Work-related Identity Research Articles

Revisiting Compassion and Job Performance: A Constructive Study in South Korean Public Art Institutions.

This study empirically examines how employee compassion relates to job performance. Specifically, this study is a constructive replication and expansion of a previous study on the relationship between compassion and job performance using multiple sources of measurement. It investigates unexplored pathways within the public art sector in South Korea. Focusing on the mediating roles of positive work-related identity (PWRI) and positive psychological capital, we collected data from public art institutions in Korea, including galleries and museums, using a survey method. We tested the hypotheses using structural equation modeling and the PROCESS bootstrapping method. Our findings demonstrate a positive association between compassion and job performance, serially mediated by PWRI and positive psychological capital. Theoretically, by constructively replicating and expanding the previous findings, our study contributes to a robust understanding of how compassion could enhance employee performance. Practically, this study reinforces the value of fostering compassion and positive psychological resources to improve job performance, particularly within the public art sector.

The Enactment of a Corporate Entrepreneurial Role: A Double-Edged Sword Forged by Heart and Context

Enacting a corporate entrepreneurial role requires cognitive, behavioral, and emotional qualities. While scholarly work has focused on the cognitive and behavioral aspects of this role, its emotional aspect—how corporate entrepreneurs feel when enacting their role—remains relatively unexplored. Our qualitative study reveals the corporate entrepreneurial role as a source of liabilities and assets for the role incumbents’ work-related identity, which are brought to light as these employees emotionally experience their role. In addition, we elucidate how contextual elements shape this experience, and how corporate entrepreneurs use emotions to work around the detrimental and beneficial effects of their role enactment.

When "who I am" is under threat: Measures of threat to identity value, meanings, and enactment.

Although scholars across fields have studied threats to individuals' identities for their impact and ubiquity, the absence of standard scales has hindered the advancement of this research. Due to the lack of identity threat measures, the myriad existing propositions and models remain untested which may generate skepticism of the field. In the comparatively rare instances where deductive models have been tested, studies often suffer from methodological shortcomings related to the absence of a standard measure (e.g., the use of scales that tap into adjacent constructs) or an assumption of unidimensionality, despite recognition that identity threat can take various forms. Such shortcomings can yield inaccurate conclusions and threaten content validity. In response to these issues, we followed recommended steps to develop three measures capturing threats to identity value, meanings, and enactment. We rigorously validated these measures across different contexts: threats to teachers' work-related identity, to pregnant women's leader identity, and to organizational members' lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning identities. Our results provide evidence of the psychometric validity of the three measures and their applicability to different types of identities individuals hold. Using our measures, scholars will be able to further explore identity threat triggers and outcomes, the mechanisms underlying the effects of the three different types of threat on outcomes, and temporal dynamics. Researchers can also use our measures in designing interventions. Ultimately, this will allow management and applied psychology scholars to develop better guidance for organizations and employees dealing with the commonplace, yet difficult experience of identity threat. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Beyond personal safe spaces: Creating and maintaining collective environments for meaning and identity on digital platforms

The transience of digital platforms poses obstacles for platform workers to create stable meaning and identity in online work environments. Extant literature concerned with work-related identity discusses gig-workers coping with the erosion of organizational structures in online spaces through “personalized holding environments”. We add to this literature by illustrating how actors maintain and create digital platforms as collective environments with the capacity for meaningfulness and identity formation. To do so, we draw on Hannah Arendt’s distinction between human activities in labor (serves necessities), work (creates things), and action (provides identity and meaning). Empirically, we autoetnographically investigated two digital platforms reflecting two prevalent narratives of the future of platform work: a platform dedicated to creative collaboration in an online community (FAWM) and a platform associated with precarious microtasking in the gig economy (MTurk). In both cases, we find that labor activities are required to maintain a digital identity and a digital environment. In turn, work activities establish a digital environment in a state of consistency, without ever adding tangible permanence to the human artifice. Thereupon, while establishing the digital platform as a stable collective environment, collective action (e.g. community building) can be performed. Here, we finally argue, lies the future human condition of platform work: in the ongoing care and creation of stable collective environments in a digital space lacking permanence.

