Organizational Misfits as Creative Agents of Change: The Case of Pracademics

Abstract

The experience of ‘misfit’ between individuals’ professional identities and work roles or work contexts is common in inter-role or inter-professional career transitions. Responses to identity threat arising from such misfit have often been framed in terms of attempts to minimize their negative consequences and maladaptive outcomes at the individual level. Less attention has been paid to the organizational outcomes of career actors’ efforts to overcome misfit and their role as creative agents of change. This study examines how problematic identity dynamics associated with misfit motivate the shift towards the development of positive identities and induce change-oriented agency. It builds on theory of positive identity construction and the notion of identity work as a form of embedded agency. The empirical study looks at a group of ‘pracademics’ whose career trajectories deviate from the prototypical patterns in academia. It examines the identity work strategies that these people undertake to overcome misfit and construct a positive sense of their professional selves in career transitions. The analysis reveals the dynamic interplay between positive identity construction and micro- acts of creative agency. It distinguishes two identity work strategies: ‘hybridization’ and ‘positive distinctiveness’, which provide different pathways to identity positivity and disrupt knowledge boundaries and established work practices in different ways. The study contributes to the positive organizational scholarship literature and advances our understanding of identity work as an agentic and inherently creative human endeavour.