The Space Between Role Identities: How Individuals Navigate Boundary Crossings

Abstract

The papers in this symposium take a fresh look at the concept of boundaries between role identities and at how individuals navigate those boundaries while maintaining a coherent sense of self. It brings together four papers that investigate the sensemaking processes, the identity work strategies, and the boundary management tactics surrounding transitions across roles, cultures, and occupations. The first two papers focus on macro-role transitions, i.e., transitions between sequentially held roles. The first presentation focuses on what happens when individuals who cross cultural boundaries for work or education hold on to the self they left behind. The second presentation explores how hobby job holders, individuals who have turned previously held hobbies into jobs, create a sense of self that spans across temporal and work-life boundaries. The final two papers focus on micro-role transitions, i.e., transitions between simultaneously held roles. The third paper studies how YouTubers, whose job involves the use of social media to market products online, deal with their work-life boundaries in a context where self-disclosure is encouraged and where their private self is at the core of the work. The fourth presentation proposes a theoretical model of the boundary management tactics of multiple job holders. Together, the four papers in this symposium add to our understanding of the subjective experience of boundary crossings in the modern workplace. Boundary Crossing and Cognitive Processing: How the Self Left at Home Influences Expatriates Presenter: Mailys George; IESE Business School Presenter: Karoline Strauss; ESSEC Business School Presenter: Kevin W. Rockmann; George Mason U. Crafting a Thread that Binds: Identity Threading and Boundary-Spanning Identities Presenter: Zhuo Lin; U. of Cincinnati Presenter: Elaine Cahalan Hollensbe; U. of Cincinnati Intertwined Private and Public Selves Among YouTubers: Privacy Management in Self-Commodifying Work Presenter: Marie Lachapelle; HEC Montreal Presenter: Sarah Bourdeau; UQAM U. of Quebec in Montreal, Canada Presenter: Judith A Clair; Boston College A Typology of Boundary Management Tactics of Multiple Jobholders Presenter: Emily D. Campion; Old Dominion U. Presenter: Brianna Barker Caza; U. of North Carolina at Greensboro