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The purpose of this paper is to draw on a subjective personal introspection (SPI) approach and Breakwell’s identity process theory (IPT) principles to show how elements from different cultures are performed by an individual to form a unique patchwork identity, and how this patchwork identity will contribute to deepen tourist gaze and, thus, achieving and maintaining authentic destination experience.

The use of SPI gives the researcher an easy access to data collection of his personal, daily experiences related to changing destinations and consuming different places in Europe (France, UK and Italy), North America (USA and Canada) and North Africa (Algeria, Morocco and Egypt) for unlimited 24-hour access from an insider’s ongoing lived experiences.

The results show that Breakwell’s IPT four principles are an integral part of patchwork identity construction when living and experiencing several places. Patchwork identity encompasses the individual’s ability to cross different social and symbolic boundaries when experiencing different destination. Each cultural context contributes to the bricolage and the assemblage of individual patchwork identity revealing one or more IPT dimensions.

This paper serves to emphasize the importance of SPI-based research to patchwork identity construction in understanding the impact of cultural identity on tourist gaze. This approach can help marketers and tourism professionals to understand how consumers select the cultural elements that fit their identity and how the patchwork identity formed will contribute to deepen tourist gaze and destination experience of authenticity.

The use of IPT and SPI-based research to explore tourist gaze offers a comprehensive framework based on a personal introspective approach where the starting point is the meaning individual provides to his hyphenated identity as coping mechanism to respond to social, psychological, ideological, cultural, symbolic, functional, structural, etc., aspirations.

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 study is to test a model of healthcare professionals’ well-being seen as a consequence of a process of motivated professional identity construction, a variable that mediates the influence of the organizational identity (utilitarian or normative) and the perceived reputation of the profession on well-being.

Cross-sectional design, based on a survey of 384 healthcare professionals. Structural equation modeling with latent variables was used to test the model.

The data provide empirical evidence supporting the proposed model. We find that organizational identity (utilitarian and normative) and perceived professional reputation positively relate to professional identity, a variable that positively relates to well-being. Professional identity mediates the relationship between organizational identity (normative and utilitarian) and perceived professional reputation and well-being. Utilitarian organizational identity and perceived professional reputation are also directly related to well-being.

This research significantly departs from the current focus of explaining the well-being of healthcare professionals by resorting mainly to individual factors and introduces organizational and institutional determinants.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.

The objective of this article is to explore and challenge the concept of leadership by presenting a perspective on leadership as identity construction. The perspective presented is based on premises from the complexity sciences.

The article is based on a conceptual discussion.

Leadership is better understood as identity construction. This is because leadership emerges in the interaction between people as the act of recognising and being recognised. Leaders' images of themselves are therefore social constructions and the development of a leadership self (and thereby leadership) is coupled to the interaction between leaders and followers.

The research is limited to a conceptual discussion. The findings need to be further explored and challenged by other methods. The discussion is focused on organisational leadership.

Leaders do not always have the control that mainstream leadership theory suggests. The act of leadership is therefore better understood as identity construction. In the article the authors suggest a conceptual framework for reflecting on leadership identity because self‐images influence people's acts as leaders. The concept of leadership is hence the ability to mobilise the discipline necessary to develop one's self by reflecting on identity in different contexts and coupling this to the acts of leadership.

The principal contribution is a conceptual discussion on the concept of leadership. This contribution provides managerial ideas and insights into the act of leadership in organisations faced with increasing complexity.

The objective of this article is to conduct a case study of the Supermalt brand of malt beer, which has become the preferred beverage of Afro‐Caribbean consumers in Brixton on a very limited marketing budget.

The article uses the concepts of personal identity and brand identity in a qualitative study to explore how Brixton‐based Afro‐Caribbean consumers construct their self‐identities and the brand identity of Supermalt. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 14 Afro‐Caribbean consumers. Each interview was divided into three parts. The first part focused on consumers' self‐identities. The second part explored the role of food and beverage products in the construction of self‐identities. The final part focused on the construction of brand identity for Supermalt.

The article provides information on the self‐identities constructed by Afro‐Caribbean informants. The food and beverage consumption of informants reflects their mixed cultural identity. The brand identity Supermalt appears to be malleable, with ample room for consumer co‐construction. Perceptions of brand identity differ markedly among informants, who are all able to construct Supermalt as one of their own.

The findings are based solely on semi‐structured interviews with a small sample of Afro‐Caribbean consumers. The findings are therefore not generalizable.