Older adult's commercial diffusion of household sector innovation: a vocational and retirement perspective

PurposeCitizens can develop new products in the household sector (HHS), and although HHS innovations are generally valuable to others, they are seldom diffused by the innovator. In order to provide insight for the understanding of this diffusion failure, this article proposes to introduce the vocational and retirement perspective to consider how the innovator's chronological aging affects her diffusion channel selection. Commercial diffusion of HHS innovations allows older adults to continue a work-related identity. And, a satisfying work experience could enhance older adults' reliance on work for self-worth. Therefore, the relationship between the older HHS innovators and their commercial diffusion as well as the moderating effect of their person–organization (P–O) fit on this relationship was examined.Design/methodology/approachThis study referred to the standard procedure and utilized a Japanese consumer panel to identify HHS innovators. The criterion of old age was set to 60+ years old. The hypotheses were tested with ordinary least squares regression analysis. The robustness of our findings was checked by analyzing two restricted samples.FindingsIn Japan, older adults are more likely to diffuse their HHS innovators commercially than to peers. This relationship is amplified when the older adults also perceived a P-O fit in their employer firm.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the evidence that older adults can be an important source of innovation. It – for the first time – points out that the vocational and retirement perspective can help researchers consider why a particular diffusion channel is selected and thereby provide insight for understanding when the diffusion failure of HHS innovation is alleviated. The moderating effect of the P–O fit originally suggests the “interdependent life spheres”, that is, older adults' work experience may affect their post-retirement life and their activity in the household sector.

So, What Do You Do? Exploring Identity Claiming By Entrepreneurs

The way we respond to the casual question: “What do you do for a living?” involves making claims about work-related identity. As individuals often have multiple identities, including at work, deciding which identities to claim over others may not be straightforward. We explored how 29 entrepreneurs across Canada, the United States, and Australia respond to this question. Contrary to what would be predicted from prior research, these informants largely resist claiming the label of “entrepreneur” in informal social interactions. Instead, informants claimed labels based either on roles they held or occupations in which they currently or previously worked. Several also claimed labels that were “self-effacing” and downplayed their role in their organization. In exploring the rationale for these claiming decisions, we found that the broader social context—including cultural meanings of being an entrepreneur and conversational norms—played a key role in determining individual identity claiming. We also identified two motives underlying these contextual factors: the need to be comprehensible and the need to avoid creating distance between themselves and their interaction partner. We discuss the implications of these findings for both the research on identity claiming and entrepreneurship.

Up in the Air: Using Blogs to Study the Identity and Emotion Transitions of the Unemployed

The 2008 recession caused unemployment, motivating individuals to evaluate their work-related identity. We qualitatively study such identity transitions and emotions during: (1) involuntary job loss, (2) subsequent unemployment, (3) job search, (4) underemployment, and (5) reemployment. We analyzed fifteen blogs of individuals laid off from October 2008 to April 2011. Blogs provide a rich medium to study of thoughts and feelings due to non-researcher-influenced discourse. Using grounded theory, we construct a model of the various transitions work-related identity undergoes. We also note how opposing sets of emotions interact with cognitive ideological techniques during identity transitions to produce varying outcomes.

Navigating the Opportunities and Threats in Constructing Corporate Entrepreneurs’ Role Identity

Established organizations increasingly rely on employees who span work boundaries to engage in entrepreneurial activities on their behalf. However, the ambiguity and uncertainty entailed by corporate entrepreneurial activities may challenge employees’ work-related identity once they act autonomously. We draw on the identity and emotion work literature to understand how employees navigate their role as corporate entrepreneurs in developing a positive work-related identity. Based on the narratives of 25 corporate entrepreneurs, our qualitative analysis reveals that employees’ entrepreneurial role simultaneously generates a threat as well as being an asset in constructing a positive work-related identity. Corporate entrepreneurs combine emotion and identity work to fashion a distinct and sometimes unfamiliar role —both to themselves and others—while reducing the downsides of its enactment. Our grounded theoretical model contributes to the extant corporate entrepreneurship and identity work literature by explaining how emotion and identity work can help employees cope with the threats and opportunities that permeate entrepreneurial roles in organizational settings.

A new look at an old problem: A positive psychology lens on discrimination – identity builders and work-related outcomes

Although many scholars and practitioners continue to emphasize the benefits of a diverse workforce, discrimination remains an impediment to diversity and inclusion. For African Americans, who are uniquely stigmatized in the United States as descendants of enslaved people, merely having a “black name” or Afro-centric hairstyle can result in employment discrimination. Despite these outcomes, many African Americans remain resilient while facing discrimination. Utilizing positive organizational scholarship and the positive work-related identity typology as a framework, we propose a conceptual model that examines how African Americans' experiences enable them to shape a positive identity and serve as protective buffers against discrimination. Importantly, we suggest this identity process empowers African Americans to overcome discrimination, still perform well, and not voluntarily quit. We conclude with a discussion of our model's impact on African Americans and other stigmatized minorities and suggestions for future human resource management research and practice.

