“That is Not What I Live For”: How Lower-Level Green Employees Cope with Identity Tensions at Work

Organizational and institutional scholars have advocated the need to examine how processes originating at an individual level can change organizations or even create new organizational arrangements able to affect institutional dynamics (Chreim et al., 2007; Powell & Colyvas, 2008; Smets et al., 2012). Conversely, research on identity work has mainly investigated the different ways individuals can modify the boundaries of their work in actual occupations, thus paying particular attention to ‘internal’ self-crafting (e.g. Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Drawing from literatures on possible and alternative self and on positive organizational scholarship (e.g., Obodaru, 2012; Roberts & Dutton, 2009), my argument is that individuals’ identity work can go well beyond the boundaries of internal self-crafting to the creation of new organizational arrangements. In this contribution I analyze, through multiple case studies, healthcare professionals who spontaneously participated in the creation of new organizational arrangements, namely health structures called Community Hospitals. The contribution develops this form of identity work by building a grounded model. My findings disclose the process that leads from the search for the enactment of different self-concepts to positive identities, through the creation of a new organizational arrangement. I contend that this is a particularly complex form of collective identity work because it requires, to be successful, concerted actions of several internal, external and institutional actors, and it also requires balanced tensions that – at the same time - enable individuals’ aspirations and organizational equilibrium. I name this process organizational collective crafting. Moreover I inquire the role of context in supporting the triggering power of those unrealized selves. I contribute to the comprehension of the consequences of self-comparisons, organizational identity variance, and positive identity. The study bears important insights on how identity work originating from individuals can influence organizational outcomes and larger social systems.

Based on 29 in-depth interviews during the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we examine how Trump supporters engaged in a form of identity work that we call signifying aggrieved white selves. Taking an interactionist approach, we demonstrate how they used racial discourse and emotional communication to engage in three distinct forms of racial identity work: (1) othering racialized freeloaders, (2) criminalizing racialized others, and (3) discrediting racialized dissenters. Our study contributes to research on racial discourse and emotions and research on race and the 2016 presidential election, which emphasize linguistic or cultural frames and/or subjectivity rather than the dramatization of racial selfhood. We propose that signifying aggrieved white selfhood is a generic process and that racial identity work is a useful lens for analyzing how a foundational concept of critical race theory—namely, that race is a social construct—is reproduced in everyday life.

Entrepreneurs often play different roles that can cause identity tension. Prior research suggests that identity tensions have negative consequences, which can be reconciled through managerial intervention. However, we know only little about how entrepreneurs manage identity tensions through self-mandated identity work. Through a qualitative study of 43 designer-founders, we find that entrepreneurs may attenuate role identity tensions through either/or approaches or may leverage these tensions through both/and approaches. Our study highlights that individuals’ construction of roles as competing or complementary and framing of identity tensions as a problem or an opportunity informs their identity work. We extend theory by creating a grounded model of self-mandated identity work; identifying triggers of identity tensions; uncovering individual-level conditions scaffolding entrepreneurs’ pathways of identity work, and delineating practices for structural and behavioral identity work.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine restaurant employees’ engagement in identity work to manage occupational stigma consciousness.Design/methodology/approachResearch methods included ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews.FindingsWidespread societal stigma attached to food service work disturbed participants’ sense of coherence. Therefore, they undertook harmonizing their present and envisioned selves with “forever talk,” a form of identity work whereby people discursively construct desired, favorable and positive identities and self-concepts by discussing what they view themselves engaged and not engaged in forever. Participants employed three forever talk strategies: conceptualizing work durations, framing legitimate careers and managing feelings about employment. Consequently, their talk simultaneously resisted and reproduced restaurant work stigmatization. Findings elucidated occupational stigma consciousness, ambivalence about jobs considered “bad,” “dirty” and “not real,” discursive tools for negotiating laudable identities, and costs of equivocal work appraisals.Originality/valueThis study provides a valuable conceptual and theoretical contribution by developing a more comprehensive understanding of occupational stigma consciousness. Moreover, an identity work framework helps explain how and why people shape identities congruent with and supportive of self-concepts. Forever talk operates as a temporal “protect and preserve” reconciliation tool whereby people are able to construct positive self-concepts while holding marginalized, stereotyped and stigmatized jobs. This paper offers a unique empirical case of the ways in which people talk about possible future selves when their employment runs counter to professions normatively evaluated as esteemed and lifelong. Notably, research findings are germane for analyzing any identities (work and non-work related) that pose incoherence between extant and desired selves.

