork.

Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings includes abstracts of all papers and symposia presented at the annual conference, plus 6-page abridged versions of the “Best Papers” accepted for inclusion in the program (approximately 10%). Papers published in the Proceedings are abridged because presenting papers at their full length could preclude subsequent journal publication. Please contact the author(s) directly for the full papers. Governing Identities: Narrative and Discourse as Identity Work at Four Levels of AnalysisSuzanne M. Gagnon and Pushkala PrasadSuzanne M. GagnonMcGill U. and Pushkala PrasadSkidmore CollegePublished Online:30 Nov 2017https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2015.14805symposiumAboutSections ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AbstractThis symposium seeks to deepen our understanding of identity formations in and by organizations by sharing insights from four empirical studies of "identity work" at different levels of analysis. Departing from the more customary emphasis in organizations studies on managerial, employee and organizational identities, the workshop focuses entirely on collective and embodied identities relating to gender, class, life-stage, religion, nationality and ethnicity. A second focus of the panel is on the process whereby identities are worked, reworked or governed through conversation, narrative and discourse over time and in situated historical contexts. These orientations provide an important lens into the power dynamics which invariably must ground considerations or evaluations of open governance following the conference theme for this year, in particular as these relate to equality, difference, and diversity. The symposium will thus serve as a forum for in- depth discussions connecting language, power and identity in organizations. Our four presenters will be looking at identity work at the individual level through narratives of identity conflict in women’s careers over time, at the organizational level through age dynamics in a fast food chain, at the institutional level through marketing processes in the U.S. tobacco industry, and at the societal level through public discourses of ethnicity, feminism and difference in the province of Quebec. Thus our presenters will be employing very different levels of analysis including interpersonal, organizational, industry-wide and socio-political vantage points to understand identity work. We anticipate that this symposium will stimulate considerable discussion on (a) the active production and reproduction of diverse identities by individuals, groups, organizations, industries and societies within complex matrices of power and (b) possibilities for studying and analyzing this phenomenon at different levels of analysis. The symposium includes four interactive presentations and is structured to involve significant audience participation and engagement.Cooling Down the Heat: Identity Work and the Pursuit of Social Fitness by the US Tobacco IndustryPresenter: Pushkala Prasad; Skidmore CollegePresenter: Anshuman Prasad; U. of New Haven"Masters in our own House: Identities, Memory, and the Politics of Difference in Contemporary Quebec"Presenter: Suzanne M. Gagnon; McGill U.When Identities Conflict: Ongoing Narrative Identity Work of Professional Working MothersPresenter: Ioana Lupu; Cass Business School, City U. LondonPresenter: Judith A. Clair; Boston CollegeWorking Like Adults: Negotiated Order and Adulthood in a Fast Food ChainPresenter: Jina Mao; Skidmore CollegeFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 2015, No. 1 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 30 November 2017 Published in print 1 January 2015 InformationCopyright of Academy of Management Journal is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.Keywordsdiscourseembodied identitiesidentity work

Identity construction and deconstruction processes play a central role in leadership development. They can create developmental experiences that either build or undermine the individual’s sense of self as a leader. Consequently, individuals can either develop their leadership skills and behaviors or withdraw from leadership. This chapter outlines the triggers, processes, and consequences of leader identity construction and deconstruction. As part of the chapter, the authors propose a conceptual model that integrates the different components of leader identity construction and deconstruction processes. They draw upon event system theory (Morgeson et al., 2015) and leader knowledge progression states (Lord & Hall, 2005) for the development of their conceptual model. To begin the chapter, they define identity play and identity work as key identity processes. They then delve into key event triggers for identity construction and deconstruction and outline how different triggers can be perceived as either an identity opportunity, identity threat, or impostorism experience. Next, they address the consequences of these processes and how they impact leaders. The authors finally discuss current practical implications, methodological challenges, and future research avenues.

Many TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) programmes focus on providing professional knowledge to Asian teachers who are pursuing their degrees in English-speaking countries. However, not much attention is given to their expectations, personal lived experiences and identity construction while studying in these countries. These aspects are important in their development as users and teachers of English. This article explores these aspects through interviews and email correspondence with Thinh, a highly accomplished TESOL professional who pursued a Master of TESOL degree as an international student in Australia. Findings suggest that when she was in Australia, she displayed strong agency as she changed some aspects of her identity in order to adapt to studying and living in the country. Nevertheless, there is also continuity in her identity construction, as she maintained other aspects of the identity that she brought from her home country. Her identity construction is best seen in the context of her investment in her career in her home country. As a resilient individual, Thinh demonstrates how she manages her process of identity construction through her reflections and strategic thinking. The findings of this study suggest the need for TESOL programmes to actively connect international students' lived experiences outside class to their pursuit of professional knowledge.

Erratum to: ‘Activists in a Suit’: Paradoxes and Metaphors in Sustainability Managers’ Identity Work

Through a longitudinal ethnographic study of new recruits into an English police service we explain how different ‘identity work orientations’ (i.e. legitimacy, authenticity and competence seeking) direct different patterns of identity work and produce different work identities within the same socialization processes. In so doing, we make a three-fold contribution. First, departing from mainstream research of newcomers’ identity construction, our study highlights the fragmentation and diversity of externally provided work identities and the important influences of newcomers’ own orientations in their identity formation. Second, by illustrating three distinct identity work processes, we challenge the monolithic portrait of identity work and theoretical disconnection in the identity work literature. Third, we offer identity work orientation as an analytical lens that transcends theoretical boundaries and sensitizes researchers to diverse identity work. Key words: Identity construction, identity work, newcomer socialization, police.