Work-related identity discrepancy and employee innovation behavior: the role of intrinsic motivation and self-construal

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of intrinsic motivation and self-construal in explaining the relationship between work-related identity discrepancy and employee innovation behavior.Design/methodology/approachBased on a survey of 637 respondents from 15 organizations in southern China, this study examines four hypotheses with regard to the relationship between work-related identity discrepancy and employee innovation behavior through hierarchical regression analysis.FindingsThe research results indicate that work-related identity discrepancy is negatively related to employee innovation behavior, but intrinsic motivation mediates their negative relationship, and self-construal moderates this mediating effect further. Specifically, the results demonstrate that perceiving work-related identity discrepancy can lower intrinsic motivation among employees with interdependent self-construal and subsequently reduce their innovation behavior.Originality/valueDrawn on social cognitive theory, this study reveals the negative effect of work-related identity discrepancy on employee innovation behavior and the moderated mediation effect of intrinsic motivation and self-construal on the negative relationship. The finding expands existing literature on work-related identity discrepancy and employee innovation behavior.

Enhancing End-User Roles in Information Security: Exploring the Setting, Situation, and Identity

Managing employee behaviors is a continuous quest for management. The quest is even more intense in the information security space, where a seemingly unintentional activity could have a consequential effect on an organization's security. The information security literature has used many theoretical approaches to explain how to regulate employee security behaviors, including protection motivation and deterrence. However, a theoretical approach that has captured the focus in organizational literature for behavioral regulation and yet to be realized in the information security domain is work-related identities. Work-related identity regulation depends on settings and situations in which the individual is embedded. This study draws from the identity theory and information security literature to explore how factors in the information security setting (security threats, security policy, and organizational support) help foment work-related information security identity and security behaviors. Our findings show that these factors significantly increase the user's identification in their roles in information security, and in turn, security behaviors. This research has implications for research and practice.

Constructing a positive identity as a disabled worker through social comparison: The role of stigma and disability characteristics

Drawing on 36 semi-structured in-depth interviews with individuals with a variety of disabilities who are active in the labor force, we examine how such individuals construct positive work-related identities at work. The findings show how disabled workers use downward social comparison as a stigma identity management strategy, to compare themselves with individuals with disabilities that they perceive to be more stigmatizing, and how this affects their ability to construct a positive work-related identity. This perception of stigma is influenced by four disability characteristics: its visibility, severity, controllability and whether the disability needs workplace adaptations. Moreover, a range of contextual factors were identified to impact their capacity to construct a positive work-related identity. The disabled workers in this study tend to compare themselves with other disabled workers with disabilities that are more severe, more visible, less controllable and present more constraints for employers. Interestingly, they use the characteristics of one's disability as resources to construct a positive work-related identity, while those characteristics simultaneously stigmatize them as a social group. However, disabled individuals who cannot engage in downward social comparison are put in a marginalized position and struggle to construct positive social identities.

Making sense of ‘maker’: Work, identity, and affect in the maker movement

This paper investigates the affective dimensions of entrepreneurial and creative work with the goal of making sense of the emergent collective identity of ‘maker.’ Relying on qualitative research in Detroit, MI, and Portland, OR, with small, entrepreneurial craft producers affiliated with the ‘maker movement,’ I forward two broad suppositions. First, as a work-related identity, ‘maker’ is emergent from a collective frustration with globalization and corporate/professional work. From the perspective of affective labor, the suggestion is that this negative association with globalized forms of work might be productive of a politically oppositional subjectivity. Second, as an identity term ‘maker’ is vague and oftentimes rejected by the people it ostensibly describes, and as such, the politics of ‘maker’ are not oriented toward collective political action. Why does ‘maker’ appear coherent as a response to globalization and corporate culture, but incoherent as a form of solidarity or collective identity? The paper utilizes affect theory to make sense of this contradiction, finding that the ambiguity and negation of ‘maker’ help shape a non-rigid form of belonging that allows makers to express various dissatisfactions (e.g. of globalization) while maintaining feelings of autonomy and avoiding overtly political positions. Lastly, I contend that ‘making’ is an adjustment to the turbulence of capitalism rather than a confrontation against it and is best understood in terms of the sense of mooring and purpose it provides for those within its milieu.

The Moderated-Mediation Effect of Workplace Anxiety and Regulatory Focus in the Relationship between Work-Related Identity Discrepancy and Employee Innovation.

