Processes Of Identity Work Research Articles

The MAP (Me-As-a-Process) coaching model: a framework for coaching women's identity work in voluntary career transitions.

Dealing with change and the resulting process of transition is challenging. In today's workplace, where change and innovation are increasingly a fact of life, too many transitions end in failure, at a high cost to both people and organizations. Interest in the identity work integral to career transition has grown rapidly in recent years and it is now recognized that career transition is more than simply a change in status, salary and role description. It involves social, relational and personal shifts, conscious and unconscious processes, and identity work-agentic, holistic engagement in the shaping and sustaining of who we become. Evidence suggests that specifically addressing identity work in coaching leaders, teams and groups significantly increases the success rate of transitions. And yet topics around identity and identity work are given little prominence in coaching education, leaving many coaches unaware of these basic constructs. This paper presents a new coaching framework, the MAP (Me-As-a-Process) coaching model, to support coaches and their clients as they embark on the process of identity work in voluntary career choices and transitions. It draws on research from my qualitative doctoral study (2021) which identified four stages in the process of women's identity work in voluntary career change and choice. It synthesizes academic theory, evidence from coaching practice, and findings from 53 women who had recently experienced career choice or change.

Online identity work dynamics of Instagram micro-influencers: an extreme case approach.

Advanced media technologies have become an integral part of people's daily lives, providing them with new tools and environments for the formation and enactment of their identities. To date, the literature acknowledges that media technologies, such as social networking sites, are used to form and enact online identities, and that these platforms can simultaneously pose challenges to individuals' identity work. However, we know little about the precise online identity work strategies that individuals employ in response to the challenges they face over time. This paper examines the online identity work dynamics of Instagram micro-influencers, for whom social network sites enable and guide them in forming and enacting their online identities on a daily basis. The study was guided by the following research question: what are the challenges that Instagram micro-influencers perceive online and what are the online identity work strategies that they employ in response to these challenges over time? This study employs an extreme case approach to rigorously explore the lives of seven micro-influencers on Instagram. We combine in-depth data from narrative interviews, longitudinal data from online autobiographical narratives revealed through the participants' Instagram timelines, and follow-up interviews. Our analysis revealed three main themes that highlight the challenges that Instagram micro-influencers face online: (1) amplified social expectations, (2) feelings of inauthenticity, and, as a result thereof, (3) psychological distress. We found that these challenges were viewed as catalysts for their online identity work processes. We identified three key online identity work strategies that the Instagram micro-influencers employed in response over time: (1) experimenting with their online identities, followed by either (2) segmenting between their online and offline identities, or (3) adding identities through online multiplicity. Our research provides new insights into how individuals may respond to the challenge of managing their online identities over time by engaging in different online identity work strategies. This study highlights the importance of designing online media technologies that enable individuals to cope with online challenges. We emphasize the need to design online spaces for (1) the expression of authentic identities, (2) community building, and (3) online multiplicity.

Beyond the Screen: Exploring Vaporwave Musicians’ Communicative Identity Work

ABSTRACT While vaporwave musicians create surreal soundscapes from under the cover of anonymity, they also engage in complex and humanizing identity work processes. We applied a communication theory of identity (CTI) lens to semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 self-identified vaporwave musicians. Grounded in the experiences of vaporwave musicians, our iterative qualitative analysis revealed that participants constantly contend with friction between personal, enacted, relational, and communal identities. This study’s contributions include extending CTI literature into a new realm of music subculture, suggesting new avenues for understanding identity within digital communities, and emphasizing the importance of lived participant experiences.

