More than a Metaphor: Organizational Identity Makes Organizational Life Possible

Recent papers by Cornelissen (2002a, 2002b) and Gioia, Schultz and Corley (2002a, 2002b ) have debated the utility of organizational identity as a metaphor for understanding organizational life. In the present paper we argue that this debate is limiting because it frames issues of organizational identity purely in metaphorical terms and fails to explore the social psychological basis and consequences of the discontinuity between personal and organizational identity. Extending this debate, we argue that the power of organizational identity as a theoretical and applied construct derives from the fact that it has the capacity to be both an externally shared and negotiated product and an internalized aspect of the collective self. Consistent with recent research informed by the social identity approach to organizational psychology, we discuss how an appreciation of the identity‐based dynamic between the social facts of organizations and the socially‐structured psychology of organizational members is essential for both theoretical and practical understanding of organizational life.     

The Role of Brokers and Social Identities in the Development of Capabilities in Global Virtual Teams

While organizations are increasingly relying on global virtual teams (GVTs) to carry out knowledge intensive activities, the understanding of how GVTs develop capabilities is still limited. We explore how GVTs adapt routines and build capabilities, and the role played by brokers and social identities in this process. We interviewed 49 professionals working in fifteen GVTs based in Europe, India, and US, and operating in IT and engineering consulting companies. Our multi-level grounded model highlights that, while brokers help in the creation of mutual knowledge, they reduce the accuracy of perceptions about distant co-workers. Mutual knowledge, combined with limited accuracy of perceptions, diminishes the need to adapt team routines over time. The negative effect of brokers on the creation of team capabilities is reduced when individual professional identities trigger the search for more accurate perceptions of distant colleagues and clients with the objective of adapting team routines and performing more stimulating work. On top of this, organizational identity further enables the process of adaptation of team routines. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications on the interplay between operational and social processes in GVTs and team capabilities, as well as practical implications for designing and managing GVTs.     

Past,Present and Future Research on Multiple Identities: Toward an Intrapersonal Network Approach

Abstract

Psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers have long recognized that people have multiple identities—based on attributes such as organizational membership, profession, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and family role(s)—and that these multiple identities shape people's actions in organizations. The current organizational literature on multiple identities, however, is sparse and scattered and has yet to fully capture this foundational idea. I review and organize the literature on multiple identities into five different theoretical perspectives: social psychological; microsociological; psychodynamic and developmental; critical; and intersectional. I then propose a way to take research on multiple identities forward using an intrapersonal identity network approach. Moving to an identity network approach offers two advantages: first, it enables scholars to consider more than two identities simultaneously, and second, it helps scholars examine relationships among identities in greater detail. This is important because preliminary evidence suggests that multiple identities shape important outcomes in organizations, such as individual stress and well-being, intergroup conflict, performance, and change. By providing a way to investigate patterns of relationships among multiple identities, the identity network approach can help scholars deepen their understanding of the consequences of multiple identities in organizations and spark novel research questions in the organizational literature.     

The Professional,the Personal,and the Ideal Worker: Pressures and Objectives Shaping the Boundary between Life Domains

Abstract

Both scholarly literature and popular accounts suggest that modern organizational practices have moved toward encouraging employees to “integrate” or blur the boundary between their personal and professional domains, for example, through self-disclosure at work, company-sponsored social activities or providing on-site child care. Concurrently, an ideology underlying U.S. professional norms discourages integration practices such as referencing non-work roles during workplace interactions, expressing emotions in the workplace, and/or displaying non-work-related items in workspaces. In this review, we posit that these two norms firmly coexist because they differentially serve two objectives corresponding to the parallel bodies of research we examine: one addressing boundary management as a tool for handling role responsibilities, and the other considering boundary management as a tool for shaping workplace identity and relationships. Specifically, we posit that segmenting personal and professional domains facilitates the management of role responsibilities, whereas integration is more beneficial for managing workplace identity and relationships. Furthermore, both objectives serve the “ideal worker” imperative of work primacy. We identify key contingencies that help us to further understand existing research findings, and prompt future research directions informing theories for understanding the attractiveness and efficacy of different personal–professional boundary management strategies for both organizations and individuals.     

