Fitting as a temporal sensemaking process: shifting trajectories and stable themes

This study identifies several mechanisms and the overall process by which individuals understand their evolving fit with their work environment. Prior person-environment research has emphasized one-time quantitative assessments of fit, primarily as new entrants enter their work environment. In this study, we employed a qualitative approach to investigate the following question: how do long-tenured professionals make sense of fit over time? Three key findings emerged from the fit-related histories we collected. First, we discovered four prototypical fit trajectories, which were constructed from temporal comparisons with past, present, and future fit, and employed to make momentary sense of events occurring in the work environment. Second, we identified two fit processes that played out over time: a slow accumulation journey and a sudden identity-threat journey. Third, we found that individuals’ set of fit experiences was explained by one of four enduring fit themes, explaining their pattern of fit experiences over time and their reaction to misfit. Most surprising was the significant turnover among our long-tenured participants in the year or so following our interviews. Our findings break from traditional thinking about fit as predicting outcomes in the moment, to fitting as both a journey and a retrospective and prospective process of sensemaking. Keywords: person-environment fit, misfit, temporal, time, process, sensemaking, qualitative, identit

Forgone, but not forgotten: Toward a theory of forgone professional identities

Through an inductive, qualitative study, I developed a process model of how people deal with professional identities they have forgone by choice or constraint. I show that, when forgone professional identities are linked to unfulfilled values, people look for ways to enact them and retain them in the self-concept. I further identify three strategies that people use to enact foregone professional identities: (1) real enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity through real activities and social interactions either at work or during leisure time), (2) imagined enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity through imagined activities and interactions, either in an alternate present or in the future), and (3) vicarious enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity by observing and imagining close others enacting it and internalizing these experiences). These findings expand our conceptualization of professional identity beyond identities enacted through activities and interactions that are part of formal work roles, and illuminate the key role of imagination and vicarious experiences in identity construction and maintenance

Betwixt and between identities: liminal experience in contemporary careers

Liminality, defined as a state of being betwixt and between social roles and/or identities, is the hallmark of an increasingly precarious and fluctuating career landscape. The generative potential of the liminality construct, however, has been restricted by six key assumptions stemming from the highly institutionalized nature of the rites of passage originally studied. As originally construed, liminality (1) implied both an objective state and the subjective experience of feeling betwixt and between, and was (2) temporary, (3) obligatory, (4) guided by elders and/or supported by a community of fellow liminars, (5) rooted in culturally legitimate narratives, (6) and led to a progressive outcome, i.e., the next logical step in a role hierarchy. By recasting these assumptions as variables, we improve the construct’s clarity, precision, and applicability to contemporary liminal experiences that are increasingly under-institutionalized. We illustrate the utility of our updated conceptualization by arguing that under-institutionalized liminality is both more difficult to endure and more fertile for identity growth than the highly institutionalized experiences that gave rise to the original notion. Drawing from adult development theory, we further propose that for under-institutionalized experiences to foster identity growth, the identity processes involved need to be more akin to identity play than identity work. We discuss the theoretical implications of our ideas for research on liminality, identity, and careers

The liminal playground: identity play and the creative potential of liminal experiences

Liminality is the individual or group experience of being betwixt and between states, roles, and/or identities. For both individuals and organizations, liminal experience is pervasive, often permanent, intrinsically problematic and a crucible for innovation and growth. Yet advances in our understanding of liminality in organizational life have remained fragmented, uninformed by empirical research in adjacent fields of scholarly inquiry or theorizing at different levels of analysis. This chapter aims to bring together disparate research and theorizing on liminality’s contemporary manifestations to conceptualize liminality as a creative process that affects the renewal and adaptability functions that are so vital to personal and organizational thriving

New Perspectives on Individual Identity Work, Organizational Arrangements, and Institutional Logics

This symposium aims at providing theoretical reflections and empirical evidence on how processes of identity work originating from individuals\u2019 efforts to deal with identity challenges can influence existing organizations, create new organizational arrangements, and eventually affect institutional dynamics. We intend to highlight how recent perspectives on identity related to possible and alternative selves can help us appreciate the motivations in prompting individuals to change not only their work, but also their organization and beyond. The four papers triangulate on this topic by empirically examining: how individuals struggle with identity issues through the experience of alternative selves, and how their attempts to deal with multiphrenia impact organizations and institutions; how individuals handle the relationship between destabilized identification with their organization and identity through the identity-work enacted while interacting with multiple external audiences; how the search for enacting possible selves, when undertaken collectively, can extend beyond individual self crafting and play a role in creating new organizational forms; and how individual processes of identification with institutional logics influence the way employees organize their work and develop certain attitudes towards particular organizational practices. Presenters will explore these issues through field studies in a variety of settings and will offer new insights to the recent streams of research interested in identity work and in exploring the microfoundations of organizational and institutional change and transformation