Applying an Intersectional Perspective to Identity Foci at Work

In this chapter, the authors advance thinking on examining the key identity targets through which individuals derive a sense of self in the context of work. They focus on four organizationally situated targets or foci: ‘manager’, ‘leader’, ‘follower’, and ‘team’. These identity targets are examined along two axes: fluidity versus stability, and content versus context. Additionally, the authors advance scholarship on individual-level identity foci by advocating the value of an intersectional perspective and drawing on key notions from intersectionality literature. They define an intersectional perspective as an approach that pays conscious attention to multiple positionality and power in conceptualizing, theorizing, and analysing identities and identification. By drawing on exemplars from current studies and offering suggestions for future scholarship, they show how adopting an intersectional perspective prompts further questions and provides additional lenses for analysis and theorizing, ultimately deepening our understanding of the processes by which individuals make sense of themselves in the context of work.

National Identity in and around Multinational Corporations

This chapter focuses on national identity in and around multinational corporations (MNCs). The authors offer three conceptualizations of national identity and demonstrate how it may be studied in MNCs. First, they argue that organizational actors (re)construct their national identities via references to, and associations with, particular ideologies and worldviews. These are rigid constructions, which are deeply rooted in actors’ place in and fundamental views about the world. Second, national identity is (re)constructed through group-level relations vis-à-vis relevant ‘others’ in the specific organizational context. Such constructions are relatively stable but they are relational in the sense that they are rooted in actors’ identification with their cultural group. Finally, national identities are (re)constructed by organizational actors through mundane everyday relations and interaction. These are fluid and temporary constructions contingent on the immediate interests of those involved and the social dynamics of specific interactions. Based on their conceptualization, the authors outline avenues for future research to understand better the changing roles and implications of national identity in modern organizations.

Fiction and the Identity of the Manager

This chapter explores fictional portrayals of managers in popular culture and considers the different ways that they shape our understanding of the identities of managers. Focusing on films and novels, the chapter begins by exploring the fundamental nature of the claim that well-known fiction has a capacity to shape and influence the world, albeit indirectly, and in unobtrusive, relatively unnoticed ways. The chapter builds upon established traditions of literary-orientated work in organization studies to show how fiction can transmit ideals, identity models, and patterns for sensemaking about organizations. However, the chapter also represents a fresh direction for research, focusing on the tensions and continuities across a wide range of contrasting fictional portrayals of manager-like figures. The chapter explores ‘positive’, ‘negative’, and ‘tragic’ portrayals of managers in fictional works to consider how they might help shape who we think of when we consider a ‘manager’ in contemporary society. In doing so, the authors encourage a wider consideration of the cultural content and context of managerial identity work and the ways that it can be imagined and understood.

Senses of Self

Research on identity at work tends to take the individual as unit of analysis. This chapter explores how we might address identity beyond the person—not merely as a social practice led by conscious humans, but as a semi-conscious bodily encounter that activates the individual. Drawing on affect theory, the author makes the case for a pre-individual approach to identity, abridged as ‘senses of self’. Instead of a social construction that is primarily human, social, and intersubjective, identity becomes a sociomaterial production that is posthuman, social and material, and transpersonal. After conceptualizing this shift, the author shows how it can help us rework current formulations of identity at work, such as the ‘glass slipper’ of occupational identity. Ultimately, the author argues that a pre-individual unit of analysis is crucial to better understanding late-capitalist operations of identity. By replacing the fantasy of bounded individuals who compose themselves with the figure of the Sleepwalker, the senses-of-self approach can cultivate a molecular politics of identity, attuned to bodily vulnerability.

