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This chapter disrupts the common notion that identity can be understood through the use of categories. Categorical terms like gay, straight, man, or woman often mask the complexity of curriculum making and identity-making. Curriculum making and identity-making are narrative terms used to understand the dynamic, relational, and on-going process of making meaning about people, things, contexts, and identity through experience. Identity making, understood narratively as the composition of stories to live by, allows us to image diverse communities, contexts, and experiences that uniquely shape the stories that people live and tell. Inquiring into the experiences of two research participants, I begin the chapter by thinking with Calle’s stories of experience to explore the limited and limiting categorical stories of identity. Then, I consider Jamie’s stories to live by, attending to the role of his contexts and communities in the composition of his stories to live by. In doing so, I seek to further map out the narrative geography of curriculum making and identity-making places and communities for individuals who compose diverse stories to live by. Building on previous research findings that contexts shape the composition of stories to live by as identity is negotiated through these dominant stories as an individual’s ontology, his/her story of the world and self in it, is constituted in part, by these dominant stories; here, I argue that contexts that allow for diverse stories to be told are those that attend to experience rather than clinging to familiar dominant stories.

The concept of a “category” and the social process of “categorization” occupy a crucial place in current theories of organizations. In this introductory chapter to Research in the Sociology of Organization's volume on Categories in Markets: Origins and Evolution, we review published work in various streams of research and find that studies of organizational forms and identities, institutional logics, collective action frames, and product conceptual systems have key commonalities and predictable differences.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an emerging approach in research on school leadership, within the framework of the “International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP)”, where one of the three key research strands is “Principals’ identities”.

The paper responds, from a biographical-narrative approach, to knowledge about the impact of the Spanish model of school management on the professional identity of school principals. It analyses the biographical interviews of 15 school principals, through a process of structuring and categorizing the data collected, applying content analysis.

The dimensions of the principals’ identities emerge in different categories: personal identity, professional identity (internal perspective), professional identity (external perspective), social identity, professionalization and dual identity.

The authors studied identities in a project entitled “Successful school principals”, understanding that successful leadership practices largely depend on headteachers’ identities. That is, when the identities are weak and unstable, with a poor identification with the managerial tasks and functions, and not recognised by the teaching staff, the school will probably be unsuccessful. On the contrary, when there are headteachers with a strong professional identity, the authors want to show that there is a positive impact on improvement of results. In the future, in the development of the research project, the authors aim to verify the relationship between headteachers’ identities and educational improvement.

The knowledge gained in our study would enable us to reimagine lines in order to increase the professionalization and identities of headteachers, redesigning work contexts in ways which can strengthen fragile and unstable identities. Finally, the implications of the study in relation to future research can be summarised by the following ideas.

Understanding the world of the lives (lebenswelt) of Spanish headteachers means adopting a hermeneutic approach, observing the self-interpretation comments expressed by the subjects, where the temporal and biographical dimensions occupy a key role. The authors understand professional identity as a socially constructed and personally created experience with its own meanings, feelings and intentions. Therefore, it is logical to use, for data collection, individual interviews which explore the school context and the impact which it has on those subjects who are part of the professional environment. In addition, the authors have the intention of following up the study of identities.

It formulates, first, the theoretical framework for the professional identity from a narrative approach, linked – at the same time – to the practice of leadership, as an interactive relationship with the other members of the school. Successful leadership practices depend to a large degree on strong principals’ identities. Finally, the results are discussed, and future lines are proposed to articulate and strengthen the identity of school principals in Spain.

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into customers’ psychological processes and behavioral responses after merger and acquisition (M&A) of an artisanal brand.

Study 1 adopts a qualitative approach to understand how craft-beer customers perceive M&A decisions. In Study 2, a two-conditioned (M&A types: local and local company M&A vs local and national company M&A) between-subjects design experiment was executed.

The findings of this study show M&A’s of artisanal brands cause identity stigmatization, resulting in customers’ identity dissonance and coping strategies. Which coping strategies a customer uses depends on their brand identity, product-category identity and M&A partner types.

This was an exploratory study that serves as a starting point for future research. Future research could investigate the model proposed in this study by testing the effects of potential moderators and mediators.

The findings of the study enable companies to better anticipate post-M&A customer behavior, thereby enabling them to enhance their brand positioning when a competitor is acquired by a large company.

The popularity of locally produced and craft hospitality products has attracted the attention of large companies that acquire artisanal brands. There is a paucity of research investigating post- M&A customer reactions of locally owned artisanal companies by large companies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms use the identities of their alliance partners in choosing initial governance structures in strategic alliances. It proposes that social identity from the perspective of an established firm participating in an inter-firm alliance can be constructed on the basis of ownership categories and market categories of the firm’s alliance partners.

The study focusses on a sample of 478 alliances involving 36 focal firms in the US semiconductor industry over a nine-year period (1995-2003). The sample is analyzed using logistic regression methods.

