Identity Work Research Articles

When less is more: Exploring the role of silence in consumers’ identity work

When less is more: Exploring the role of silence in consumers’ identity work

Reconstructing a Meaningful Self: The Identity Work of People Living With Chronic Disease.

With the escalating number of people diagnosed with chronic disease globally, research aimed at supporting their adjustment and coping is invaluable. Reconstructing a sense of self is core to the psychosocial adjustment of people with chronic disease (PwCD), and meaning making is central to their coping with the diagnosis. Despite the growing number of PwCD living productive lives, their identity work is underexplored. This article reports on an in-depth multiple case study that explored the identity work of PwCD from a meaning-making perspective. Data were gathered from three cases using semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and diaries. Data analysis entailed interpretative phenomenological analysis and flexible pattern matching. Three themes describe participants' identity work process: First, they narrate a broken identity, having experienced identity disruption, discontinuity, and loss; second, they envision an ideal identity through existential reflection; and third, they reconstruct a meaningful identity. Reconciling the broken self with an ideal self leads to the construction of a meaningful self. The meaningful self is conceptualized in participants' application of Frankl's meaning-making principles, as they constructed a purposeful self (creative), a connected self (experiential), and a determined self (attitudinal). The article discusses the implications for helping professionals and organizations in supporting PwCD as they work toward rebuilding a meaningful self, facilitating their identity work in the search of a meaningful self.

Filling the void: the underlying processes of CEO post-retirement role identity reformation

PurposeFollowing identity theory from a symbolic-interactionist perspective, we explore the post-retirement role identity reformation of public company CEOs to uncover the process elements through which role identities reform after retirement from highly salient roles.Design/methodology/approachWe applied a self-relevant qualitative exploration based on 30 in-depth interviews and employed an interpretative phenomenological analysis.FindingsThe findings reveal six interrelated, contemporaneous and contiguous underlying process elements within post-retirement liminality and emergence clusters, which shape work and nonwork role identities that contribute to retirement stability and well-being.Practical implicationsThe research provides a basis for organizations and human resource specialists to guide retiring senior executives on the psychological effects, cognitive processes and practical considerations of the retirement transition.Originality/valueThe study provides a framework for understanding how the post-retirement void evokes novel appraisals of self, others and context. These appraisals act as stimuli of an integrated cognitive, social and behavioral work role identity reformation process.

Integrating professional and religious identities: implications for career success and workplace dynamics in China

ABSTRACT This study explores how Chinese Buddhist business owners navigate the intersection of their professional and religious identities and how this shapes their perceptions of career success. Through qualitative interviews with 31 Buddhist Chinese business owners, we introduce the concept of ‘identity synchronisation’ to explain how individuals manage multiple, potentially conflicting identities. Our findings reveal that participants maintain distinct yet mutually reinforcing professional and religious identities, leading to a holistic conceptualisation of career success encompassing both material achievements and spiritual fulfilment. This process of identity synchronisation influences ethical decision-making, leadership approaches, and definitions of success. Our analysis extends social identity theory by demonstrating how individuals actively synchronise seemingly disparate identities, challenging the notion that work and religious identities are inherently conflicting. The study contributes to understanding how religious identity shapes work experiences in diverse business contexts and offers insights for organisations supporting multiple identity expressions. It provides a foundation for exploring how diverse identities influence workplace dynamics in an increasingly globalised environment.

Social difference and relational coaching: finding new freedoms in working with identity

In this article we explore some of the processes involved in dealing with Social Difference (SD) in coaching. Using examples from our own practice, we consider several factors, including the identity work involved in navigating the experience of SD in one-to-one coaching. Dealing with experiences of difference, including social class, gender, race, ability, and sexuality can invoke complicated and powerful feelings. Feelings of guilt, shame, anger, and isolation may cause impasses and ruptures in the coaching relationship. The article also sets out to test two hypotheses. Namely that working with questions of SD can enrich coaching if the Working Alliance (WA) is experienced as positive, and that issues of SD are better managed if they are discussed explicitly. We draw on social constructionist conceptions of identity, together with Rothberg’s work on the implicated subject, to facilitate inquiry into SD and identity for ourselves as coaches, as well as for our coachees. This is the work of re-examining ourselves, re-thinking who we are, and moving beyond the unwanted aspects of the self which may provoke existential feelings of guilt, shame, anger, and isolation, as accumulated through or aggravated by the current and historical woundings of oppression and social injustice. Our research tells us that it is by facing into the complicated emotions engendered by SD, that we can begin to embrace what we psychically and socially “disown.” We suggest that by recognizing our implicated selves, we may become better equipped psychologically, to be more sensitive and responsive to the impact that SD has on individuals, groups, and organizations. We discuss the ways in which a relational stance in coaching can help to provide a secure holding environment for critical and reflexive inquiry into SD, identity and the selves we enact. We conclude that a relational and implicated approach in coaching provides a wider perspective and extends the critical capacity of leaders to look within themselves and into their challenges with more congruence and ethical maturity.

