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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of identity play defined as people's engagement in provisional but active trial of possible future selves.

Current research and theorizing on the variety of strategies and behaviors used by individuals to tailor, adapt or otherwise change their identities has converged on the notion of identity work to conceptualize these processes. This paper introduces an alternative but complementary notion – identity play – and develops a framework that specifies how identity work and play differ from each other, and proposes a set of ideas about the process of identity play in role transitions.

The authors theorize that role transitions are a useful context to explore identity play and that just as individuals move between cycles of career stability and professional transitions so may they move between periods of identity work and play.

The concept of identity play provides a useful starting point to explore the multiple, often incoherent and variable nature of the self as well as the process of exploration and discovery necessary for creating new identities.

The journey to establish one’s core identity is a lifelong and tumultuous path represented as traversing a series of peaks, valleys, and plateaus. The journey unfolds over time, includes repeating cycles, and presents challenges when one must develop an identity to align with a new and unfamiliar role, such as that of a leader. Similar to one’s core identity, a leadership persona is dynamic and involves multiple transitions over time. The role of a leader and characteristics of leadership are often undefined and represent additional obstacles for women. Women in leadership positions shape their leader identities while navigating a labyrinth of barriers and contradicting directions.

This chapter highlights the dynamics of female leader identity through the story of one woman, Dr. Sylvie Raver, as she established her core identity and then worked to create her leader persona. Dr. Raver’s persona as a leader is dynamic and will continue to evolve throughout her lifetime. This story underscores how imposter sentiments can either hinder an individual’s growth along their journey or be used as a catalyst to help propel them forward in their professional life. Ultimately, the chapter emphasizes the importance of realizing that each aspect of oneself does not live isolated from another. Instead, all facets of identity can work together to shape both one’s core and leader identities.

This paper explores the implications of using Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs as a “paradigm case” of transformational leadership by comparing the practical metadiscourse of remembrances published at the time of his passing to the theoretical metadiscourse of transformational leadership. The authors report the frequency of transformational leadership characteristics that appeared in characterizations of Jobs in the months after his passing in October 2011. Results show that people do remember Jobs as a leader, and as one who possessed three key personal characteristics of a transformational leader: creative, passionate, and visionary. People also remembered Jobs as an innovator, which is not typically associated with transformational leadership but which does reflect the discourse of the consumer electronics industries upon which he had an impact. However, the results also show that two important interpersonal characteristics of a transformational leader were absent in the remembrance discourse: empowering and interactive. The authors discuss the implications of the two missing terms for pedagogy and theorizing, including how problematizing Jobs as a paradigm case might lead to fruitful discussions about the importance of a transformational leader’s engagement with followers.

As ethical leadership has advanced as a construct, the degree to which healthy relational systems explain its effect on employee outcomes has been understudied. With this manuscript we conceptualize and test a model based on a Relational Systems approach to ethical leadership and its relationship with conflict and turnover intentions.

Two studies were conducted to test our hypothesized first- and second-stage moderated mediation model. In Study 1, online surveys were completed by 168 working adults across two different time points. Study 2 extended Study 1 by surveying 115 working adults across three time points using the Mechanical Turk platform.

The indirect relationship between ethical leadership and turnover intentions via relationship conflict was conditional based on follower moral identity. The negative influence of ethical leadership on relationship conflict and, in turn, turnover intentions was stronger for followers who had higher moral identities. In addition, our findings suggest that leader holding behaviors strengthen the negative indirect effects of ethical leadership on turnover intentions.

This paper demonstrates the usefulness of a Relational Systems theoretical approach to understanding ethical leadership. Specifically, ethical leaders, through their desire and ability to help employees feel known and not alone at work, are better able to reduce relationship conflict and, in turn, reduce employees' desire to leave the organization.

Continued identification with a former employer may provide valuable self‐enhancement during transition, or it may highlight unsettling self‐discontinuity. This study seeks to develop and test competing hypotheses regarding the extent to which continued organizational identification relates to psychological well‐being following involuntary job loss.

