Search results

Managers play a crucial role in organizations. They make decisions that directly influence organizational success and significantly impact employees’ mental health, development and performance. They are responsible for ensuring the financial well-being and long-term sustainability of organizations. However, their mental health is often overlooked, which can negatively affect employees and organizations. This study aims to address managers’ mental health at work, by examining specifically the direct and indirect effects of identity verification on their psychological distress and depression through self-esteem at work. The study also aims to examine the moderating as well as moderated mediation effects of identity salience.

A sample of 314 Canadian managers working in 56 different companies was studied, using multilevel analyses.

The findings showed that the verification of managers’ identity vis-à-vis recognition is positively associated with psychological distress and depression. Self-esteem completely mediates the association between low identity verification vis-à-vis work control and psychological distress, and also the association between low identity verification vis-à-vis work control and superior support and depression, while it partially mediates the association between low identity verification vis-à-vis recognition and depression.

This study can also help both managers and human resource management practitioners in understanding the role of workplaces in the identity verification process and developing relevant interventions to prevent mental health issues among managers at work.

This study proposed a relatively unexplored approach to the study of managers’ mental health at work. Its integration of identity theory contributes to expanding research on management and workplace mental health issues.

As every day work is central to people's lives and events serve as significant contextual factors, examining what impact the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic restrictions had on knowledge workers warrants further investigation. The author's research question investigated how employees in the London Insurance Market had made sense of their work identities during a period of mandated remote work and isolation from co-workers, leaders and others, amidst a turbulent environment. To address this enquiry, this research drew on Goffman's institutional, dramaturgical and stigma theories.

Data used in this research are from an ongoing PhD study of how individuals conceive, construct and conduct their careers in this field. As individuals and their social worlds are interwoven, a qualitative methodological approach was employed in this research.

Participants were thrusted into a position where they had no prior knowledge what identity they should adopt in a situation which had totalising characteristics. The loss of clear boundaries between work and home setting caused a deterioration of participants' work identities whilst physical separation from their institutions and co-workers posed a risk of disconnecting their past work identities from the present. Moreover, participants' experiences of deterioration and disconnection were intertwined with their demographic and occupational identities.

This study aligns with existing research on identity work, emphasising the crucial role of social interaction in the formation of work identities. However, it also highlights that the establishment and sustenance of work identities is also reliant on individuals having separate frontstage and backstage settings to understand and interpret their conduct and those of their significant others.

This paper aims to explore the stages and processes of work identity reconstruction following a major health-related career shock.

In-depth case study and interpretive phenomenological methods are used to allow for deep reflective self-analysis of post-career shock stages. The paper explores the identity processes and stages a Chief of Human Resources of a multinational firm experienced after being deprived from his main working abilities as a result of a brain stroke.

Post-shock work identity stages and processes are identified, as long as the importance of identity threat, liminality, identity internalization and relational recognition in the reconstruction process. The findings propose new coping responses that may allow individuals to escape a diminished work identity: identity shedding and identity implanting.

While career shocks play a significant role in career development, there is currently little understanding of how career shocks may affect individuals' work identity or sense of self, particularly over time. The paper provides a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon, through process data collected at several points in time over a period of 14 years.

While there is vast research on expatriate adjustment, it is still known very little on how self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) in particular might cope with identity conflicts and how they engage with identity work. What is more, although there is some literature on the existence of expatriate bubbles, this does not cover how these bubbles might impact identity work. The purpose of this paper is to explore identity work that is taking place within expatriate bubbles and thus advance our knowledge on both expatriate bubbles and expatriate adjustment.

The study reports on the analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interview data collected from 37 self-initiated expatriate engineers from Greece, Spain and Italy, currently residing in Bristol, UK.

Previous studies have argued that expatriate bubbles impede adjustment. The study analysis, however, shows that expatriate bubbles can be not only a powerful mechanism for coping with foreignness and strengthening their sense of belonging but also act as identity workspaces where SIEs engaged with identity work and navigated identity conflicts.

The present study addresses two empirical gaps: the paucity of literature on the identity work that self-initiated expatriates engage with and the paucity studies on self-initiated expatriate engineers. The study also has a theoretical contribution as, drawing upon a Goffmanian dramaturgical framework sheds light on the back regions of performance taking place within expatriate bubbles. Thus, showing how SIEs relax but also rehearse their performances in order to reduce any identity gaps triggered by the new organisational and national context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how disadvantaged young adults construct a positive work-related identity in their transition from unemployment to employment, and what enables or constrains a successful transition.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 29 apprentices of a reemployment program (Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen). The qualitative data were complemented by data on participants’ reemployment status one year after the program ended.