Romanticisation and monetisation of the digital nomad lifestyle: The role played by online narratives in shaping professional identity work

Some occupations are subject to more complex identity work processes than others. This rings true for those professional endeavours that are relatively poorly known and that cannot rely on institutions as a reference for identification, such as digital nomadism. Digital nomads can broadly be defined as professionals who embrace extreme forms of mobile work to combine their interest in travel with the possibility to work remotely. Building on a two-stage data collection process, this paper proposes a typology that characterises four archetypes of digital nomad lifestyle promoters’ narratives found online and show how these online narratives play a role in the process of identity work of other digital nomads. Our contributions are two-fold. First, we show that while the archetypes act as an important online identity regulatory force, they do so through dis-identification. Second, we explain how identity work for digital nomads involves evaluating discursively available subjectivities and propose a three-step reflexive process that entails (i) interpreting, (ii) dis-identifying and (iii) contextualising. We contend that our findings extend beyond the specific case of digital nomads and shed light onto the intricacies of work identity for ‘new’ occupations that are romanticised and monetised through social media and beyond.

Integrated Fan Identity

While extensive work on team identification have broadened our understanding of sport fans' psychological ties to teams, it has been pointed out that limited and inaccurate use of theoretical perspectives on identity has prevented further investigation of a complex construct. In this review, we explain the concept of identity work and adopted as to understand the developmental nature of sport fans’ identities. Next, we outline the underlying theoretical perspectives for three different identity types (social, role, personal) and how they are represented in team identification studies. Based on the above, we propose a rationale for implementing the conceptual framework of an integrated fan identity, highlighting the reciprocal identity work processes of the social, role, and personal identities of sport fans. Implications for future work are also discussed.

The Cultural Underpinnings of Organizational Identity Shaped by External Identity Referents

In this qualitative study, we examine how an organization that permanently sits between two or more other organizations - salient identity referents - constructs its own identity. Drawing on a processual lens on identity, we find that the organization 'caught in the middle' constructs its identity by drawing on various forms of identity work: identity borrowing, identity referencing and identity affirmation. We find that these processes of identity work are underpinned by cultural mechanisms in that the enactment of cultural practices feeds into organization members' understandings of and claims about their organization's identity. Our work thus contributes to our understanding of the links between organizational culture and identity. We also shed light on how an organization positioned 'between' salient identity referents constructs its own identity through continually enacted processes. Further, we find that central cultural practices may be customized, adding to organizational differentiation.

“Tearing the Fabric” or “Weaving the Tapestry”? A Discursive Resources Approach to Identity-Implicating Organizational Events

How do organizational members discursively construct large-scale organizational events that have identity implications? Whereas previous studies have focused primarily on collectively construed organizational identity threats and, to a lesser degree, identity opportunities, we move beyond past work to examine how individual members construct a single organizational event in divergent and more nuanced ways. Taking a discursive resources approach to members’ discourse in response to a watershed event in the Episcopal Church, we find that members engage in organizational identity work processes as a means of constructing an identity-implicating event. Through their identity work, which involves the construction of (in)coherence among an organization’s multiple identities, members construct an event as aligned with some organizational identities yet misaligned with others. Our study has implications for research on organizational identity and identity work, organizational events, and discursive resources.

Identity work by a young petite female academic home comer: quest for social power in masculine settings

PurposeHow do females with multiple sources of identity deal with intersectional identity tensions and perceived lack of access to social power? The study focuses on how social relationships form and develop in masculinised settings between construction workers and a petite female researcher through perceived notions of equality and inequality. Through autoethnographic tales, the study examines how an academic home comer navigates between conflicting professional and cultural identities, in their native country.Design/methodology/approachUsing collaborative autoethnography, the study examines how the intersections of being a young petite female and a “partial” insider in a male-dominated construction industry influences the researcher's identity work process and her quest for social power.FindingsThe findings suggest that to access referent social power, the researcher covers stigmatised intersectional attributes and reveals a more favourable identity. The fieldwork journey of the young petite female researcher highlights that identity work is a situational process that evolves with respondent relationships, respondent assigned roles, perceived notion of access to power and struggles of cultural versus professional identity. The reader is also taken through the collaborative autoethnographic journey of a female researcher and her doctoral studies supervisor.Originality/valueThis paper makes several contributions. First, it contributes to the academic literature on intersectionality of identity, especially concentrating on the intersectional attributes of petite physical stature, gender and perceived lack of access to social power. Second, this paper theorises identity work processes as an indirect strategy of social power in researcher-and-researched relationships. Last, through collaborative autoethnography of female researchers' fieldwork journey, this study contributes to the body of knowledge on academic home comers as “partial” insiders in their native country.

