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The purpose of this paper is to understand how digital interventions are mediating the identity work of community health workers (CHWs) in the context of two African countries.

This paper analyzes the everyday work of CHWs in two low- and middle-income country (LMIC) contexts (Uganda and Malawi) and seeks to understand changes in collective identity and the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in mediating this “identity work”. As CHWs conduct their everyday tasks of care giving, data reporting and maintaining social interactions, they play two primary roles. One is the care giving role oriented towards the community, and two, is reporting and administrative work by virtue of them being affiliated with the Ministry of Health, either in formal or voluntary capacity. The ambivalence which they experience as they move back and forth between these two worlds of work is significantly now mediated through ICTs. The paper analyzes these dynamics and identifies three key sets of ambivalence in identity work: (1) role embracing-institutional distancing; (2) conformist-resistant and (3) dramaturgical-transformative. The paper makes unique contributions to information systems (IS) and ICT for development (ICT4D) studies in that it focuses on a nonprofessional group, which plays a fundamental role in providing care to underserved populations and also conducts data work which provides the foundation of the national health information system. This contrasts with dominant research in the field which focuses on professional groups, largely based in Western business organizations.

The paper identifies identity related tensions that emerge with the mediation of digital technologies in the work world of CHWs. These include tensions of conformist-resistant; and (3) dramaturgical-transformative. These findings are relevant and unique to the field of IS and ICT4D studies in that it focuses on a nonprofessional group, which plays a fundamental role in providing care to underserved populations and also conducts data work which provides the foundation of the national health information system.

While acknowledging identity construction and negotiation is a function of both work and social lives, in this paper we could only focus on the work lives.

As digital interventions in the health sector of low and middle income countries is becoming increasingly widespread, often the focus is more on the supply side (the supply of the technology) rather than on the demand side (users experiences and aspirations). Identity becomes a lens to understand these demand side dynamics, which helps provides practical guidance on implementation approaches to ensure that the technology adds value to user work processes and there is a seamless and not a disruptive transition.

CHWs are the most neglected cadre in the health system of low and middle income countries, even though they provide the cutting edge in care provision work to the most marginalized populations, living in rural and underserved areas. By focusing on how technologies can be more effectively implemented to support these care processes, the paper provides important social implications both for practice and research.

Analysis of identity construction and negotiation of informal groups in the unorganized sector of low and middle income countries has not received adequate attention in IS research. The paper seeks to fill this important gap.

A creative identity, the incorporation of creativity into self-definition, is associated with creative outcomes. Given the importance of creativity to organizational success, understanding creative identity and in particular creative identity work (the formation and maintenance of creative identity) can be useful in understanding creatives within organizations. To be considered creative, individuals need to not only produce unique artefacts, but these artefacts need to be assessed by legitimate judges as being creative. Judges may be within an organization (e.g., senior researchers within a laboratory) or may be external to an organization (e.g., award judges in international advertising competitions). Underpinning creative identity work is the creative assessment, however this assessment is ambiguous and contextual. In other words, what is considered creative in one context or by one judge may not be considered creative in another context or by different judges. The ambiguity of the creative assessment makes creative identity work a precarious undertaking. Based on two case studies – a R&D laboratory and an advertising agency – this research explores the strategies which creative individuals employ in their creative identity work in response to the ambiguity of the creative assessment. This research contributes to the growing area of creative identity research by unpacking three specific strategies used as part of identity work of creatives: defending, emotional distancing and differentiating. These strategies assist the creatives in maintaining a coherent sense of who they are within the organizational context despite the unpredictability of the creative assessment.

Despite the interest in leaders' identity work as a framework for leadership development, coaching psychology has yet to expose its active ingredients and outcomes.

To do so, the authors reconcile published systematic literature reviews (SLRs) in the field to arrive at a more thorough understanding of the role of identity work in coaching. A total of 60 eligible SLRs on identity work and coaching were identified between 2010 and 2022. Four were included in the data extraction after selecting and screening, and the full texts of 196 primary studies reported therein were analysed.

Amongst the coachee-related factors of effective coaching, the coachee’s motivation, general self-efficacy beliefs, personality traits and goal orientation were the most frequently reported active ingredients, and performance improvement, self-awareness and goal specificity were the most frequently supported outcomes. The analysis indicates that leaders' identity work, as an active ingredient, can be a moderator variable for transformative coaching interventions, while strengthening leadership role identity could be one of the lasting outcomes because coaching interventions facilitate, deconstruct and enhance leaders' identity work. Further research is needed to explore the characteristics of these individual, relational and collective processes.

This study adds value by synthesising SLRs that report coachee-related active ingredients and outcomes of executive coaching research. It demonstrates that the role of leaders' identity work is a neglected factor affecting coaching results and encourages coaching psychologists to apply identity framework in their executive coaching practice.

The purpose of the article is to illuminate micro‐processes and dynamics of identity work in an academic working context. It elaborates on the various and shifting self‐notions experienced within a typical workday of an academic.

The study adopts an analytic autoethnographic approach focusing on recalled experiences of the author's current employment in a university department. This approach is considered to contribute to the investigation of the intensive personal process of identity construction that likewise enhances the understanding of the connection between the individual person and the organization.

Illustrating the multifold notions of who one is in a particular work situation, the author demonstrates that identity work is correspondingly ongoing during the workday. Employing a workday narrative and the different self‐notions created throughout this day, the study illustrates the richness and variety in the identity work accomplished. Focusing on four particular workday events demonstrates how these situations serve as moments of identity work in the sense that they call for engaging in answering the question of who one is and how one should act.