Identities and Identity Work in Organizations

Identities, people's subjectively construed understandings of who they were, are and desire to become, are implicated in, and thus key to understanding and explaining, almost everything that happens in and around organizations. The research contribution that this review paper makes is threefold. First, it analyses the often employed but rarely systematically explored concept ‘identity work’, and argues that it is one metaphor among many that may be useful in the analysis of professional and more generally work identities. Second, it focuses on five fundamental, interconnected debates in contemporary identities research centred on notions of choice, stability, coherence, positivity and authenticity. Third, it outlines the roles that the concept ‘identity work’ may play in bridging levels of analysis and disciplinary boundaries, and sketches some possible future identities‐focused ideas for further research. Under‐specification has meant that ‘identity’ has not always fulfilled its analytical promise in either theoretical explorations of identities issues or in empirical studies of identities in practice; and it is to these ends that this paper seeks to contribute.     

Exploring the use of virtues to facilitate identity construction among management students

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities facing educators who wish to facilitate management students’ identity construction as a means to foster their students’ emergent professional identities and post-graduate career attainments. We look to medical and law schools’ recent advancements, alongside their traditional dissemination of knowledge and technical skills, in better aligning students’ developing identities and related behaviors with respective professional ideals. Drawing on insights from these professional schools, we examine whether the concept of “professional virtues” that’s proven valuable in these contexts might also be used to facilitate students’ professional identity construction within management education.     

Work-related social media use: The mediating role of social media communication self-efficacy

Social media use has become an indispensable part of knowledge work. Employees posting work-related content on social media are considered credible sources of information and have significant importance for how stakeholders, such as potential customers and future employees, perceive the organization. Therefore, employees’ ability to communicate about their work on social media has become a competitive advantage both for individual employees and for their organizations, especially in the professional service sector. Hence, understanding the role of employees’ ability to use these social media professionally is crucial for understanding the communicative behaviors of contemporary knowledge workers. In this study, we draw on social cognitive theory and focus on the antecedents and consequences of self-efficacy in individuals’ work-related communication on social media. The results show that perceived organizational commitment, clarity of communicative role, social media training, and prior experience with social media serve as antecedents of communication self-efficacy and subsequent work-related communication on social media. Thus, organizations and particularly management, have several aspects directly within the scope of their control that may aid employees in engaging in the professional use of social media. The paper contributes to the literature on employees’ communication behavior and provides important and actionable insights for management and the development of human resources.     

The Importance of Role Models and Demographic Context for Senior Women's Work Identity Development

The lack of senior female role models continues to be cited as a key barrier to women's career success. Yet there is little academic research into the gendered aspects of role modelling in organizations, or the utility of role models at a senior level. The paper starts with a review of papers examining the construction of role models in organizational settings. This leads to the inclusion of two related areas – organizational demographics as the contextual factor affecting the availability of role models and how they are perceived, and work identity formation as a possible key explanatory factor behind the link between the lack of senior female role models and the lack of career progression to top organizational levels. The literature looking at social theories of identity formation is then considered from a gender perspective. The key gaps identified are that while the behavioural value of role models has been well documented, a better understanding is needed of how gender and organizational demography influence the role modelling process. Importantly, the symbolic value and possibly other values of female role models in the identity construction of senior women require further in‐depth investigation. Finally, this review calls for a more integrated approach to the study of role models and work identity formation, pulling together literatures on organizational demography, the cognitive construal of role models and their importance for successful work identity formation in senior women.     

Embracing Indeterminacy: On Being a Liminal Professional

The rise of the corporate profession has contributed to a more varied and ambiguous professional terrain that is increasingly seen to be indeterminate and fluid. This paper advances the current debate around the development of corporate professions, exploring how practitioners respond to this environment. Drawing on research with public relations practitioners, the paper shows how the idea of being a liminar facilitates the formation of a professional identity in conditions of high indeterminacy. In taking an individual level of analysis of professions, the paper suggests that indeterminacy is a more resonant feature for corporate professionals than previously suggested in the research, but that this indeterminacy is navigated in professional identity construction through ‘being a liminar’, and thus greater nuance may need to be recognized in the conceptualization of both corporate professions and corporate professionalization. It also demonstrates the use of liminality as a discursive resource in identity construction and with it, challenges the common association of liminality with self‐doubt and existential anxiety. In turn, the paper considers the implications of the liminal professional identity for the future of contemporary professions, and for understanding the liminal experience.     

