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Festivals are conceptualised in this chapter as temporary organisations embedded in more permanent structures (e.g. festival lead organisation). Festivals face a series of paradoxical tensions common to temporary organisations in creative fields. These tensions arise, in part, from the diversity of actors involved in festivals and the distinctive values and priorities they bring to their festival organisational involvement. Lucca Comics & Games (LC&G), which is one of the biggest comic-cons in the world, operates in the intersection of different institutional contexts, which include a wide range of actors involved. Thus, tensions appear within the LC&G domain as a result of these actors’ different levels of involvement in the festival organisation and their diverse identities. These tensions and their resolutions will be analysed from the perspective of extant theory on paradox. A specific focus of this chapter is on the belonging paradox, which concerns the role of competing identities among different types of festival participants and how these competing identities are manifested in the organisational identity of LC&G, its structures and processes. Our study provides evidence of identity tensions as both/and relationships that are not mutually exclusive or antagonistic. The authors also suggest that ‘place identity’ requires further examination as a distinctive feature of temporary organising in festivals, considering its role in mediating tensions arising from the belonging paradox amongst festival main actors (exhibitors, artists, public bodies and lead organisation employees).

This chapter explores the symbolic connections between coming of age liminality and identity-oriented consumption practices in postmodern American culture, specifically among adolescent girls.

Forty-two female participants (ages 20–23) participants were asked to answer the general question of “Who am I?” through creating identity collages and writing accompanying narrative summaries for each of three discrete life stages: early adolescence (past-self), late adolescence (present-self), and adulthood (future-self). Data were analyzed using a hermeneutical approach.

Coming of age in postmodern American consumer culture involves negotiating paradoxical identity tensions through consumption-oriented benchmarks, termed “market-mediated milestones.” Market-mediated milestones represent achievable criteria by which adolescents solidify their uncertain liminal self-concepts.

In contrast to the traditional Van Gennepian conceptualization of rites of passage, market-mediated milestones do not necessarily mark a major transition from one social status to another, nor do they follow clearly defined stages. Market-mediated milestones help adolescents navigate liminality through an organic, nonlinear, and incremental coming of age process.

Rather than traditional cultural institutions (e.g., church, family), the marketplace is becoming the central cultural institution around which adolescent coming of age identity is constructed. As such, organizations have the power to create market-mediated milestones for young people. In doing so, organizations should be mindful of adolescent well-being.

This research marks a turning point in understanding traditional rites of passage in light of postmodern degradation of cultural institutions. The institutions upon which traditional rites of passage are based have changed; therefore, our conceptions of what rites of passage are today should change as well.

In this chapter, a model to understand teachers’ professional identity, appraisals and behaviours in the classroom is presented and illustrated with empirical data. It is argued that the comparison between interpersonal identity standards and interpersonal appraisals of classroom situations results in two types of emotions experienced by teachers. One type of emotion is the direct result of teachers’ interpretations of, and coping with, specific classroom events whereby their emotions are part of the appraisal process of situations and evaluated in the light of their interpersonal role identity standards. The second type of emotion emerges as a result of tensions or dilemmas of prolonged differences between appraisals and identity standards. It is argued that the Teacher Interpersonal Identity Role and Appraisal model is helpful for both researchers and practitioners to better understand, recognise and support beginning (and experienced) teachers with emotions that occur in the classroom, and to help stimulate both their personal as well as professional development.

This paper discusses tensions and identity resistance in a cross-cultural educational context in the United Arab Emirates. It focuses on how Emirati students, living and socialised in a conservative Arabic-Islamic society and shaped by Islamic values and epistemologies, construct their cultural identities while learning English with their Western-trained teachers, who are influenced by liberal ideologies and secular epistemologies. To understand the complex engagement between Emirati students and their Western-trained teachers this article uses both phenomenography and reflection on critical incidents to explore, investigate and interpret Emirati students’ intercultural experience with their Western-trained teachers and to highlight the tensions and identity resistance that arise from this educational encounter.

A consequence of globalization is the deterritorialization of space, place, and territory, as well as culture and identity. Focusing on identity-in-context within externally imposed, integral, and multilevel changes, a review of contemporary and post-modern literature contributes an expanding and fluid, albeit insufficient, trajectory for global identity development. Building on this earlier work, this paper offers a model of global identity, provoked by and responding to four key tensions salient to global leaders in the deterritorialized environment. Using a developmental paradigm, the expanded conceptualization comprises a re-constructive, developmental process of global identity, multidimensional identities as a constellation enabling spanning and navigating porous boundaries, an interdependency construct of relational belonging that transcends geography, and a sense of advocacy for extended global responsibility. Transformational opportunities for global identity development and future research are suggested.