The green intentions of leaders are crucial for stimulating employees’ green creativity, but there is a dearth of research on how green mindful leadership affects employee green creativity, including the pathways and boundary conditions. This study applies social cognitive theory, role identity theory, and conservation of resources theory to construct a chained mediation model where green mindful leadership influences employee green creativity through employee resilience and green role identity, and also investigates the moderating effect of workplace digitalization. A survey of 305 employees from green digital enterprises was conducted, and the theoretical model was tested using SPSS (a statistical software package widely used for data analysis) and Bootstrap methods (a resampling technique used to estimate statistics on a population by sampling a dataset with replacement). The findings reveal that: (1) green mindful leadership positively affects employee green creativity; (2) employee resilience and green role identity partially mediate the impact of green mindful leadership on employee green creativity; (3) employee resilience enhances green role identity, and these two factors act as a sequential mediator in the relationship between green mindful leadership and employee green creativity; (4) The positive influence of workplace digitalization on employee green creativity through the enhancement of green role identity not only serves as a moderating role for the mediating effect of green role identity but also acts as a moderator in the chain mediation relationship. In light of the research findings, recommendations are offered on how to improve employee green creativity to help enterprises respond to environmental pressures and achieve innovative development.

Recent work contends that management education provides an important space for managers’ identity work. However, it is also recognised that much of what is currently offered constrains rather than enables managers’ identity work. Against this background, I present material which provides important practical possibilities to managers for more realistic and helpful forms of identity work, and theoretically, also add to the development of a more nuanced understanding of managerial identity work processes. Drawing on interviews with a range of managers, I offer rare empirical evidence, which illustrates the ordinarily suppressed emotional struggles of the mismatch between social identities of manager and self-identities. In this way, I contribute to current theoretical offerings to demonstrate the centrality of emotions to processes of becoming. In turn, I propose that exploration of these emotions offers management educators important possibilities for facilitating managers’ identity work.

Despite an increase in migrant entrepreneurship research in recent years, the current literature mainly focuses on the personal characteristics of migrant entrepreneurs and the influence of structural changes, often overlooking the role of the agency of migrants in overcoming marginalisation. The study addresses this gap by drawing on the identity work perspective and recategorisation theory to explore how migrant entrepreneurs use identity work as a form of agency to overcome marginalisation. Through in-depth interviews with migrant entrepreneurs in Australia, our study identifies three forms of marginalisation: structural, relational and sociocultural. We propose a typology of three forms of identity work – identity construction, mobilisation and recategorisation – which act as mechanisms through which migrant entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of their multiple identities to overcome marginalisation. Our study makes important theoretical and practical contributions by highlighting that migrant entrepreneurs are not passive subjects of marginalisation embedded within social structures but have the agency to construct and reshape their identities to overcome marginalisation in their new home country.

An organization’s identity, as defined by its members, must be aligned with its collective identity prescribed by institutions. This alignment is broken when an institutional change threatens the collective identity and jeopardizes the existence of a group of organizations. They then undertake to carry out identity work, both internal and external, in order to establish a new alignment. Based on a single case study, this research article explores the interplay between the two forms of identity work: internal and external. The findings of this study reveal that introspective internal identity work feeds the work to repair the collective identity with traditional values that have been rediscovered thanks to a reflexive examination of self by the organization. By internal extrospection identity work, the external identity repair work is fed with new values that the organization internalizes and enacts in its practices. Based on these findings, this article puts forward new theoretical propositions, as well as a model of the interplay between internal and external identity work that aims to realign the organization’s identity with that of the collective.

ABSTRACTInter-organizational collaboration (IOC) research considers the achievement of a collaborative identity as a key enabler of a successful collaboration. As a result, little has been said about the interactions between collaborative and non-collaborative identities. We build on narrative identity work and positioning theory, to explore how collaboration partners engage in identity work positioning to manage the interactions of the multiple identities emerging through the process of collaboration as they try to accomplish collaborative work. We illustrate this process through a qualitative longitudinal study of an educational partnership in Greece. Our analysis shows how IOC partners manage the interactions between collaborative and non-collaborative identities by positioning themselves, and others, in narratives of collaboration as part of their daily identity work when responding to emerging collaborative needs. Our research extends our current understanding of identity work processes in IOCs by demonstrating the paradoxical nature of the collaboration, which requires relying on both collaborative and non-collaborative identities for the successful achievement of aims. We therefore suggest that identity tensions should not be resolved but rather managed, since they enable partners to respond creatively to contextual organizational changes and make sense of the collaboration as it happens.