Identity construction was not preceded by clear motives or “possible selves.” Rather, serendipitous events led to participation in the reemployment program, after which provisional selves seemed to emerge through different pathways. The data also suggested that disadvantaged young adults had to discard their old selves to consolidate their new identity.

A successful transition from unemployment to employment may require that old selves must be discarded before new selves can fully emerge. Given that our qualitative design limits the generalizability of the findings, the authors propose a process model that deserves further empirical examination.

A clear employment goal is not always required for the success of a reemployment intervention: interventions should rather focus on accommodating the emergence and consolidation of provisional selves. Yet, such programs can be simultaneously effective and unhelpful: especially group identification should be monitored.

Most research assumes that people are driven by specific goals when making a transition. The current study shows otherwise: the factors that enable or constrain a successful transition are not to be found in people’s goals, but rather in the process of identity construction itself.

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.

Identities are central to the regulation and control of knowledge‐intensive work. Rather than being managed on the basis of technocratic or bureaucratic control, knowledge intensive firms are employing knowledge workers who enact and internalize identities and roles that guide everyday behaviour in organizations. However, the concept of identity is relational and contingent on local conditions and interactions in everyday practices, different identities may be complementary or even contradictory. The paper aims to show that consultants are altering between being experts and speaking‐partners, two identities that in many ways are complementary but also mutually reinforcing.

This is a case study of a Swedish management consulting firm, Johnson Consulting.

The challenge for consultants is to be capable of effortlessly transgressing the line of demarcation between the two identities – expert and speaking‐partner – and their accompanying practices for the benefit of the client. Skilled consultants are trained at moving back and forth between these positions while less experienced consultants may find it intimidating to lose their position as expert.

The paper concludes that knowledge‐intensive firms such as management consulting firms should articulate and elaborate on the various identities mobilized in everyday work when encountering clients.

The paper uses the literature on identities in knowledge‐intensive firms and an empirical study of management consultants to show that knowledge‐intensive work is always operating on the level of identities and self‐images. Understanding knowledge intensive firms thus demands an understanding of how co‐workers perceive their own role.

While the literature on migration highlights the reshaping of host and immigrant population in countries, there is a paucity of research in marketing investigating the evolving dynamics for acculturation. The purpose of this study is to further the understanding of the emerging phenomenon of acculturation and identity negotiation.

Three experiments examined situational ethnicity, self-construal and identity negotiation in home and host culture work and social settings. Study 1 and Study 2 were conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), where the host country is the majority population. Study 3 was conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the host country is the minority population. Study 4 utilized qualitative interviews in both countries.

Results from all four studies show that ethnic consumers deploy “indifference” as an identity negotiation mechanism when the host society is the majority population (UK) and when the host society has the minority population (UAE).

The authors offer new insights into identity negotiation by ethnic consumers when the host society is the majority population as well as the minority population. “Indifference”, i.e. preferring to neither fit in nor stand out as an identity negotiation mechanism, is deployed in work and social settings of home and host societies. The authors also advance the existing literature on acculturation by examining whether independent and interdependent self-construal influence identity negotiation.

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 paper is to explore how a group of dirty workers, that is, exotic dancers employed in a gentlemen's club, engage in identity construction amidst various macro, meso and micro considerations.

This study adopts a social constructivist approach in exploring the stories of a group of 21 dancers employed at a chain of exotic dancing clubs in the UK, For Your Eyes Only.

Identity construction is a complex process whereby dancers struggle to secure a positive sense of self among the various resources they encounter. The findings focus upon the processes of distancing through projecting disgust upon clients, other dancers and other clubs. Dancers do this to minimize the stigma associated with their own identities and position themselves in a more favourable light to others. In doing this, dancers construct a variety of identity roles for themselves and “others.” This process of distancing also results in the construction of a hierarchy of stigmatization whereby dancers categorize motivations for dancing, type of dancing and type of clubs to rationalize the work they perform and manage their spoiled identities.

The stories of these dancers illustrate the messy nature of identity construction for dirty workers. In turn, it also illuminates how a better understanding of the complexity of identity construction for exotic dancers can offer insights transferable to other dirty work occupations and organizations in general.

The paper provides an indepth look at an occupational site that is relatively unexplored in organization studies and thus makes a unique empirical contribution. It also offers a more comprehensive theoretical lens for understanding identity construction and dirty workers.