A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Research into leadership effectiveness has largely overlooked the implications of the fact that leadership processes are enacted in the context of a shared group membership, where leaders, as group members, ask followers, as group members, to exert themselves on behalf of the collective. In contrast, the social identity model of organizational leadership, proposed here, emphasizes the characteristics of the leader as a group member, and the leader’s ability to speak to followers as group members. In salient groups with which group members identify, leadership effectiveness rests on the extent to which the leader is prototypical of the group (i.e. representative of the group’s identity) and engages in group-oriented behavior (i.e. behavior perceived to benefit the group). Explicating the added value of our model and going beyond contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness, we discuss how our model extends, and may be integrated with, three major contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness (charismatic leadership theories, Leader-Member Exchange theory, and leadership categorization theories). In addition, we outline how our model provides a viable framework to integrate future developments in research on leadership such as a growing attention to leader fairness and the role of emotions in leadership effectiveness.     

Identity Work and Emotions: A Review

This paper reviews the empirical literature on identity work and identifies two distinct approaches to incorporating emotion. The majority of empirical studies use emotion to describe the experiences of identity work. In doing so, the authors (a) mention the emotions that people feel in situations that trigger identity work, (b) illustrate identity work as an emotional endeavour, and (c) describe the emotional impact of successful and unsuccessful identity work. There is also an emerging literature that examines the mutual constitution of emotions and identity work. These authors address emotional labour, affective social identification, emotional attachment and detachment, and humour when studying identity work. This paper suggests that, to understand better the relation between emotions and identity work, future research should examine the role of emotions in problematizing identity, the emotional constitution of the identity work experience, the intersection of emotions and other ways of knowing the self, and the links between emotions and power in identity work.     

Identities under scrutiny: How women leaders navigate feeling misidentified at work

The identities of women leaders can fall under intense scrutiny; they are often confronted with other's perceptions of them—perceptions that may not be wholly accurate. Through in-depth qualitative interviews of senior women leaders working in male-dominated industries, we explore how they experience and respond to feeling misidentified (internal identity asymmetry; Meister, Jehn, & Thatcher, 2014) throughout their careers. Employing grounded theory methods, we uncover how women are likely to experience asymmetry, and discover it becomes most salient during personal and professional identity transitions. We build theory with respect to how women leaders navigate feeling misidentified, and find with time and power the experience becomes less salient. Our study draws together and contributes to both the identity and leadership literatures by exploring an important identity challenge facing women leaders in industries that are striving for a greater gender-balance in senior positions.     

Common Threats and Managing Reputation in Executive Search Firms

A free video abstract to accompany this article can be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IziwDorbeGU This paper provides important insights into how executive search firms can successfully manage their reputations to overcome major threats to their organizations. The paper focuses on three threats faced by executive search firms: the global financial crisis; questions around the sector's professional status; and the proliferation of social media for recruitment. Our data show that there was not a single coherent response from firms, but a piecemeal approach that focused on three forms of reputation management. First, diversifying service offerings; second, highlighting their symbolic capital; and third, connecting their firms to clients and candidates through partners. Building on our data and the theoretical literature, we provide a framework for understanding how professional service firms can manage their reputations in response to common threats, based on three categories from the English idiom ‘keep up with the Joneses’. First, moving away from the Joneses; second, fencing out the Joneses; third, networking more than the Joneses. We provide theoretical and practical insights around how organizations can manage their reputations in response to threats which are common across sectors.     

Career transition as identity learning: an autoethnographic understanding of human resource development

This paper examines the phenomenon of career transitions in terms of learning using an autoethnographic story of our own career moves. In the contemporary world of globalized flexible employment, inter-organizational career moves are increasingly prevalent and the learning associated with such transitions needs to be better understood within human resource development (HRD). We show that the learning required in career transitions extends beyond the acquisition of new knowledge and the development of new skills to the appropriation of new identities. We overview identity theorizing and, adopting a social constructionist perspective, explain the concept of identity work to understand the nature of identity learning in career transitions. We then reflexively examine our autoethnographic methodology, proceed to tell the story of our career transitions, and then interpret this story in terms of identity learning. Conclusions are drawn showing how the learning associated with career transitions involves conscious and unconscious identity work to release an established way of being, cultivate a new and desired way of being, and to cope with the existential anxieties associated with transition. Significant implications for international HRD scholarship, policy, and practice are proposed.     

