Identity Leadership, Social Identity Continuity, and Well-Being at Work During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread remote working that has posed significant challenges for people’s sense of connection to their workplace and their mental health and well-being. In the present work, we examined how leaders’ identity leadership is associated with the well-being of employees in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we examined how both leaders’ and team members’ identity leadership is associated with employees’ social identity continuity, and through this with their job satisfaction, burnout and loneliness at work. Employees (N = 363) participated in a field study during the COVID-19 pandemic, completing measures of their leader’s and team members’ identity leadership (i.e., entrepreneurship and impresarioship), social identity continuity, job satisfaction, burnout, loneliness at work. Results revealed that to the extent that employees perceived greater social identity continuity, they were more satisfied with their work and felt less lonely. Furthermore, mediation analyses revealed indirect effects of team members’ identity entrepreneurship on job satisfaction and loneliness via an increase in social identity continuity. Results suggest that to foster employees’ health and well-being in times of disruption, organizations might put in place practices that allow employees to maintain a sense of ‘we-ness’ at work by involving not only formal leaders but also other members of the organization.

Communicative peculiarities of verbalization of the concept of “way of family life” in the British children's literature of the XX century (on the example of the fantasy novel “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton)

Concept of the “way of family life” is one of the unique concepts of the English-language linguistic worldview, as it reflects mental, cultural and behavioral traits of the British people. The subject of this article is the communicative methods of expressing the concept of “way of family life” on the example of children’s fantasy tale “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton. Research methodology is based on the analytical method (analysis of theoretical literature and factual material on the topic), descriptive method, and continuous sampling. The authors describe such aspects of the concept of “way of family life” as family traditions and routine, relationships between family members, family structure, parenting, rules, morality, and habits. The scientific novelty lies in adding more details to the existing representations on the concept of “way of family life” in the English-language linguistic worldview on the level of its verbal representation in the fantasy tale “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton. The acquire results allow stating that this fantasy tale creates a holistic image of the typical lifestyle of the English family, which implies such aspects, as responsibility for each other, mutual understanding, household issues, relationships between spouses and children, family traditions, distribution of roles in the family, family identity, continuity in child’s upbringing, relations with relatives and neighbors. The determined communicative peculiarities in verbalization of the concept of “way of family life” testify to the fact that in British society this concept is associated with such notions as tranquility, home, comfort, coziness, something very personal and dear to heart. Such privacy of feelings and space, as demonstrated in the analyzed material, is rooted in mentality of the British people.

Shaping Identity: Older Adults’ Perceived Community Volunteering Experiences in Shanghai

This study explores elderly volunteers’ identity during their experiences volunteering in the community in Shanghai. Purposive and snowball sampling strategies were used to recruit elderly volunteers to participate in semi-structured, in-depth interviews ( N = 40). Participants developed new identities during volunteering. Through volunteering, they also continued to sustain their professional identities and Chinese Communist Party identities. Volunteering had both positive and negative implications for participants’ identities. Our findings suggest that volunteering strengthened participants’ role identity and social identity to better adapt to life after retirement. Volunteering also helped participants achieve identity continuity. This study offers nuanced sociocultural context to current elderly volunteering research and informs tailored policy and practice development in urban China.

Karen Fog Olwig: Global Culture, Island Identity: Continuity and Change in the Afro-Caribbean Community of Nevis

Karen Fog Olwig: Global Culture, Island Identity: Continuity and Change in the Afro-Caribbean Community of Nevis Anmeldes af Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Badea et al 2019 IJIR - Threat to national identity continuity

European majority group members increasingly perceive threats to national continuity, which in turn leads to defensive reactions, including prejudice against Muslim immigrants. However, according to self-affirmation theory, individuals can respond in a less defensive manner if they have affirmed positive aspects of their self-concept (self-affirmation) or their social identity (group-affirmation). In the present research, we test the potential of affirmation procedures as tools for reducing prejudice towards Muslim immigrants when national continuity is threatened. We examine the impact of personal vs. normative attachment to Christian roots of national identity on the efficacy of affirmation procedures, and the congruence between the threatened and the affirmed domains of the self. Results show that group-affirmation reduced opposition to Muslims’ rights amongst participants personally attached to the idea that national continuity is based on Christian roots. The discussion stresses the importance of non-congruence between the threatened domain of the self and the affirmed domain for the design of affirmation procedures.

Work as a recovery factor after earthquake: a mixed-method study on female workers

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reaction of female workers to the earthquake event that shocked the city of L’Aquila in April 2009, with a specific focus on work as a recovery factor. Design/methodology/approach The selected sample consists of current or former resident women in the affected province of L’Aquila, who participated in a series of focus group discussions on the ability to reconstruct their own professional identity after the earthquake. The focus group seemed to be the perfect instrument for this research, because of its ability to generate a true discussion among a group of people on the research topic of this study. The collected data were analyzed both in terms of metaphors, as well as linguistic agentivity and by automatic content analysis. Findings From the analysis of the data, emerges the value that adds to the sense of identity continuity for the women in the sample, together with interesting differences between employed and self-employed workers that are characterized by distinct challenges and assurances. In regards to the effects of gender in response to disaster events, the results make a peculiar echo to the studies on public-private space dichotomy developed by Fordham, according to which, during a disaster, women are not allowed to develop work-related desires. For the group of women that the authors interviewed, the challenge to have family focused or work focused desires was clearly evident; they seem predetermined to the above-mentioned dichotomy, valid in both directions: the women who invested in work and have become entrepreneurs seem to have no chance of a private life and, on the contrary, the women who were focused on more traditional family roles seem to have no chance in terms of job opportunities. Originality/value Based on the authors’ knowledge this is the first time that focus groups are used to assess the value that work had in supporting individual recovery for women in the aftermath of the L’Aquila earthquake.