The Challenge and Opportunity of Navigating Multiple Identities at Work

Abstract

How employees construct and manage their identities at work has important consequences for individuals and organizations (Ashforth & Schinoff, 2016). Yet recent workplace trends are blurring the boundaries between work and non-work domains, bringing increasingly diverse and interrelated sets of identities to bear on workplace dynamics (Ramarajan & Reid, 2013). Despite this, the management literature has little explored how individuals manage and construct multiple identities at work, particularly those that are seen as conflicting, counternormative, or misfit. The current symposium shifts the focus from investigating the effects of a single identity to considering a plurality of identities and the interactions between them. We explore how multiple identities and identity options are constructed and managed, examining how individuals negotiate seemingly incompatible identities; the consequences for individuals when conflicting identities cannot be reconciled; how nascent professionals choose between multiple identity options; and the potential benefits of identifying as a misfit at work. Constructing a Counternormative Work Identity in the Context of an Intrapersonal Identity Network Presenter: Elise Bair Jones; Boston College Managing Creative Working Mother Identities Through Identity Integration Narratives Presenter: Jennifer Lynch; London Business School Intractable Identity Conflict and Identity Conflict Management Burnout Presenter: Elisabeth Yang; Yale School of Management Presenter: Yun-Kyoung Kim; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Teresa Cardador; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Heather Ciara Vough; George Mason U. Coming into Focus: Navigating Identity Options in Professional Identity Construction Presenter: Njoke Thomas; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Owning Up: Occupational Misfit and Responses to Public Social Disapproval Presenter: Natalya Alonso; U. of British Columbia