Promoting a micro‐perspective, the study illuminates that identity work‐processes can also be observed within the relatively small‐scaled focus of an individual workday. It proposes to understand identity work as a process of micro‐level sensemaking. The study also reveals the shifting nature of self‐notions experienced over the day. It is not only various identities that are manufactured in relation to different workday events but also that these senses of oneself come at different levels of concreteness.

Telling the story of the author’s attempts acquiring the Danish language over the past three and a half years, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how identity work is narratively accomplished within organisational contexts. It aims at developing an in-depth understanding of the process of identity work.

The autoethnographic study illuminates narratives of subjectivity that inform notions of identity during the author’s journey of learning Danish and how this enterprise is embedded in the workplace surroundings.

The autoethnography carves out seven distinct, yet, inter-related narratives of subjectivity constituting the notion of who I am and what I should do within the process of learning Danish as a foreign language.

Instead of only describing different self-notions within identity work, the process view adopted in this research enables understanding of the various tensions, struggles and contradictions inherent in identity work. Examining the process of identity work sheds light on the multiplicity of self-notions emerging and re-emerging over time, co-existing, replacing each other, intertwining, struggling for dominance, and through this constituting the precarious and ongoing sense of identity.

The experience of “misfit” between individuals’ professional identities and their work roles or work contexts is common in career transitions. In contrast to extant literature that focuses on the identity struggle of these people, this study examines how problematic identity dynamics associated with misfit motivate the shift toward the development of positive identities and induce creativity in meaning-making and change-oriented actions. It builds on the insights of Mead (1934) and Joas (1996) who view creativity as the most significant aspect of human agency, and the identity work literature that highlights the agentic process in identity construction. The study looks at a group of “pracademics” whose career trajectories deviate from the prototypical patterns in academia. It examines the identity work strategies that these people undertake to overcome misfit and shows how identity work liberates them from the limits of a particular identity, and facilitates new activities that alter aspects of their work contexts. The study advances our understanding of identity work as a creative human endeavor and sheds new light on the change-oriented agency of misfits.

The purpose of this paper is to expand recent discussions of research practice in organizational ethnography by engaging in a reflexive examination of the ethnographer's situated identity work across different research spaces: academic, personal and the research site itself.

Examines concerns with the traditional notion of “being there” as it applies to ethnography in contemporary organization studies and, through a confessional account exploring the author's own experiences as a PhD student conducting ethnography, considers “being […] where?” using the analytic framework of situated identity work.

Identifies both opportunities and challenges for organizational ethnographers facing the question of “being […] where?” through highlighting the situated nature of researchers’ identity work in, across and between different (material and virtual) research spaces.

The paper provides researchers with prompts to examine their own situated identity work, which may prove particularly useful for novice researchers and their supervisors, while also identifying the potential for incorporating these ideas within organizational ethnography more broadly.

The paper offers situated identity work as a means to provide renewed analytic vigour to the confessional genre whilst highlighting new opportunities for reflexive and critical ethnographic research practice.

The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of the theory of identity-work and to then deploy this understanding in examining managers’ identity-work. These understandings provide a basis for appreciating managers’ receptivity to learning and, in turn, for considering the likely efficacy of management development.

A qualitative, photo-elicitation interview research study is detailed in which managers’ accounts of being a manager were generated.

The accounts of a sample of managers are analysed through the lens of identity-work using a range of narrative analysis techniques. The findings of the study reveal the use of six distinct types of identity-work that have potential for explicating managers’ receptivity for learning.

The strengths of the qualitative research approach are expounded but certain limitations are acknowledged and therefore opportunities for extending the research trajectory are proposed. Specific implications for training and development practice are developed.

The study contributes to the literature of workplace learning and HRD by showing the potential of understanding identity for appreciating managers’ receptivity to learning and, thereby, the efficacy of management development activity.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of professional and leader identity and the maintenance of identity, through identity work as IT professionals transitioned to a permanent hybrid role. This study therefore contributes to the under-researched area of permanent transition to a hybrid role in the context of IT, where there is a requirement to enact both the professional and leader roles together.

The study utilised a longitudinal design and two qualitative methods (interviews and reflective diaries) to gather data from 17 IT professionals transitioning to hybrid roles.

The study findings reveal that IT professionals engage in an ongoing process of reconciliation of professional and leader identity as they transition to a permanent hybrid role, and they construct hybrid professional–leader identities while continuing to value their professional identity. They experience professional–leader identity conflict resulting from reluctance to reconcile both professional and leader identities. They used both integration and differentiation identity work tactics to ameliorate these tensions.

The longitudinal study design, the qualitative approaches used and the unique context of the participants provide a dynamic and deep understanding of the challenges involved in performing hybrid roles in the context of IT.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how ethnic migrant entrepreneurs (EMEs) utilise identity work to build legitimacy in a host country. According to optimal distinctiveness theory (ODT), legitimacy is achieved by balancing conformance and distinctiveness. This paper draws on ODT in the context of ethnic migrant entrepreneurship to examine how EMEs both fit in (conformance) and maintain their uniqueness (distinctiveness) in cross-cultural settings.

This study adopts a qualitative approach utilising semi-structured interviews to examine the identity work of EMEs from three distinct countries (Indonesia, Pakistan and South Korea (henceforth Korea)) in one host country (Malaysia).

The results show that EMEs’ identity work incorporates both the blurring and strengthening of host-home country boundaries. Building on this study’s results, the authors develop a model of identity work and three propositions regarding legitimacy building through identity in the context of ethnic migrant entrepreneurship.

Through the model and propositions, this research contributes to the identity, international entrepreneurship and ethnic migrant entrepreneurship discourse by identifying the mechanisms, focus and key features of identity work for entrepreneurs operating in cross-cultural settings. In so doing, this research also offers an alternative interpretation on the apparent divergent views around identity work in the fields of organisation (advocate isomorphism) and entrepreneurship (advocate uniqueness).