Identity work strategies

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Identity Work ◽  
Work Strategies

scholarly journals Emotions and identity work: Emotions as discursive resources in the constitution of junior professionals’ identities

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 988-1009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumati Ahuja ◽  
Helena Heizmann ◽  
Stewart Clegg
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Professional Service ◽  
Service Firms ◽  
Professional Identities ◽  
Professional Service Firms ◽  
Professional Careers ◽  
Work Strategies ◽  
Work First ◽  
Discursive Resources

For junior professionals, notions of professional identity established during their education are often called into question in the early stages of their professional careers. The workplace gives rise to identity challenges that manifest in significant emotional struggles. However, although extant literature highlights how emotions trigger and accompany identity work, the constitutive role of emotions in identity work is under-researched. In this article, we analyse how junior professionals mobilize emotions as discursive resources for identity work. Drawing on an empirical study of junior architects employed in professional service firms, we examine how professional identities, imbued with varying forms of discipline and agency, are discursively represented. The study makes two contributions to the literature on emotions and identity work. First, we identify three key identity work strategies ( idealizing, reframing and distancing) that are bound up in junior architects’ emotion talk. We suggest that these strategies act simultaneously as a coping mechanism and as a disciplinary force in junior architects’ efforts to constitute themselves as professionals. Second, we argue that identity work may not always lead to the accomplishment of a positive sense of self but can express a sense of disillusionment that leads to the constitution of dejected professional identities.

scholarly journals “That is Not What I Live For”: How Lower-Level Green Employees Cope with Identity Tensions at Work

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 5778
Author(s):  
Susanne Blazejewski ◽  
Franziska Dittmer ◽  
Anke Buhl ◽  
Andrea Simone Barth ◽  
Carsten Herbes
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Job Crafting ◽  
Top Management ◽  
Work Strategies ◽  
Job Context

Research on green identity work has so far concentrated on sustainability managers and/or top-management actors. How lower-level green employees cope with identity tensions at work is, as yet, under-researched. The paper uses an identity work perspective and a qualitative empirical study to identify four strategies that lower-level employees use in negotiating and enacting their green identities at work. Contrary to expectations, lower-level green employees engage substantially in job crafting as a form of identity work despite their limited discretion. In addition, the study demonstrates that lower-level green employees make use of identity work strategies that uphold rather than diminish perceived misalignment between their green identities and their job context.

scholarly journals Identity work by a non-white immigrant business scholar: Autoethnographic vignettes of covering and accenting

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 765-788 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Fernando ◽  
James Reveley ◽  
Mark Learmonth
Keyword(s):  
Identity Work ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Work Strategies ◽  
White Immigrants

How do immigrants with multiple sources of identity deal with the identity tensions that arise from misidentification within the workplace? In order to answer this question, we reposition two under-researched self-presentational identity work strategies – covering and accenting – as particular types of intersectional identity work. Adopting a minoritarian perspective, we apply this framework to an autoethnographic study of a non-white business scholar’s identity work. To the extent that covering and accenting allow the scholar to draw identity resources from non-threatening and widely available social identities, we find that this work enables him to avoid being discredited in the eyes of others. Yet, as a practical response to being misidentified, it also risks reproducing oppressive social structures. We conclude that as ways of doing intersectional identity work, covering and accenting take on heightened significance for non-white immigrants who seek to craft identities at the intersection of several discriminable and stigmatizable categories of difference.

Hybrids, identity and knowledge boundaries: Creative artists between academic and practitioner communities

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 837-863
Author(s):  
Alice Lam
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Work ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
External Boundary ◽  
Identity Conflict ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
Identity Processes ◽  
Work Strategies ◽  
Creative Artists ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

Hybrid people can be riven by identity conflicts and yet be profoundly disruptive of social boundaries. How can we understand these two facets of hybridity? This study examines how internal identity conflict resolution is related to external boundary disruption by focusing on the identity work of individuals who cross professional knowledge boundaries. It looks at artist-academic hybrids who operate at the interface between the academic and art worlds. The analysis shows the dynamic interplay between their hybrid identity work and knowledge boundary work. It distinguishes three categories of hybrids (‘Janusian’, ‘ambivalent’ and ‘asymmetric’) whose varied identity work strategies (‘integrative’, ‘multiplex’ and ‘buffering’) disrupt knowledge boundaries in different ways (‘blurring’, ‘transgressing’ and ‘brokering’). The study sheds light on the varied nature of hybrids and the mutually constitutive nature of their internal and external identity work. It advances our understanding of identity work as an agentic activity and reveals the identity processes underlying the disruption of knowledge boundaries.