The author finds evidence suggesting that joint venture (JV) structures are more likely when an alliance has more partners that identify as privately held firms or subsidiaries of other firms. The results also suggest that JV structures are more likely when an alliance involves strong product market identity with partners and less likely when an alliance involves strong geographic identity with partners.

These findings provide some novel insights into potential heuristics that alliance managers use in making initial alliance structure decisions. In particular, this paper contributes to a growing stream of research that considers the optimal alliance structures for different partner configurations by showing the potential influence of partners’ identities in simplifying these important decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how non-EU university graduates (third-country graduates, TCGs) experience the intended transition to the German labor market. Through a critical analysis across multiple contexts, the authors intend to increase the reflexive scope of HRM research and practice.

The explorative study is based on social constructivism. It relies on qualitative data, specifically problem-centered narrative-biographical interviews with ethnic Russian TCGs at three different stages of transition. The authors interpret social identity processes and related ascriptions of strangerness critically and link them to wider contexts and dominant categories of identity.

Identity processes between social self and other require (dis-) identification with larger identity categories. TCGs as an example of skilled self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) face obstacles when seeking employment, yet, might utilize ascribed strangerness for reclaiming agency. To identify exclusive practices, individual career aspirations and organizational strategy and practice need to be linked to wider societal, institutional and national contexts.

Through a critical analysis across multiple contexts, HRM research and practice is enabled to reflect upon its own implicit assumptions. To identify critical intersections between interpersonal identity-making and dominant identity-categories, HRM researchers need to differentiate between emic self-perception and etic ascriptions, to move beyond individual and organizational levels of analysis and to consider the interrelations between structure and agency.

HRM practitioners performing a critical analysis across multiple contexts are enabled to reflect upon their own implicit assumptions. This allows for improved organizational strategies and practices when trying to identify and secure global talents.

The originality of the paper lies in providing a multi-context critical analysis of TCGs seeking employment, thereby enabling HRM research and practice to reflect upon implicit assumptions, to move beyond dominant categories and to truly identify and secure global talents.

Treatment of intersectionality in empirical studies has predominantly engaged with individual categories of difference. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that there is utility in exploring intersectionality at the intersection of individual and institutional levels. As such the authors move beyond the polarised take on intersections as either individual or institutional phenomenon and tackle intersectionality as a relational phenomenon that gains meaning at the encounter of individuals and institutions in context. Therefore, the authors explicate how intersectionality features as forms of solidarity and hostility in work environments. As such the authors posit that not only individuals but also the institutions should change if inclusion is aimed at societal and organisational levels.

A thematic analysis on qualitative interview data of a purposive- and snowball-selected sample of 11 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer working adults in Turkey was used.

This paper finds evidence to support the existence of a multidimensional model of intersectionality, where conflicting and complementary individual and institutional intersections create four intersectional typologies in the form of intersectional hostility, intersectional struggle, intersectional adjustment and intersectional solidarity.

The extant literature offers rich insights into individual intersectionality but sheds very little light on institutional intersectionality and its interaction with individual intersectionality. This paper attempts to fill in this gap by investigating intersectional encounters as interactions between the individual and institutional intersections.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Much of the current literature on category construction and maintenance has focused primarily on the disciplining effect of audiences that evaluate for conformity. This literature often characterizes categories as benign organizing devices that bring order to social life. However, categories are also contentious political and cultural productions. This is especially so, when the categories are hybrid. Employing a qualitative case study of an impact investing organization operating in Sub-Saharan Africa, we illustrate how the construction and maintenance of hybrid categories can have potentially advantageous effects for certain actors by shaping the architecture of knowledge and transferring legitimacy to otherwise illegitimate actors or nascent practices. The findings of this study highlight how some hybrid categories can be used to create and maintain unequal relations of power.

Companies may spend capital and effort to ensure the survival within their niche but have limited capacity to expand into other niches or broaden their target segment. This paper aims to provide insights into how they can overcome this niche entrapment – companies becoming trapped in the very niche they have cultivated, the weight and inertia of their investment shackling them to its continued existence.

Cedar Fair’s acquisitions and its organizational structure are carefully examined to illustrate the need for considering niche entrapment as a concept. To understand the complexities that firms face in their attempts to overcome the niche entrapment, this paper analyzes Cedar Fair using the concepts of categories and inherited identities.

The following important lessons are elaborated for helping business organizations overcome niche entrapment: embrace the organizational complexity; use gateway and complementary identities; consider brand disassociation; and achieve ambidexterity through a portfolio of offering.

This paper deviates from the traditional treatment of niches as a focus strategy that firms can select to build competitive advantages but instead provides insights into how those very niches can become constraints. It also conceptually evaluates the attempts to overcome these constraints from an organizational perspective instead of an industry perspective. Apart from using categories in a novel way, it also introduces a new concept of inherited identities, which are the organizational identities that firms inherit as they acquire and assimilate other firms.