The dynamic performance of identity work

As a phenomenon socially constructed and performed through relationships (Ainsworth and Hardy, 2004, Cunliffe, 2008, Beech, 2008), self-identity is inextricably dependent on interpersonal interactions and social contexts (Kondo, 1990, Kondrat, 1999, Ybema et al., 2009). Thus “selves and identities are ‘performed within relationships’, ‘done in interactions’ and/or ‘talked into being’” (Smith and Sparkes, 2008, p.25). As this suggests, identity is performative (Butler, 1990, Smith and Sparkes, 2008) and, therefore, identity work becomes an important feature of the way in which individuals strive to enact, and become, their identity (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2001, Down and Reveley, 2009

Intersectionality and identity: shared tenets and future research agendas for gender and identity studies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Special Issue developed from a joint research seminar of the Gender in Management and Identity Special Interest Groups of the British Academy of Management, entitled “Exploring the Intersectionality of Gender and Identity”. It also presents an introductory literature review of intersectionality for gender in management and identity/identity work researchers. The authors highlight the similarities and differences of intersectionality and identity approaches and introduce critiques of intersectional research. They then introduce the three papers in this Special Issue. Design/methodology/approach – The authors review the intersectionality literature within and outside management and organisation studies and focus their attention on three intersectionality Special Issues (Sex Roles, 2008, 2013 and the European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2006). Findings – The authors outline the ongoing debates relating to intersectionality research, including a framework and/or theory for identity/identity work, and explore the shared tenets of theories of intersectionality and identity. They highlight critiques of intersectionality research in practice and consider areas for future research for gender in management and identity researchers. Research limitations/implications – The authors provide an architecture for researchers to explore intersectionality and to consider issues before embarking on intersectional research. They also highlight areas for future research, including social-identities of disability, class and religion. Originality/value – Gender in Management: An International Journal invited this Special Issue to make a significant contribution to an under-researched area by reviewing the shared and different languages and importantly the shared key tenets, of intersectionality, gender, identity and identity work from a multidisciplinary perspective

The importance of respect as a discursive resource in making identity claims: insights from the experiences of becoming a circus director

Though often invoked in the leadership and identity literatures, respect has been poorly articulated. This paper conceptualizes respect as a discursive resource for making identity claims and provides empirical illustration from circus directors’ accounts of becoming managers. Identity claims draw on particular discursive resources and enact recurrent social practices in “specific local historical circumstances” that cohere with “the local moral order”. To claim and to offer respect based on recognition, appraisal, identification, status and other discourses is to participate in such an order, and to make identity claims which are understood as positioning self and others. We provide “transparently observable” illustrations of respect as a discursive resource for forming, maintaining, strengthening, repairing or revising identity claims. An extreme case purposive sample of circus directors provides an organizational site in which identity dynamics are “highly visible”. Within the local moral order of travelling circuses respect is both desired from and conferred upon those whose artistic merit is recognized in both single acts and whole shows. We show that the distinction between appraisal and status as respect discourses evident in the wide social order breaks down in the case of circus. We theorize from this to the importance of respect as a discursive resource in identity claims and to its dependence upon particular accounts of merit

Sociomateriality and disabled individuals’ identity work: a critical poststructuralist research agenda

This paper responds to calls to rebalance the role of materiality in identity work. Taking a critical poststructuralist approach to identity work and a relational ontology perspective on sociomateriality, we explore how a ‘disabled’ person’s identity work is shaped by and responds to the influences of embodied practices and material arrangements within the workplace. We achieve this by reviewing the notion of sociomateriality as a "constitutive entanglement" (Orlikowski, 2007: 1437) of the material and the human. More specifically, we discuss how disabled individuals are constituted through sociomaterial relations and practices involving the body, assistive technology and mundane artefacts. This paper, therefore, contributes to the emerging interest, in identity studies, on the role of the material within identity work, and, in Disability Studies, to the entanglement of the social and material in constructions of disability as difference

Professionals becoming managers: personal predicaments, vulnerability and identity work

This thesis explores identity work employed to secure stability and coherence of self-identity. This is achieved through an exploration of professionals becoming managers' experiences of vulnerability, conceived as personal predicaments, as they make a transition into and progress within management. This thesis takes up the invitation to dialogue with scholars from disparate philosophical orientations and epistemological commitments (Alvesson, Ashcraft and Thomas, 2008a; Smith and Sparkes, 2008) by reviewing critically the shared and contested views on self-identity. A theoretical framework is developed that conceptualises identity work within a fusion of symbolic interactionist positioning theory (Davies and Harr& 1990, 1999; Hart-6 and van Langenhove, 1991, 1999c) and relational social constructionist identity work processes (Beech and McInnes, 2006). This study's emergent focus on vulnerability, as experienced during role transitions (Hill, 1992, 2003; Watson and Harris, 1999) and ongoing personal predicaments (Schlenker, 1980), builds on the analytical importance of vulnerability (Sims, 2003), insecurity (Collinson, 2003), self-identity and identity work processes. Accounts of vulnerability as professionals make a transition into and progress within management are explored through a two-stage interview process with experienced public sector middle and senior managers from previously under-researched professional backgrounds (Cohen et al, 2002; Casey, 2008). Existing identity-related studies into professionals becoming managers (Hill, 1992, 2003; Ibarra, 1999; Watson and Harris, 1999) considered only the first year of transition into management. This research, therefore, adds to existing literature both through the type of participant and the extended nature of the study. The framework of self-identity presented is offered as a theoretical and methodological heuristic device. The thesis also offers refined conceptualisations of personal predicaments and of identity work processes, and insights into identity work strategies related to professional becoming managers' experiences of vulnerability

Mundane materiality and agential cuts: A sociomaterial reading of disabled people’s identity work

This paper proposes that the role of materiality in research on identity formation has been marginalized. We bring materiality to the fore of identity formation, through a posthumanist performative (Barad, 2007) reading of the way in which ‘agential cuts’ - specific material-discursive practices which determine particular boundaries and properties of ‘entities’, including of one’s identities - are made within and through material and human intra-actions. Through analysis of interview texts of a disabled academic’s everyday work experiences that refer to mundane material artefacts and practices such as box files, chairs, and standing in meetings, we intend to “critically reflect on ... the seemingly insignificant and all-too-mundane ... realities of everyday organizational life” (Ybema et al., 2015) for disabled people, to explore “the boundary-making practices that distinguish ‘disabled and ‘non-disabled’ people

Exploring traditions of identity theory for Human Resource Development (HRD)

The question of who is developed by HRD might appear self-evident. However, the answer becomes less certain when one seeks to understand how the individual changes through HRD activities and how these changes in turn shape what they do and how others respond to them. Such concerns are of central interest to the study of identity, a field that sees the question of who someone ‘is’, and indeed is not, as an important contributor to the personal and interpersonal dynamics of organisational life. Many of those engaged in identity scholarship would readily declare themselves to understand identity as a socially constructed phenomenon. Beyond this, however, contrasting research traditions adopt different positions on what constitutes an identity, where it emanates from, and how it might be known. Such variety means identity offers a potentially fruitful series of frameworks for exploring the nature, as well as the effect, of HRD on the individual and the workplace. Unlocking this potential, however, requires a firm understanding of the perspectives from which identity is described and the processes through which it is sustained and evolves