The politics of constructing counternarratives against Orientalism in popular media reception: the case of Mulan (2020)

ABSTRACT This article investigates into Orientalism in Disney’s Caro, Niki, dir. 2020. Mulan. Orlando, FL: The Walt Disney Company. and its resistant reading on Chinese social media platform Douban. It adopts a qualitative method to discipline data collected from Douban, then analyzing them in light of Stuart Hall’s articulation theory and Henry Jenkins’ ‘collective intelligence’. The analysis first reveals two ‘articulated’ Orientalist discourses in the film undergirded by a form of ‘new racism’, which serves to perpetuate the existing racial and gender hierarchies in the West–East power matrix. Then it shows how Douban users’ collective intelligence can potentially ‘disarticulate’ and ‘rearticulate’ Orientalism through a kind of microphysical, collective rewriting. The research argues that both disarticulation and rearticulation are a means by which Douban users indulge the civic imagination for alternative geopolitics in popular culture representation; compared with disarticulation, their rearticulatory practice is less effectual due to the inclusion of self-conflicting discursive elements, which ironically lay bare traces of their own discursive formation. This irony, this article suggests, calls into question the dominant-resistant binary paradigm that predominates current media reception studies. The article concludes by rethinking Orientalism and its Douban resistance in light of ‘Chineseness as identity work’, which deconstructs the oppositional paradigm and enlightens Orientalist film studies in global contexts.

Navigating Role Identity Tensions: It Project Managers’ Identity Work in Agile Information Systems Development

Navigating Role Identity Tensions: It Project Managers’ Identity Work in Agile Information Systems Development

Supporting New Ways of Working for Social Workers Through High Performance Work Practices: Sustaining Professional Identity

ABSTRACTIn our study, we examine implementation of strength‐based practice (SBP) that invokes a new way of working for social workers in England. We note two antecedent conditions to support new ways of working. First, hybrid managers, who combine professional and organizational perspectives, act as a conduit for implementation of new ways of working through supporting implementation of high performance work practices (HPWPs). Second, the financial context faced by social care providers influences whether new ways of working, and HPWPs associated with this, aim to improve productivity, or enhance capability and commitment of social workers. We identify three HPWPs that support the new way of working because they align with professional identity of social workers. First, hybrid manager jobs were designed to afford opportunity for recruitment of appropriately able social workers to enact strategic influence over SBP implementation. Second, intervention to support peer‐to‐peer learning enhanced the ability of social workers to deliver SBP, and also motivated social workers toward SBP implementation because they retained professional autonomy in developing their practice. Third, performance management intervention was developmental rather than judgmental, designed to enhance ability of social workers to deliver SBP. Similar to the peer learning intervention, it remained within control of social workers, hence motivated them to engage with SBP.

Nonprototypical Managers: The Identity Work of Young Managers in Relation to Age-Based Stereotypes

To be a young manager is to deviate from the norm, because youth and management are perceived as contradictory social positions. Thus, young managers are positioned as nonprototypical, which poses challenges to gaining acceptance and claiming the managerial identity. In this multicase interview study, we show how available social prototypes of management and self-to-prototype comparisons are important as young managers approach the identity work process. We conducted interviews (N = 38) and workshops (N = 6) in three business sectors with young and senior managers, subordinates, and those performing support functions. Based on an analysis of these interviews and workshops, we developed a theoretical model illustrating how young managers use implicit theories of leadership (ILT) to reduce the incongruity between internal self-conceptions and external prototypes of management as a benchmark toward managerial identity, revealing three main approaches to identity work. Young managers approach age-based drawbacks by acting based on noncontextualized ILTs, making adjustments in relation to available prototypes, and by making self-to-prototype insights. Our findings augment the identity work theory by providing an age perspective on this process and highlight the importance of future research engaging in depth with age as a sociodemographic factor in relation to the managerial role.

‘Maybe we’re not past the traditional gender roles then!’ Exploring less than full-time training among men in Scotland: a qualitative study

ObjectivesA more sustainable work–life balance is desired by trainees, and increasing access to flexibility in training may improve staff morale and retention. Although a number of less than full-time (LTFT)...