From lone wolves to members of the pack: Exploring interpersonal identity work within identity workspaces

SummaryIndividuals can experience the urge to realize their desired work selves, inspired either by the “roads not taken” in the past or positive images of the self in the future. Based on a qualitative study of healthcare professionals working in Italian community hospitals, we develop a process model of how communities of individuals who are unable to enact their desired work selves in their current occupations create new entities to act as identity workspaces to host their identity work. They may do so even if they hold different desired work selves, engaging in interpersonal identity work. The processes of identity work and collective creation of an identity workspace are intertwined since the identity work of one individual is in an ongoing dynamic relation with the identity work of other individuals. People converge to play out their desired work selves in an identity workspace which is supportive. However, the heterogeneity of the desired work selves involved can lead to the individual's identity work encroaching on the identity work of the others, and this heterogeneity results in impasse. This impasse is resolved only when individuals engage in interpersonal identity work, through mutual exploration and enactment of expanded work selves in an enabling identity workspace.

Critical management education: Selected auto-ethnographic vignettes on how attachment to identity may disrupt learning

In this essay, we explore the underlying processes of identity work in teaching from a critical management education (CME) perspective. Identity is a concern for both teachers and students and especially where the assumptions and routines on which it is grounded are challenged as in a CME learning environment. Through auto-ethnographic accounts of our teaching experience, we focus on the problems that result from being attached to an identity and how this might be explored through reflexive participative learning. Identity work describes the pursuit of these attachments without challenging the pursuit itself. A distinctive part of o2ur contribution is to consider how in taking identity for granted as a laudatory accomplishment, CME scholars often fail to recognise how our attachment to it can be an obstacle for management learning. To conclude, we speculate on the implications of our pedagogy for inculcating more critical forms of identity work, through which we might free ourselves to think and engage with the world differently.

A Pedagogy for Critical Management Studies

In this essay, we explore the underlying processes of identity work in teaching from a critical management studies (CMS) and critical management education (CME) perspective. Identity is a concern for both teachers and students and especially where it is routinely challenged as in a CME and CMS learning environment. In bucking the trend of offering a staple diet of managerial solutions to organizational problems, our pedagogy is inherently troubling. We reveal this through auto-ethnographic accounts of our experience of teaching critically and seeking to engage ourselves and our students in self reflexively problematising identity and the world which it reflects and reproduces. A distinctive part of our contribution is to consider the way that identity is so often taken for granted as a laudatory accomplishment and, as a consequence, CMS and CME often fail to recognise how our attachment to it can be an obstacle for management learning. To conclude, we speculate on the implications of our pedagogy for inculcating more critical forms of identity work, through which we might free ourselves to think differently.

Prison is power: Federal correctional officers, gender, and professional identity work

AbstractFederal correctional officers (COs) face a compelling amount of professional stress and rigid professional expectations. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP), in an effort to improve employee wellness, has instituted a number of policies and programs addressing gender, sexual harassment, the treatment of inmates, and the role of the BOP in rehabilitation efforts. As a result, COs are navigating how they see themselves and their role within the BOP. Using interviews with 26 federal COs, we use the communication theory of identity (CTI) to explore how correctional workers are communicatively managing their professional identities as the BOP's policies shift. Officers described idealized professional identities in oppositional gendered terms (e.g., masculinity is privileged; femininity derided). Female‐identifying officers described being unable to meet professional ideals, and some male‐identifying officers struggled enacting their masculinity. However, COs described managing gaps between their personal and professional identities in ways that elucidated connections, rather than separation, between officers. We provide theoretical and practical implications from participant voices, including the use of CTI to better understand identity work processes in workplace contexts.

