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Virtual organizations present numerous challenges for managers, especially in regards to organizational identity formation. This paper aims to address this gap in the extant literature by exploring how organizational narratives can foster identification with the virtual organization. Moreover, information technology can further catalyze the positive effects of narratives on identity formation.

Qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 18 members of a nonprofit, virtual organization – DiverseCS – were collected. Participants were asked about their roles in the organization, challenges and collaborative efforts. Grounded theory methodology was used to analyze the data.

Efforts to instill a sense of identity and community through the adoption of information technology was met with resistance. Rather, senior leaders encouraged and institutionalized the creation of organizational narratives. Novel use of information technology – social media and hyperlinks – became a means to amplify the positive effects of narrative creation and sharing by organizational members.

This study investigates how some members of a virtual organization use information technology in novel ways to further spread organizational narratives to other organizational members and also to external collaboration partners. This research contributes to the extant literature on virtual organizational identity and also proposes a research agenda.

As the novel virus was declared a pandemic, Korean schools quickly transitioned to remote schooling based on its advanced IT system, government-operated digital learning platforms, and an abundance of pre-existing online teaching materials (Byun & Slavin, 2020). Unfortunately, this story of “successful” educational responses to the pandemic was of little relationship to physical education (PE) partly because of the sparsity of supportive resources for online teaching of the hands-on subject area but mainly because of the incompatibility between the nature of the online classroom and the essence of PE (Baek & Yoon, 2020; Oh, 2021). As its name implies, physical education is inseparable from physical movements, bodily dialogue, close physical contact, and active, direct interactions between engaged individuals. Accordingly, PE teachers, dwelling in either online or blended classrooms where bodies are absent, and touch is unthinkable, are experiencing diminished room to implement their pedagogical repertoires and, in turn, affecting their deconstruction and reconstruction of their teacher identities (Kamoga & Varea, 2022). In a nutshell, PE subject matter and PE teachers' identities are being challenged and experiencing unexpected metamorphoses amid this global crisis.

The rates of offending and re-offending for young males are higher than any other population. Whilst the UK Ministry of Justice (2020) states that rehabilitation programmes should aim to build a positive identity, little is known about the subjective experiences of how this occurs. Various theories and models suggest that the development of a positive identity assists rehabilitation for young men with convictions (i.e. Johns et al., 2017). Therefore, the current study aimed to gather personal narratives from male, young offenders with the intention of understanding identity development.

Twelve interviews were conducted with young men with convictions aged between 18 and 25 years who had almost completed a rehabilitation process within the community. Narrative analysis was used to analyse the data. All were engaging with the rehabilitation service as a result of conviction for low to medium level offences, including burglary, harm of another person and drug related offences.

Three plots were identified which explain identity when committing offences: “The Powerless”, “The Feared” and “The Disconnected”. One plot was evident within the narratives which explained positive identity when rehabilitated: “The Connected”. The findings illustrate the importance of an approach which considers various aspects of a young offender’s life.

The current study further adds to knowledge base of young offender rehabilitation by providing a systemic understanding of how men with convictions’ identity develop pre- and post-rehabilitation. New implications for trauma informed practice are discussed.

The purpose of this research is to explore how an industry is represented in multimodal public media narratives and to explore how this representation subsequently affects the formation of public sense-giving space during a persisting crisis, such as a pandemic. The question asked is: how do the use of multimodality by public service media dynamically shape representations of industry identity during a persisting crisis?

This study made use of a multimodal approach. The verbal and visual media text on the restaurant industry during the COVID-19 pandemic that were published in Finland by the public service media distributor Yle were studied. Data published between March 2020 and March 2022 were analysed. The data consisted of 236 verbal texts, including 263 visuals.

Three narratives were identified– victim, servant and survivor – that construct power relations and depict the identity of the restaurant industry differently. It was argued that multimodal media narratives hold three meaning making functions: sentimentalizing, juxtaposing and nuancing industry characteristics. It was also argued that multimodal public service media narratives have wider implications in possibly shaping the future attractiveness of the industry and organizational members' understanding of their identity.

This research contributes to sensemaking literature in that it explores the role of power – explicitly or implicitly constructed through media narratives during crisis. Furthermore, this research contributes to sensemaking literature in that it shows how narratives take shape multimodally during a continuous crisis, and how this impacts the construction of industry identity.

Data science promises new opportunities for organizational decision-making. Data scientists arguably play an important role in this regard and one can even observe a certain “buzz” around this nascent occupation. This paper enquires into how data scientists construct their occupational identity and the challenges they experience when enacting it.

Based on semi-structured interviews with data scientists working in different industries, the authors explore how these actors draw on their educational background, work experiences and perception of the contemporary digitalization discourse to craft their occupational identities.

The authors identify three main components of data scientists’ occupational identity: a scientific mindset, an interest in sophisticated forms of data work and a problem-solving attitude. The authors demonstrate how enacting this identity is sometimes challenged through what data scientists perceive as either too low or too high expectations that managers form towards them. To address those expectations, they engage in outward-facing identity work by carrying out educational work within the organization and (paradoxically) stressing both prestigious and non-prestigious parts of their work to “tame” the ambiguity and hype they perceive in managers’ expectations. In addition, they act upon themselves to better appreciate managers’ perspectives and expectations.

This study contributes to research on data scientists as well as the accounting literature that often refers to data scientists as new competitors for accountants. It cautions scholars and practitioners alike to be careful when discussing the possibilities and limitations of data science concerning advancements in accounting and control.

This paper explores two museums in Taiwan, both former sites of incarceration, and asks how they reflect Taiwan’s evolving relationship with the past. Taiwan has successfully emerged from its authoritarian past into a democratic present; yet, it still bears the scars of its traumatic and violent history in the places where trauma and pain was exacted over Taiwanese people by different regimes. Two of these places are former prisons, now museums with common histories of incarceration, but very different approaches to presentation of traumatic pasts. This paper aims to understand the selective presentation of narratives of punishment in prison museums in Taiwan and what they reflect about Taiwan’s national identity.

This research used a qualitative ethnographic methodology, approaching prison museums as research sites with multidimensional textual, spatial and visual data. This study used a narrative ethnology approach to analyse the content, structure and social context surrounding the stories told about punishment at the sites.

While the Jingmei White Terror Memorial Park documents past abuses under the authoritarian Kuomindang Government (1945–1987), the narratives presented at the Chiayi Prison Museum, constructed under Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945), ignore past colonial violence. This study argues that the invisibility of past colonial violence in Chiayi prison museum acts to strengthen Taiwan’s multicultural national identity, while Jingmei WTMP acts to valorise political prisoners as heroic fighters for Taiwan’s democracy and human rights.

This research makes a contribution to the museum studies literature through extending understanding of the relationship between former carceral spaces and national identity projects.