Religious Social Identities in the Hybrid Self‐presentations of Sikh Businesspeople

This paper explores the identity work practices of Thai Sikh businesspeople. The paper focuses on two important social identities in participants’ self‐presentations – those derived from religious (Sikh) and western business discourses – and identifies powerful tensions in their hybrid identity work. Conducting discourse analysis on identity work practices within interview settings, the authors explore how participants resolve, accommodate or reject these discursive tensions while attempting stable and coherent hybrid self‐presentations. They identify several different forms of hybridity, including what they term ‘equipollence’, which occurs when two equally powerful, contradictory discourses are incorporated in self‐presentations, producing potentially irresolvable intersections and leading to a lack of coherence. Contributions are made to the literatures on religion and work, hybrid identity work processes and social identities.     

Gender in Management: Theorizing Gender as Heterogender

Research on gendered identities in management has exploded over the past three decades. The focus on gender obscures the place of sexuality in gendered theory. In this article theories of gender as ‘object’, ‘subject’ and as social processes are used as interpretative frames to explore the ways in which gender and sexuality are enacted by lesbian managers. Their narratives demonstrate that managing gender was experienced primarily as managing heterosexuality. Disjunctions in identity positions revealed that heterosexual assumptions provide the foundation of gender. Reframing gender as ‘heterogender’ foregrounds heterosexuality and gender as intertwined and provides another layer to understanding how gender is ‘done’ in management.     

How leader role identity influences the process of leader emergence: A social network analysis

Contemporary theories on leadership development emphasize the importance of having a leader identity in building leadership skills and functioning effectively as leaders. We build on this approach by unpacking the role leader identity plays in the leader emergence process. Taking the perspective that leadership is a dynamic social process between group members, we propose a social network-based process model whereby leader role identity predicts network centrality (i.e., betweenness and indegree), which then contributes to leader emergence. We test our model using a sample of 88 cadets participating in a leadership development training course. In support of our model, cadets who possess a stronger leader role identity at the beginning of the course were more likely to emerge as leaders. However this relationship was only mediated by one form of network centrality, indegree centrality, reflecting one's ability to build relationships within one's group. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The ebb and flow of identity: How sustainable entrepreneurs deal with their hybridity

The identity of sustainable entrepreneurs progresses and is primed by certain identity dimensions, including society, community, or competition as their frames of references, their social motivation, and their self-evaluation. Because sustainable entrepreneurs aim to achieve the goals of generating profit and create social and/or ecological value at the same time, they experience two types of tensions: one that concerns social and ecological and the other with an extension of economic aspects. To leverage these, we find identity shifts dependent on the tension sustainable entrepreneurs’ experience, activating a certain combination of identity dimension. Building on 29 case studies with European sustainable entrepreneurs, the study investigates the dynamic role of entrepreneurial identity, thereby informing about fluid hybrid identity conflict management strategies. This adds to theory on entrepreneurial identity that has widely found multiple, yet coherent entrepreneurial identities and conflict management strategies.     

“Seeing to be seen”: The manager’s political economy of visibility in new ways of working

Recent changes in the world of work have modified the conditions of the exercise of management in ways that challenge managers’ traditional authority and identity, both symbolically and physically. In this context, we analyse the “visibilizing process” of managers, through which they attempt to make themselves more visible, in ways that reaffirm their authority and restore their identity as managers. To that end, we develop a Foucauldian framework on power and visibility, which sheds light on the “political economy of visibility” of the manager. We apply this framework to a case study that encouraged a re-spatialization of remote work in coworking spaces. The findings show how the manager in our case study staged his own visibility, by enhancing managerial control, to manage his invisibility and shape his intertwined identities. Through the visibilizing process, the manager legitimated his role, materialized his function, and restored his authority.