The author conducted a two‐wave survey study spanning six months during the recent financial crisis in 2008 to test these hypotheses. Results are presented for 86 employees in two samples, 45 who were unemployed at the beginning of the study and 41 who lost their jobs during the study.

Continued organizational identification positively related to psychological well‐being in both samples. In a post‐hoc analysis, this relationship held only for employees who attributed their job loss to themselves, rather than to external factors such as their organizations.

The results are based on a limited sample both in terms of size and scope; accordingly, they are best used to explain the relationships for the sample from which they were drawn, professional employees in the USA with a business education, about half of whom worked in the financial services industry.

Being identified with an employing organization is not only beneficial for current employees and their organizations, but also helps employees whose jobs have been terminated. Managers and counselors should advise people to reflect upon, rather than distance themselves from, aspects of their identities based in former employers.

This is the first study to examine the role of organizational identification in individual response to involuntary job loss.

Building on research about entrepreneurship and social capital, the purpose of this paper is to explore how women founders of technology-based ventures in Canada access and use formal external entrepreneurial networks to build their companies.

The study draws on 25 semi-structured interviews with women founders of technology firms and leaders of formal networks.

The authors demonstrate the positive impact of women only networks (WON) for founders including increasing entrepreneurial diversity, access to financing, and founder credibility and sponsorship. The authors show how women founders use mixed gender and WON to build their businesses and conclude that membership in WON can be a vital step.

The sample size is small and most participants reside in highly urban areas, which may limit generalizability. Findings may not generalize beyond Canada due to cultural and structural differences.

The research suggests that external WON should be encouraged as important resources for founder identity work which may enable positive change.

This research can assist in designing initiatives that support women entrepreneurs and promote gender parity.

The authors draw on research in women's leadership development to explain how WONs for entrepreneurs help founders create overlapping strategic networks – a unique form of social capital – and serve as identity workspaces for the identity work women founders must complete. The authors argue that the identity work in WONs can be a mechanism by which gender structures are challenged and eventually changed.

Drawing on sociolinguistics, this chapter proposes an encoding–decoding perspective on evaluation, conceptualizing codes as interpretive schemas that are encoded by firms and decoded by audiences. A key element in this process is code complexity, denoting combinations of interdependent elements. We demonstrate that the evaluation of code complexity depends on the type of audience (professionals and laypersons) and the type of complexity (technological and aesthetic). We analyze the attribution of awards by professionals and the public in luxury watchmaking, featuring three mechanisms: the social embeddedness of audiences, their motivation for evaluation and supply-and-demand matching. The results attest to significant differences in the evaluation of technological and aesthetic code complexity by professionals and laypersons. There is a premium attributed to aesthetic code complexity by professionals and a premium attributed to technological complexity by laypersons. Finding the right type and level of code complexity to pursue in their offerings is a key strategic challenge for producers.

This paper aims to explore the nature of the celebrity chef phenomenon and its impact on the contemporary hospitality industry, to both enrich current knowledge on the topic, as well as inform future research endeavors.

The study was based on a narrative literature review of secondary data sources, namely, academic literature and industry-related articles, and video data collected from popular video-hosting websites.

Despite the vast popularity of celebrity chefs, the phenomenon remains underexplored, with limited coverage given to it by hospitality-related literature. Prior investigations primarily focused on celebrity chefs’ commercial influence and power of advocacy, with little reference to their impact on the next generation of culinary professionals and on the sustainability of the profession.

This commentary has numerous theoretical and practical implications for industry stakeholders who wish to explore this phenomenon beyond the limited confinements of its commercial impact. In particular, the study explores the nature of the phenomenon, where television, social media and the celebrity status of chefs influence both the values and norms surrounding the profession, and individuals’ vocational choices. That said, findings suggest that additional research is required on this topic.

The exploration of celebrity chefs as a topic has so far been limited and has leaned toward one dimension in hospitality literature, despite its interesting scope. This critical overview provides conceptual clarity on issues such as the phenomenon’s commercial and vocational impact and highlights areas of concern and opportunity. Moreover, the study sets a clear pathway for further research.