The Supermalt brand represents an interesting case for companies aiming to develop strong brands with a limited marketing budget. Based on the Supermalt case, suggestions are made regarding branding in relation to ethnic minorities.

This article provides a study of a brand that has become strong within a narrowly defined group of consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of the different relations of power embedded in social structures on the construction of nomadic identities at the individual level.

The authors use a qualitative approach. The authors interview expatriates adjusting to an international audit firm in Luxembourg and young in geographical itinerancy. A multilevel analysis based on intersectionality let emerge macro- and meso-level influences on the construction of nomadic identities.

The authors differentiate three types of expression of nomadic identities thanks to the concept of intersectionality. The authors showed that power relations at the macro level of the society leads to cultural imperialism at the meso level of organizations thus shaping the identity construction of the individual.

The qualitative approach remains very specific and future research may focus on different contexts to generalize the results. The influence of gender on the construction of nomadic identities needs to be further investigated.

Diversity policies should be revisited to avoid cultural imperialism.

The authors go beyond the monolithic approach, explaining the development of nomadic identities through the lens of national culture only. The authors point out that the individual develops different social identities intersecting in his or her identity development.

The aim of the study is to analyse negotiations about ownership and style in access-based apparel related to processes of identity construction.

The study applies a qualitative and interpretative method and relies on semi-structured depth interviews and focus group interviews with clothing library users as the main data source. The conceptual context of this paper is that of consumer culture theory approaches to consumer identity construction and the role of object ownership in consumer identity projects.

The empirical analysis highlights how processes of consumer identity construction related to symbolic values of clothing and self-possession mechanisms related to ownership are negotiated in encounters with access-based types of fashion consumption with effects on potential consumer adoption of access-based forms of consumption. The findings are structured in six analytical themes.

There are several aspects of this research which are of relevance to the sustainability agenda and which have societal implications. Identity has been identified, in previous research, as a key conceptual tool for exploring, predicting and deepening the understanding of pro-environmental and sustainable behaviours. As such, if the aim is to strengthen the commitment of societies to environmental and sustainable behaviours, then this will require greater knowledge of consumers' identities and meaning-making processes. This is a challenge, not least in terms of recognizing the barriers identified in this study as relating to issues of consumer identity construction.

This study reveals multiple possibilities as well as barriers for implementing collaborative apparel consumption schemes in a fashion and apparel context. Some of the barriers might be explained by clothing's emotional character and close relationship to identity formation. Furthermore, the participants questioned whether access and renting services could substitute the meanings of owning. In conclusion, the authors argue that clothing may be a challenging type of goods to integrate in liquid forms of consumption and findings point out complexities amongst fashion-conscious consumers regarding meaning and identity values of collaborative apparel consumption. Theoretical contributions of an interpretative consumer identity approach for understanding barriers as well as possibilities for consumer adoption of access-based fashion are developed in the concluding sections of the article.

International assignments, which are used as an integral part of global management development, are challenging in terms of one's managerial competencies and self‐concept. However, not much is known about how managers develop during international assignments, or about the process of their identity construction. The purpose of this paper is to show the need for studying international assignments from an identity construction perspective and to build up an interdisciplinary framework for this kind of study.

The paper offers a new and an eclectic approach on expatriation by reviewing and combining current literature on expatriation, identity and career.

As a result of the theoretical discussion the paper notes that more empirical research is needed about the consequences of foreign assignments on individual managers’ identity and subjective career and suggests narratives as a promising strategy to capture the fluid process of identity construction during expatriation.

The value of the paper for academics is that it opens up new avenues for research on international management development and international assignments in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a thesis on global careers; a topic relevant to many project managers working internationally. The main purpose of the thesis was to contribute to the understanding of global careers through applying an identity construction perspective on narratives of global careerists' working lives.

Through a narrative approach, 20 interviews with Swedish global careerists were analyzed and comparison of two types of global careerists was made – repeat expatriates and international itinerants.

The repeat expatriates and international itinerants are shown to have different patterns in their identity construction and there are differences in their career orientations, in their identifications with the organizations they work for, with their careers and with what they do. They also differ in how they identify with their home country and culture and the countries and cultures in which they live. Circumstances such as the type of location, the time abroad, and if the work abroad is perceived as temporary, are significant in their identity construction.

Both organizations and individuals benefit from understanding the implications of such careers. The results of this study can lead to the development of HRM practices to attract and maintain the relationship with these individuals and draw on their skills.

By considering individuals' subjective experiences of global careers through an identity construction perspective, new understanding can be reached on individuals undergoing multiple transitions over the course of their careers.