Cut, Snap

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-136
Author(s):  
Dominic Pecoraro
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Interpersonal Interactions ◽  
Queer Identity

Inspired by critical interpersonal communication scholarship and queer autoethnography, this piece depicts interpersonal interactions mute or challenge queer identity. I explore the nexus of interpersonal communication theory, identity work, and queer theory to contextualize coming out and coming into sexual minority status. This piece explores narratives in which the legitimacy of queerness is unaccepted, unassured, and undermined.

Queering Gender Identity Work: A Life History of a Black Transgender Woman

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esethu Monakali
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

This article offers an analysis of the identity work of a black transgender woman through life history research. Identity work pertains to the ongoing effort of authoring oneself and positions the individual as the agent; not a passive recipient of identity scripts. The findings draw from three life history interviews. Using thematic analysis, the following themes emerge: institutionalisation of gender norms; gender and sexuality unintelligibility; transitioning and passing; and lastly, gender expression and public spaces. The discussion follows from a poststructuralist conception of identity, which frames identity as fluid and as being continually established. The study contends that identity work is a complex and fragmented process, which is shaped by other social identities. To that end, the study also acknowledges the role of collective agency in shaping gender identity.

Cultural Imperialism and the Assessment of Creative Work

2019 ◽  
pp. 275-297
Author(s):  
Juniper Hill
Keyword(s):  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Creative Development ◽  
Cultural Importance ◽  
Diverse Learning ◽  
Work Strategies

Assessing creative work is often challenging, even more so in culturally diverse learning environments, in which students and educators may not hold the same musical values. An instructor aiming to teach proficiency within a specific style may unintentionally give feedback that devalues a student’s personal creative expressions, which in many cases reflect diverse musical heritages. Such devaluing feedback can inhibit individual creative development, stifle innovation, and perpetuate sociocultural power imbalances. In this chapter examples from jazz, classical, and traditional musicians in Cape Town and Helsinki illustrate how and why idiomatic boundaries are enforced, how musical value judgments can perpetuate social inequalities, and how negative feedback can inhibit individual creative development. The chapter emphasizes the personal, social, and cultural importance of embracing musical diversity and the value of permitting and supporting developing musicians to go beyond idiomatic conventions in their creative work. Strategies are discussed for how music educators might better support individual creative development and social justice.

Cognitive Migrations

2019 ◽  
pp. 622-642
Author(s):  
Thomas DeGloma ◽  
Erin F. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Possible Selves ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Spatial Metaphor ◽  
Transformative Experiences ◽  
Personal Transformations ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Contested Meanings ◽  
Plot Structure

This chapter explores the ways individuals account for cognitive migrations—significant changes of mind and consciousness that are often expressed as powerful discoveries, transformative experiences, and newly embraced worldviews. It outlines three ideal typical forms of cognitive migration: awakenings, self-actualizations, and ongoing quests. Building on prior approaches to such personal transformations, it develops the notion of cognitive migration to argue the following set of interrelated points. First, cognitive migrations take autobiographical form, which is to say they manifest as the narrative identity work of individuals who undergo them. Second, such narrative identity work provides a reflexive foundation for an individual’s understanding of self and identity in relation to other possible selves and identities—for seeing oneself as a relationally situated character. Third, individuals who articulate cognitive migrations use the plot structure and cultural coding at the root of their narratives to express their allegiance to a new sociomental community. They thereby take on new cognitive norms and identity-defining conventions while rejecting potential alternatives, locating themselves within a broader sociomental field. The spatial metaphor of cognitive migrations draws explicit attention to the broader sociomental field in which such radical changes of mind take place. Finally, such narrative identity work links self-understandings to the often-contested meanings of broadly relevant issues, events, and experiences; when individuals account for their cognitive migrations, they also advance claims that reach well-beyond their personal lives.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document