‘Welcome to the whiteboard, the new member of the team’: Identity regulation as a sociomaterial process

Abstract

Organizations are frequently subject to changes that promote new and/or (supposedly) trendy identities for their members. Various studies have sought to understand how such identity regulation processes are achieved through discourse, a fact that has led researchers to call for a more material understanding of this phenomenon. Through an in-depth ethnography of a transformation programme aimed at constructing a new social identity among project managers – that of internal consultant – we find that identity regulation is exercised through a sociomaterial process affording the performativity of the promoted identity, mainly through the consultants’ bodily performances. This is important because it shows how identity regulation is achieved through both (and intertwined) discourse and materiality.