In Search of the Self at Work: Young Adults’ Experience of a Dual Identity Organization

Purpose: Multiple forces that shape the identities of adolescents and young adults also influence their subsequent career choices. Early work experiences are key among these forces. Recognizing this, youth service programs have emerged worldwide with the hope of shaping participants' future trajectories through boosting future engagement in civically oriented activities and work. Despite these goals, past research on these programs' impact has yielded mixed outcomes. Our goal is to understand why this might be the case. Design/Methodology/Approach: We rely on interview, archival, and longitudinal survey data to examine young adults' experiences of a European youth service program. Findings: A core feature of youth service programs, namely their dual identity of helping others (i.e., service beneficiaries) and helping oneself (i.e., participants), might partly explain the mixed outcomes. We find that participants focus on one of the organization's identities largely to the exclusion of the other, creating a dynamic in which their interactions with members who focus on the other identity create challenges and dominate their program experience, to the detriment of a focus on the organization and its goals. This suggests that a previously overlooked feature of youth service programs (their dual identity) might prove both a blessing for attracting many diverse members and a curse for achieving desired outcomes. Originality/Value: More broadly, our results suggest that dual identity organizations might attract members focused on a select identity but fail to imbue them with a blended identity; thus, limiting the extent to which such organizations can truly "re-direct" future career choices

Knowing where you stand: Physical isolation, perceived respect, and organizational identification among virtual employees

T his research investigates the relationship between virtual employees' degree of physical isolation and their perceived respect in the organization. Respect is an identity-based status perception that reflects the extent to which one is included and valued as a member of the organization. We hypothesize that the degree of physical isolation is negatively associated with virtual employees' perceived respect and that this relationship explains the lower organizational identification among more physically isolated virtual employees. In two field studies using survey methods, we find that perceived respect is negatively associated with the degree of physical isolation, and respect mediates the relationship between physical isolation and organizational identification. These effects hold for shorter-and longer-tenured employees alike. Our research contributes to the virtual work literature by drawing attention to physical isolation and the important but neglected role of status perceptions in shaping virtual employees' organizational identification. We also contribute to the literature on perceived respect by demonstrating how respect is affected by the physical context of work

Jobs, careers, and callings: Work orientation and job transitions.

Past research on the meaning of work and reemployment neglects the connection between people's goals for working and reemployment outcomes. This dissertation tests how work orientation (i.e., work as job, career, or calling) influences individual processes and outcomes in a period of unemployment. A goal theory framework is used to develop theory about how the meaning of work influences reemployment outcomes. Previous research on the goal structures people attach to work indicates that each work orientation reflects a different reason for working; for example, those who view work as a job want only to make a living from their work. I used a longitudinal data set from a sample of 1,487 respondents who have recently lost a job to investigate how work orientation and job search efforts predicted reemployment outcomes six months later. Specifically, I hypothesized that job seekers' reemployment goals would relate to work orientation in ways that predicted (1) finding reemployment, (2) time to reemployment, (3) objective and subjective quality of reemployment, and (4) pay level and occupational level at which reemployment was found. I conducted a follow-up interview study with a subset of 18 respondents selected to represent contrasts in work orientation. The data indicate that seeing one's work as a job, career, or calling does predict the self-rated quality of the new job, and career orientation predicts improvements in occupational level between the new job and the job that was lost. However, work orientation fails to predict finding reemployment, amount of time needed to find reemployment or level of pay in the new job. Follow-up interview data from 18 respondents with a job, career, or calling orientation strongly suggested that the goals job seekers pursue in a job search are related to their work orientations. The results extend what is known about how job seekers go about finding reemployment and partially support the main hypothesis that work orientation shapes the reemployment process and its outcomes.Ph.D.Occupational psychologyPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131818/2/9929980.pd

Travail, sens et identité (une étude d'interactions semi-clandestines enusine)