Extant research on work-related identity discrepancy mostly has probed its effects on employees’ attitudes and emotions but has paid little attention to its impact on employee behaviors. Drawing on self-discrepancy theory, we examined the influencing mechanism and conditions of work-related identity discrepancy on employee innovation behavior. With data collected from 563 employees who personally experienced leadership transition in the workplace, we found that work-related identity discrepancy predicts employee innovation behavior through workplace anxiety. We also discovered that employees’ personality traits—promotion regulatory focus and prevention regulatory focus in particular—can intensify or buffer the negative relationship between work-related identity discrepancy and employee innovation behavior. We further discuss the conceptual and practical implications of these findings.

Work-Related Identity Discrepancy and Counterproductive Work Behavior: The Role of Emotional Exhaustion and Supervisor Incivility.

This research investigates the role of emotional exhaustion and supervisor incivility in explaining the relationship between work-related identity discrepancy and counterproductive work behavior. Based on resource conservation theory, our study hypothesizes a moderated mediation model that work-related identity discrepancy impacts counterproductive work behavior through emotional exhaustion, and supervisor incivility is deemed as the boundary condition in the indirect effect. Drawing on a sample of 863 employees, we found support for the moderated mediation model in which the positive relationship between work-related identity discrepancy and counterproductive work behavior was mediated by emotional exhaustion, such that the mediating relationship was strengthened for new leaders with a low level of supervisor incivility and weakened for those with high level of supervisor incivility. We further discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The Intra-Action of Employees and Materiality in the Constitution of Work-Related Identity

Applying a sociomaterial view to the material and human agency in doing work, this study explores the interdependent role of material arrangements and people doing knowledge-work. Using a Nordic university organization as an example, the study specifically highlights how material-physical environment and its affordances, including spaces of work as well as “high technology” such as electronics and “low technology” such as furniture – gain agency and become significant in terms of work-related identity. We introduce three modes of work: cognitive-, embodied-, and emotional work, which describe cognitive, bodily, and emotional actions that are entangled in the expressions of knowledge workers’ work-related identities. Focusing on identity as an achievement in agentive “intra-action” between the human and the material, the article contributes to the research on the effects of material arrangements and technology in the activities that knowledge-work in a digitalized workplace in particular consists of. Keywords: work-related identity, sociomateriality, material agency

Compassion and Job Performance: Dual-Paths through Positive Work-Related Identity, Collective Self Esteem, and Positive Psychological Capital

The purpose of this study is to examine the unexplored mechanisms through which employee job performance is affected by compassion experienced at work. While the relationship between compassion and job performance is relatively well established in the literature, our knowledge of the actual mechanisms underlying this relationship is still in a nascent state. In this study, we propose two paths through which increased job performance results from workplace compassion. Our empirical results, obtained through 360 full-time employees including 182 males and 178 females working in South Korea, provide support for the serial double mediation effects of positive work-related identity and collective self-esteem in the positive relationship between compassion experienced at work and job performance. In addition, the positive relationship between workplace compassion and job performance is mediated by positive psychological capital.

“I’m really worried for my teaching spirit”: professional agency, curriculum change and the primary arts specialist teacher

ABSTRACT Arts specialist teachers have a unique place in primary schools. They are often the sole teacher responsible for an entire learning area and hence commonly provide leadership and drive the curriculum implementation of the arts in and for their school. This responsibility finds us asking questions about the ability of arts specialist teachers to create professional agency in an increasingly challenging school environment. Using a narrative portraiture approach, and seven propositions for professional agency, we focus on a single teacher in order to consider how both individual and structural elements are understood from the perspective of an arts specialist. Conditions explored include relationships, time, purpose and constraints, work-related identity, experiences, and work communities. Challenges such as isolation, ongoing support and the development of community are highlighted as potential difficulties in the process of developing agency. The study contributes to an understanding of the personal cost and potential growth the development of professional agency provides.

Conflict, Resistance and the Symbolic Meaning of Space – Activity Based Work and Possibilities to Express Work-related Identities in Everyday Working Life

The article focuses on a current trend in office design: Activity Based Work (ABW). This is an office solution that instead of providing employees with designated places, it provides them with a variety of spaces in the office that offer different functionalities. A case study is presented of the ongoing effort of a multinational technology company in the software industry to implement ABW at a local site in Sweden. Based on an analysis of the individual and focus group interviews of company employees, the article argues that the non-territorial foundation of ABW is seen as a threat to the work-related identity among certain groups within the company. The findings presented comprise specific insights into how the material aspects of organizational life interact with social identity construction.

The Impact of Work-related Identity Discrepancy of Circle Members on Job Engagement:The Role of Negative Emotions

The Impact of Work-related Identity Discrepancy of Circle Members on Job Engagement:The Role of Negative Emotions