“A world beyond this one”: Sustaining afro‐brasilidade through language, ritual, and culture teaching in a northeastern Brazilian school

AbstractThis research advances racioreligious linguistic ideologies as a concept to examine discursive processes whereby language, race, and spirituality become entangled within cultural lenses. It begins by exploring the racialization of Yoruba‐inspired (Nagô in Bahia) spiritualities and linguistic/semiotic practices under colonialism and racial slavery. It continues into the modern context with an extended example situated in a northeastern Brazilian school, where Nagô/Yoruba typifies Blackness. The data highlight how interlocutors in this school, working within affirmative racioreligious linguistic ideologies and the values they assign, engage in education as racioreligious identity work to resist racial, religious, and linguistic prejudices, sustain traditional knowledge, and affirm Afro‐Brazilianness.

Exploring pre-service teachers’ professional experiences through the lens of boundary crossing: An Australian case study

This qualitative case study uses a boundary crossing lens to explore pre-service teachers’ professional experience through their own perspectives and those of their mentor teachers. A constant comparative method was used to analyse multiple sources of data, including in-depth interviews, field observations, feedback sessions, and reflection meetings. Data analysis revealed three major themes and nine subthemes. These themes illustrated the way the pre-service teachers experienced boundary crossing throughout the professional experience, including (1) navigating collaborative and hierarchical relationships, (2) integrating converging and diverging epistemologies, and (3) engaging in identity work. The study details the subthemes by giving voice to converging and opposing perspectives and reveals the complexities inherent in boundary crossing. Implications for leveraging the professional learning of pre-service teachers echo previous studies and herald the need for considering multiplicity and hybridity in any bridge-construction endeavours across universities, schools and the spaces in between.

Resistance to economic exploitation or religious oppression? A sociomaterial analysis of the agency of Muslim food-delivery workers facing algorithmic management

This qualitative case study examines food-delivery platforms in France in order to reveal how gig workers, lacking traditional employment protections and collective bargaining, rely on informal community mechanisms to develop collective agency that is closely linked to the materiality of platforms. Drawing upon sociomaterial theory and the concept of affordance, our results show that religious affiliation plays a crucial role in the actualization of algorithmic management artifacts by Muslim migrant workers and leads to a sense of emancipation and reconciliation between their religious and work identities. Religious communities, often overlooked or avoided by traditional organizations, act as mediators in the gig economy. Because it uses “ post-diversity” organizational practices that are indifferent to marginal socio-demographic categories, the gig economy provides workers with material, emotional, and informational resources that facilitate identity agency and prioritize it over algorithmic management. The present study contributes to the literature on platform work by illuminating the intricate duality of agency experienced by Muslim migrant workers in the food-delivery sector and developed through community-built resources. It highlights the prioritization of freedom from religious oppression in the labor market over economic considerations, which leads to the acceptance of exploitative working conditions and peer control.

Prospective mathematics teachers’ collective identity work: navigating failure experiences and concerns about relating to students

Prospective mathematics teachers’ collective identity work: navigating failure experiences and concerns about relating to students

The Cost of Managerial Caring: Exploring Identity Work in the Hybrid Work Context

ABSTRACTThe Covid crisis and the resulting enforced teleworking have significantly shaken up the manager's role, leading to increased identity work. This article draws on a longitudinal study of managers conducted over the course of a full year during the Covid crisis, from May 2020 to June 2021, using interviews and self‐administered diaries to reveal a distinct sequence of identity work. This sequence combines a reappropriation of the humane dimension inherent to the manager's role (expectations and practices of managerial caring) and a distancing from the team and the managerial role through disembodied management (cost of caring). We discuss these results by identifying a paradox of managerial caring which, translated in terms of identity, may help understanding the contemporary withdrawal tendencies among managers.

Identity Work: A Qualitative Study of Residents' Experiences Navigating Identity Struggles.

Medical training traditionally holds a deterministic view of professional socialization wherein many medical learners struggle to construct a professional identity. Previous research has demonstrated the dysfunctional norms and conflicting ideologies that create identity struggle, disproportionally affecting women and individuals underrepresented in medicine. Symbolic interactionism can help explain identity struggles, emphasizing the influence of socio-contextual factors on identity construction. The purpose of this study was to explore how residents navigate identity struggles during residency training. We conducted a qualitative exploration of 12 residents in three specialties at three academic institutions in the United States. Participants engaged in rich picture drawings followed by one-on-one interviews. We coded transcript data and met regularly to identify themes related to residents' experiences with navigating professional identity struggles. We identified three main themes on navigating identity struggles: the weight of identity work, the isolating nature of identity work, and the navigation that occurs with and against socio-contextual currents. Residents described identity work as navigation like a boat at sea. This work felt weighty and at times overwhelming and residents often felt unable to discuss their identity struggles with others. Residents utilized what agency they had to either navigate with the current, navigating towards acceptable-albeit imperfect-paths forward, or attempting to go against the current to forge new paths through resistance. This study highlights how context enables and constrains identity construction, how contextual constraints can create dissonance between identities, and the considerable effort required to reconcile dissonance and construct professional identities. Training program adjustments, enhanced resident support, and cultural shifts are required to sustain residents' identity work. Medical professionals should engage in collective identity work to reimagine the profession's identity by addressing dysfunctional cultural norms.