This paper explores the relationship between ‘green’ identity and community environmental practice. It focuses on the ways in which professional community development facilitators and lead members of community groups attempt to actively shape how environmental projects are locally received. Drawing principally on identity, social sustainability and social practice theory scholarship, it reviews the often very personal and place-specific ways in which appeals to green identity are variously understood and applied, or are actively avoided, by community group leaders. Individuals who have become skilful in negotiating and influencing the presentation of environmental projects to the local community are understood here as (green) identity entrepreneurs. Arguably, it is the situated entrepreneurial skilfulness of lead individuals in negotiating the multiple and evolving (green) identities circulating through any one project, which plays a significant part in determining its subsequent impact and longevity. In understanding the contribution of (green) identity entrepreneurship, however, its relational association with everyday practices, routines and meanings of community and place is brought to the fore. The paper also considers how divergent external interpretations of what constitutes legitimate environmental practice at a local level further shape project identity. The discussion is informed by evidence drawn from a qualitative study of 17 community groups and 7 professional environmental support officers participating in a Welsh Government led programme aimed at facilitating ‘community action on climate change’.

This article examines the impact of large scale, ‘macro’ role transitions on professional identity. Drawing on in-depth interviews with two different groups of immigrant professionals, it theorizes how organizational outsiders with established professional identities respond to the institutional requirements and specifically to professional pre-entry scripts in their new host country. The study demonstrates how identity work evolves among each group as they navigate the permeable and impermeable pre-entry scripts in their respective professions. It identifies both barriers and facilitators to engagement with, and fulfillment of, local pre-entry scripts. These findings demonstrate how different professional domains and power structures create different opportunities for re-entry and as a result give rise to different forms of identity work – involving, for example, identity customization, identity shadowing, struggle and enrichment. Implications for policy makers in the field will be discussed, focusing on how different groups of professionals respond to unique forms of identity threat emerging from their respective professional institutions and structural barriers.

This paper examines how forcibly displaced people cope with prolonged liminality through identity work. Our paper is based on a longitudinal multiple case study of women refugees who fled Syria and experienced liminality in Amman-Jordan, the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan and the United Kingdom. We contribute to the liminality literature by demonstrating how forcibly displaced people respond to extreme structural constraints and maintain cognitive control over their sense of self during liminality with an end date that is unknown. We develop the concept of liminality by illustrating how the actors were pushed into a state of ‘indeterminate liminality’ and coped by co-constructing it through three forms of identity work – recomposing conflicting memories, reclaiming existence and repositioning tradition. This enabled them to stretch the boundaries of indeterminate liminality, symbolically restore their familiar past and narratively construct a meaningful future.

This study extends theory on the role of identity work in institutionalization by exploring how actors manage their identities when they adopt the roles that are negatively evaluated by society. Drawing on the study of how counterfeit distributors managed their identities, we identified three forms of identity work – normalizing, moralizing, and professionalizing – that counterfeiters carried out to turn the negative institutional prescribed role-identity into a legitimate one in the eyes of themselves and key stakeholders, in which process the legitimacy of counterfeit business was constructed. We discuss the implications for identity management, identity’s influence on institutionalization and stigma management.

We investigate how established professionals manage their identities in the face of identity threats from a contested shift in the professional logic that characterizes their field. To do so, we draw on interviews with 113 physicians from five European transition countries who faced pressure for change in their professional identities due to a shift in the logic of healthcare from a logic of “narrow specialism” in primary care that characterized the Soviet health system to a new logic of “generalism” that characterizes primary care in the West. We found three important forms of professional identity threats experienced by physicians during this period – professional values conflict, status loss, and social identity conflict. In addition, we identified three forms of identity work – authenticating, reframing, and cultural repositioning – that the professionals who successfully transitioned to the new identity performed in order to reconstruct their professional identities so that they were aligned with the new logic. Based on these findings, we present a model of how established professionals change their professional identities as a result of a contested shift in the professional logic of their field and discuss the underlying mechanisms through which this occurs.

We analyse the relationships between identity work and internal legitimacy. Based on an in-depth case study of prisoners in Helsinki Prison, we focus on how their identity work affirmed and contested three kinds of institutional legitimacy – pragmatic, moral and cognitive. The research contribution we make is to show that some forms of identity work are also a form of internal legitimacy work, and how this identity talk constructs organizations as more (or less) legitimate. This is important because it demonstrates that identity work is an intrinsic (though often overlooked) aspect of processes of organizing.