Real, Fake, and Crystallized Identities

‘Why, even with the proliferation of poststructuralist theoretical understandings of identity, do people routinely talk in terms of “real” and “fake” selves?’ (Tracy and Trethewey, 2005: 168). This chapter examines the deeply rooted assumption and sedimented way of talking about selves as essentialized, authentic, and real. Such viewpoints, along with the tendency to pit ‘real selves’ against ‘fake selves’ are often promulgated even in social constructionist, poststructuralist, and critical work, leading to a number of unintended and problematic consequences. The authors review research related to real and fake selves, and expand upon how Tracy and Trethewey’s (2005) metaphor of the ‘crystallized self’ has extended and opened up additional research that explores: (1) the discursive struggles of resistance and self-disciplining in relation to the preferred self; (2) the difficulty of viewing multiple facets of identity as valuable rather than contradictory; (3) the gendered work involved in boundary-spanning; (4) critical intersectionality; and (5) qualitative research. The authors close the chapter by discussing how the new materialism in organizational studies might extend and inspire future research in terms of crystallized identities and organizations.

Paradoxes in the Pursuit of Positive Identities

Why do people work so hard to establish and grow an identity that is positive? Individuals in their work organizations engage in ongoing identity work to establish and sustain positive identities in pursuit of life, energy, viability, well-being, and growth. However, the pursuit of positive identities does not altogether negate the negative, nor is it a simple, linear path to growth. It is often a complex process, riddled with contradiction and tension, with aspirational identities paradoxically unfolding in a persistent tension with their opposites that can be residuals from past history and/or emergent from current crisis or perceived future threat. The literature exploring positive identities (part of a larger stream of a ‘positive’ turn in psychology and organizational scholarship) has grown steadily over the past two decades. The novel focus of this chapter is to explore the paradoxical, tensional aspects of and tactics involved in positive identity work, highlighting current perspectives, criticisms, and ways forward in research.

A Psychodynamic Perspective on Identity as Fabrication

This chapter reviews psychodynamic perspectives on the emergence and function of individuals’ identities. It draws on traditional psychodynamic theories, which focus on identifications with early caregivers, and systems psychodynamic ones, which focus on work groups and organizations, to put forward the idea of identity as a fabrication. That is, a process of positioning the self in (existential) time and (social) space in ways that fulfil its longings, sustain its beliefs, and bolsters its relations. The chapter argues that a psychodynamic lens can enrich other perspectives on identity, and concludes with some suggestions for future research.

Identity Saves the World?

Identity dynamics in organizations have been associated with critical organizing processes and outcomes, especially those that centre on attachment and conflict/cooperation. As such, a deeper understanding of identity dynamics may help us better understand how organizations function (and malfunction), and ideally help us make organizations better places to work. This chapter briefly reviews where identity research has been and where it is now. The bulk of the chapter suggests three paths or ways to move forward in our research: (1) moving towards fuller (versus relatively ‘empty’) conceptualizations of identity; (2) moving towards wholes versus parts in identity dynamics; and (3) moving towards viewing ‘identity in ensemble’ rather than ‘identity as star’. Each movement suggests a richer and deeper understanding of identity, providing the requisite variety necessary to tackle better core organizational problems.

Identity Regulation and Globalization

This chapter reflects on some of the implications of globalization for identity regulation, with specific reference to the multinational enterprise (MNE). The chapter first elaborates on the MNE as an organization and shows how globalization in this corporate context results in identity regulation being stretched across nations and, in turn, mediated by country-specific discourses and institutions. The chapter then situates such processes in the wider political-economic context of (neo)colonialism. It shows how MNEs have been, until recently, mostly headquartered in the ‘West’ and how a growing proportion of their work is performed in countries that were once under colonial rule and which remain, to varying degrees, subject to (neo)colonial influences. In this context, identity regulation becomes enmeshed with not only national discourses/institutions but also (neo)colonial power relations. The chapter concludes with a call to integrate globalization—and by implication (multi)nationalism and (neo)colonialism—into the research agenda of identities-focused organization studies and suggests some avenues for future research.

Bourdieu and Identity

This chapter explores what the conceptual artillery of Pierre Bourdieu might do for identity studies. Five key identity papers are read through the conceptual prism of Bourdieu in order to identify critical junctures where identity and Bourdieu might meet. Beyond this, new areas of methodological inquiry are identified for identity studies from a Bourdieusian perspective. Specifically, it is argued that identity studies could be enriched by methodological expansion both backwards into history and outwards towards the meso and macro levels of field and society. In practical terms, this implies that identity studies pay greater attention to three key issues: history, field, and class.