After the Crisis: Explaining stories of professional identity growth from collective action

Emergent forms of collaboration are central to societies’ response to crises like natural disaster, refugee migration and pandemics. Even though individuals’ participation in such collective action may be short-lived, recent studies propose it can inspire enduring professional role change as people return to their everyday work post-crisis. Yet, previous research does not focus on the divergent stories participants tell about the crisis years afterward and what it meant for them professionally. Through a grounded study of healthcare workers involved in the 2003 Toronto SARS outbreak, we examine varied narratives of professional identity growth following collective action in crisis. Years after SARS, participants told diverse stories about the crisis as an event that suspended, affirmed or even expanded their professional identities. Participants with narratives of identity suspension saw SARS as an event lacking professional relevance. Narratives of identity affirmation and expansion, however, emphasized growth and inspiration for participants’ professional roles post-crisis. We theorize how interactions within collective responses can foster growth narratives, when they enhance meanings central to participants’ professional identities and by affording follow-on interactions that translate these meanings into role change. We contribute new insight on how collective action in crisis can lead to professional role change post-crisis, how fragmented perspectives affect capacity for collective action in intermittent crises, and the role of follow-on interactions in professionals’ narrative identity work.

Improving the hospital or immunizing its organization? Patient and public involvement at the service of quality.

There is a pressing need for the hospitals to improve their quality and become more patient-centered. Over the last decade, several approaches were implemented to meet this demand, such as hospital accreditation or patient surveys. Many studies have addressed the patient involvement systems from the viewpoint of the factors that drive them or the achieved performance. In this study, we examined the patient involvement from the viewpoint of its function and operation rather than its performance. Following Luhmann, we reconsidered quality to be related to the absorption of uncertainty rather than improvement or innovation. The adaptation of an organization to involve patient participation can be regarded as contributing to the immune function of the organizational system. Three case studies addressing patient and family advisory councils in general hospitals were conducted in Belgium. Qualitative empirical material is retrieved from observation, documentation, and interviews. Our findings suggest that the immune function of the hospital organization operates in four main phases. First, we assess how the communicative process indicates the relevant difference that needs to be addressed. Role differentiation occurs through the depoliticization and depersonalization of criticism. Second, given the impossible realization of first-order observation of the environment, our material shows how second-order observation is organized through a dual representation. Third, we unveil how the environmental representation requires a specific organizational socialization to overcome the representation paradox. Finally, we analyze how the whole described process must fulfil the preparation of a repertoire of responses to the irritations of its environment. The analysis revealed that patient and family advisory councils complete a crucial immune function for organizations, far beyond the simple discussion of the "nuts and bolts" of organizational structure. These findings permit to discuss implications of the notions of participation and quality regarding to identity work of stakeholders, open organization, and change management.

The Postdigital Panorama

University teachers are in the midst of a messy and entangled postdigital era. They face a constant stream of data and increasingly visible teaching as a consequence of digital media and AI spaces. This prompts the need for identity work to reconsider the personal, professional and societal meanings of the role of teachers in a world where people and machines are becoming further interwoven. Narrowing it down to social media spaces that encompass context collapse, it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw a line between personal and professional facets of life. Higher education teachers, who contribute to social media, construct fluid, greatly changeable and intermingled identities. The current study aims to conceptualise the practices and roles that may guide these emerging identities using a theoretical vignette as a tool. The presented case can initiate the discussions on who we are and who we are becoming in the current realities and prompt questions about learning and teaching in the networked society.

The mediated effect of youth council participation on the professional identity development of youth workers

Despite the extensive literature on the benefits of youth councils, the career-specific impact of such participation remains under-researched. Thus, the present study examined whether differences occur in the perceived professional identity of youth workers who participated in a youth council during adolescence compared to those who did not. The study was conducted on a sample of 332 students enrolled in youth work programs in South Korea. Stepwise regression modeling and mediation analysis were employed to identify both the direct and indirect effects of youth council participation on the development of professional identity in youth work. The results indicate that youth council participation has fully mediated effects on professional identity development in youth work, as evidenced by the increased awareness of youth work as a profession, average hours spent as a volunteer youth worker during college, and willingness to choose youth work as a future career. The findings suggest that young people’s professional identity in youth work can grow in youth councils despite the fact that the youth participation organization is neither intentionally designed nor formally structured for the purpose of professional identity development.