Occupational boundary play: Crafting a sense of identity legitimacy in an emerging occupation

SummaryIn emerging occupations, individuals are given very little prepackaged identity “content”—for example, occupational values, legitimating ideologies, clear goals, tasks, and/or routines—to help them build their individual‐level occupational identities. By contrast, individuals in well‐established occupations (e.g., professions) are given ample identity content, and prior identity research has examined identity work processes almost exclusively in the context of such occupations. Consequently, prior theory assumes that identity work is mostly a matter of tailoring prepackaged identity content to fit one's individual‐level preferences and objectives. Prior theory is therefore of limited use in emerging occupations, where the key identity problem is not one of tailoring identity content effectively but creating an identity in the first place—more specifically, an identity whose existence feels justified and valid. Thus, in this paper, we ask: how do individuals in emerging occupations construct an internal sense that “who they are” is necessary, desirable, and appropriate (i.e., legitimate) within the broader occupational landscape? On the basis of a grounded theory study of health coaches, we suggest that individuals in such circumstances can craft this sense of “identity legitimacy” via a sensemaking process we call occupational boundary play. This process consists of both “occupational boundary setting” and “occupational boundary blurring,” the former providing for individuals a sense of identity novelty and the latter providing a sense of identity familiarity. Taken together, this subjective experience of both novelty and familiarity provides for individuals the sense that “who they are” is legitimate within the broader occupational landscape.

Identity Work Orientation: Unpacking Divergent Identity Construction Processes of Police Newcomers

Through a longitudinal ethnographic study of new recruits into an English police service we explain how different ‘identity work orientations’ (i.e. legitimacy, authenticity and competence seeking) direct different patterns of identity work and produce different work identities within the same socialization processes. In so doing, we make a three-fold contribution. First, departing from mainstream research of newcomers’ identity construction, our study highlights the fragmentation and diversity of externally provided work identities and the important influences of newcomers’ own orientations in their identity formation. Second, by illustrating three distinct identity work processes, we challenge the monolithic portrait of identity work and theoretical disconnection in the identity work literature. Third, we offer identity work orientation as an analytical lens that transcends theoretical boundaries and sensitizes researchers to diverse identity work. Key words: Identity construction, identity work, newcomer socialization, police.

From Shelter to Emancipation: How Disabled Workers Found Their Own Voice Through Identity Work

While studies have examined individual and organizational identity work, we focus on the dynamic interplay between the two. Drawing on a six-year longitudinal study of disabled workers in a sheltered workshop in Germany, we show how the disabled found their own voice to be seen as active members of society and changed the organizational exclusionary identity of the workshop. We develop a process model with three different phases of “guided emancipation:” maintenance of identity constraints, external validation, and forging a new disability identity. Our findings advance our understanding of individual and organizational identity work processes in the workplace. First, engagement in purposeful identity work is not just performed by managers and leaders, but also by marginalized actors to empower themselves in an organization in which their role is highly constrained. Second, by illustrating the dynamic interplay between both individual and organizational identity work, we show how changes in individual identity work can precipitate an overall change in organizational identity. Third, we show how disabled workers engaged in identity work to change the socially constructed view of disability imposed on them by sheltered workshops as part of an institutionalized welfare system through expressing a positive disability identity based on their self-concept.

Sticks and Stones: The Naming of Global Talent

In the workplace, demand for globally mobile workers continues to grow. This article examines the consequences for the individual of being named as global talent. Findings from a qualitative study within a large, multinational organisation, reveal the identity struggles these individuals engage in as they seek to reconcile the tensions inherent in such challenging careers. By combining and building on extant literature in naming, identity and global talent, the article offers a greater understanding of the lived experiences of global talent, as they construct and re-construct their identities in an on-going cycle. By drawing on the emerging field of socio-onomastics, a greater understanding of the meaning and connotations of being named as global talent is offered. By highlighting how names do not merely mirror identities, but are negotiated and resisted through a process of identity work, a contribution is made to the fields of identity studies and global talent management.