Cette étude repose sur des entretiens, une enquête postale, des archives et des observations sur des interactions donnant lieu à la production et aux échanges d'objets semi-clandestins en usine pour comprendre le sens des interactions sociales. Une usine aéronautique française fournit le cadre de l'étude. Ces objets semi-clandestins sont connus sous le nom de perruques et fabriqués sur le temps de travail avec le matériel et les outils de l'employeur pour un usage personnel. Des interactions autour de perruques en apparence similaire et produisant les mêmes effets ont des sens distincts. Ces distinctions découlent du statut des participants et des destinataires des perruques. Dans un contexte d'instabilité pour les compagnons, un sous-groupe en déclin de membres de l'usine, les interactions autour de perruques qui expriment le respect et la reconnaissance permettent de maintenir une identité professionnelle. Ces résultats interrogent le postulat d'uniformité des interactions dans la sociologie de réseau. Ils documentent aussi la construction des notions de moralité et de dignité du travail particulièrement quand une communauté s'éteint.This study relies on interviews, surveys, archival data and observations on interactions leading to the manufacture and exchange of semi-clandestine factory artifacts to gain insight into meanings of social interactions. A French aeronautics factory provides the setting for this study. These semi-clandestine factory artifacts, known in English as "homers", are manufactured on company time with company materiales or tools but for personal use. Similar looking homer interactions with similar looking concrete effects are shown to carry distinct meanings depending on particpants' and recipients' statuses. These variations in meaning gain further salience in the context of heightened identity threats around craftsmen, a dwindling subgroup of factory members. Specifically, homer interactions narrated as conveying respecte and recognition, are shown to sustain the identity of these craftsmen. These findings question assumptions of interaction homogeneity in social network research. They also document ways in which morality and dignity are constructed within given occupational communities, specifically when these communities are disappearing.PARIS3-BU (751052102) / SudocSudocFranceUnited StatesFRU

One out of many? Boundary negotiation and identity formation in postmerger integration

This research investigates how boundaries are utilized during the postmerger integration process to influence the postmerger identity of the firm. We suggest that the boundaries that define the structures, practices, and values of firms prior to a merger become reinforced, contested, or revised in the integration process, thus shaping the firm identity that emerges. In a field study of a series of four sequential mergers, we find that the boundary negotiation process acts as an engine for identity creation in postmerger integration. Our analysis of the process through which postmerger identity is created reveals two stages of identity creation. In the first stage, boundaries are negotiated to leverage and import certain practices and values of the premerger firms; in the second stage, these boundaries are blurred as managers build on the set of imported practices and values to impose further systems that define the postintegration firm. Our research contributes to the identity literature by drawing attention to the important role of boundaries and practices that define the identities of the merging firms. We show how these boundaries get repurposed to create an organization whose identity ultimately represents a departure from the premerger firms while it preserves the aspects of identity that allow members to uphold key values. We also contribute to the literature on postmerger integration by demonstrating the steps through which identity evolves by the staged demarcation and negotiation of boundaries, thus complementing previous treatments of merging firms as a set of fixed organizational attributes in merger contexts

Personal Value Priorities of Economists

Economists often play crucial roles in designing and implementing public policies; thus it is of importance to better understand the values that underlie their decisions. We explore the value hierarchies of economists in four studies: The first two studies examine whether value differences exist between students of economics and other social sciences students. The final two studies examine how value priorities important to economics students relate to identification with the organization and work orientation. Taken together, our findings indicate that economists have a distinctive pattern of value priorities that may affect their work-related perceptions and attitudes and hence impact their policy decisions and recommendations.A13; economists; value priorities

DS_10.1177_0001839218759646 – Agony and Ecstasy in the Gig Economy: Cultivating Holding Environments for Precarious and Personalized Work Identities

<p>Supplemental material, DS_10.1177_0001839218759646 for Agony and Ecstasy in the Gig Economy: Cultivating Holding Environments for Precarious and Personalized Work Identities by Gianpiero Petriglieri, Susan J. Ashford and Amy Wrzesniewski in Administrative Science Quarterly</p