‘Living at the border of poverty’: How theater actors maintain their calling through narrative identity work

People who have a sense of calling to their work are more inspired, motivated and engaged with what they do. But how is calling constructed and maintained within organizations? More importantly, how do people maintain a sense of calling to their work when this is a source of ongoing material and existential hardships? This article seeks to address these questions by looking at the artistic setting of theater where actors maintain their calling despite their precarious work situation. The study employs a narrative approach to illustrate how three dominant narratives—religious, political and therapeutic—are central in constructing theater work as deeply meaningful. Specifically, each narrative explains how theater actors maintain their calling through different processes of identity work enacted through sacrifice (religious), responsibility (political) and self-care (therapeutic), with corresponding role identities as martyrs (religious), citizens (political) and self-coaches (therapeutic). We contribute to the literature on callings by: (a) showing how different processes of identity work are central to maintaining callings in precarious work situations, (b) exploring the role played by the ‘other’ as an interlocutor in accounting for and maintaining callings, and (c) advancing a theoretical explanation of callings that illustrates how callings contingently emerge as acts of elevation, resistance or resilience within contemporary society.

Presumed Mexican Until Proven Otherwise: Identity Work and Intersectional Typicality among Middle-Class Dominican and Mexican Immigrants

AbstractNon-Latino natives often conflate “Latino” with “Mexican,” treating Mexican as a stigmatized group. Latinos often engage in “identity work” to neutralize this stigmatized identity. We link these micro processes of identity work with macro structures of stratification through “intersectional typicality.” We argue that the selection of which positive traits immigrants highlight to avoid stigma is systematic and tied to intersecting dimensions of race and class stratification at the macro level. We argue that this process is context-specific. We use the case of middle-class Dominicans and Mexicans living in Atlanta. Our findings show that both groups perceive that the pervasive image of the typical Latino in Atlanta is that of a working-class Mexican. While both groups perceive this image to be low-status, they diverge in their strategies for countering this presumption. Mexicans emphasize their middle-class status and often try to change the typical image of Latinos. Dominicans emphasize that they are not Mexican and highlight their atypicality. Interview data show that Dominicans are concerned about the Mexican label because of embedded working-class assumptions. We argue that although many respondents successfully avoid negative stereotyping, their identity work actually reaffirms the low-status meaning of the typical Latino category.

The critique of alienation and the integration of the actor's perspective: understanding alienation in biographical identity work processes

ABSTRACTThis article builds on current debates on the concept of alienation as a vehicle for the immanent critique of social pathologies in the world of work. Despite the renewals of the concept of alienation, the problem of how a theoretical diagnosis of alienation can be linked back to empirical material remains unsolved. Therefore, this paper develops a heuristic approach that makes it possible to identify specific forms of suffering as feelings of alienation. Alienation is understood as, unsuccessful identity work, which is documented in experiences of suffering, unfulfilled expectations, and critiques of conditions in the working world. This paper shows how identity work processes can be examined in narrated life stories. For the analysis of feelings of alienation, two indications are presented: (1) the identification of a gap between previous and current experiences in the working world and (2) the identification of specific experiences of suffering. Experiences of alienation can thus be identified as specific forms of experiences of suffering. Such an analysis also makes it possible to integrate the actors’ voices into an immanent critique of the world of work.

Holding on to let go: Identity work in discontinuous and involuntary career transitions

This study examined the identity work processes of severely disabled soldiers who faced discontinuous and involuntary career transitions. As these individuals engaged in rehabilitation and vocational training at a military-affiliated facility, their identity transitions were not marked by deletions of past identity elements or reference groups. Instead, their transitions involved collectively and contextually edited imaginations of the future that allowed for continuity of their foundational self-narratives. The findings extend past research by identifying why the forging of continuity is generative during certain identity transitions. The findings also show that when similar others contribute to the script of one’s identity narrative within a familiar liminal context, maintaining a semblance of the status quo is construed as change.