Although the organizational identity (OI) construct (Albert & Whetten, 1985) is now in its fourth decade, research in the field has been somewhat uneven, particularly with respect to an essentialist view and hypothetico-deductive type of studies. Believing that this stems in large part from insufficient construct clarity (Suddaby, 2010), this theory-development initiative presents an expanded conceptual framework. The authors exploit several key elements of individual identity and make the case for using these as the basis for conceptualizing an organizational-level equivalent. Starting with the premise that an individual’s identity is the product of comparisons, two dimensions are identified: the type of comparison (similarity, difference), referred to as the “identity conundrum,” and the object of comparison (self–other, self–self), referred to as the “identity perspective.” The authors then propose a four-cell distinctive conceptual domain for OI and explore its implications for scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of identity play process by including the stories we live by in depth. Over the past decade, identity play literature has placed more emphasis on the role of self-narratives. Yet, the “stories we live by”, including the told or untold stories of past and imagined events of the future, have not been considered in depth in these self-narratives.

This conceptual paper draws on the personal construct theory, narrative identity and constructivist psychotherapy literatures and attempts to include the stories we live by in scholarly conceptualizations and explorations of identity play processes.

Drawing on the personal construct theory, narrative identity and constructivist psychotherapy literatures this paper offers a comprehensive conceptual model of how the stories we live by infuse individual identity construction processes. The model highlights the inter-connectivity among stories we live by, identity play, identity work, sensemaking and social validation. Looking through the lens of the personal construct theory and taking these inter-connectivities into account lead to the observation of temporality in identity construction and the plurivocality of self-narratives.

This paper looks at identity play through the lens of the personal construct theory. However, self-narratives are seen as a medium for manifestation of personal constructs. Thus, this paper also draws on the narrative identity literature and dialogical-self concept, which helps access the multiplicity of the self-narratives to widen our grasp of personal constructs. This paper combines discourse of deconstruction with the dialogical-self concept and provides more means for the explication of identity play.

Stories to live by, a narrative conception of identity, are multiple and diverse. As such, I argue that a narrative approach to research allows for complex understanding(s) of people’s lives and provokes meaning-making for participants and researchers. In this chapter, I think with the stories of Mr CEO, a research participant, to understand better the ways that his competing stories to live by are held in tension through his life experience. Mr CEO identified as African American, male, and gay, for lack of a better term. Moreover, Mr CEO’s experience growing up in a conservative African American Christian church shaped his identity-making and added complexity to his sense-making around his multiple stories to live by. I inquire into the ways Mr CEO restoried his stories to live by as they conflicted in his life experience. Mr CEO’s process of seeking narrative coherence among his many stories to live by allowed him to make sense of these dissonant stories. Similarly, it was difficult for Mr CEO to fit in with many of the familiar communities related to his dissonant stories of identity (church, gay, African American communities). As a result of his shifting stories, it became necessary for him to find new contexts and relationships that allowed for multiple and diverse plotlines. Mr CEO engaged in the process of community making as he sought to find relationships that acknowledged and valued his racial, religious, and sexual identity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how refugees from a professional career domain restore a coherent narrative when confronting barriers to recognition of their former career status. It focuses in particular on the identity work in which they engage in order to reconcile tensions between their current status as refugees and their professional identity.

In total, 15 refugees to the UK who were professionally qualified in medicine or teaching in their country of origin took part in interviews or focus groups exploring career barriers, plans and future aspirations. Initial inductive thematic analysis identified recognition of professional identities as a primary concern. Further analytic iterations between theory and empirical material sharpened the focus on identifying the tensions in their professional identity work.

Participants struggled both to restore their former professional identity and to develop alternative identities. Professional identity work limited, but also sustained them in the face of barriers they encountered as refugees.

More support for refugee career development would facilitate adaptation to local job markets, thereby addressing gaps in education and health services in the UK.

The paper highlights the tensions in refugee professional identity work and particularly the challenges and rewards of professional identification in the face of employment barriers.

This study unpacks how organizational members construct a collective entrepreneurial identity within an organization and attempt to instill entrepreneurial features in the organization's existing identity.

The study draws on the cases of two venturing units, perceived as entrepreneurial groups within their respective parent companies. Semi-structured interviews and secondary data were collected and analyzed inductively and abductively.

The data revealed that organizational members co-constructed a “corporate entrepreneur” role identity to form a collective shared belief and communities of practice around what it meant to act as an entrepreneurial group within their local corporate context and how it differentiated them from others. Members also clustered around the emergent collective entrepreneurial identity through sensegiving efforts to instill entrepreneurial features in the organization's identity, despite the tensions this caused.

Previous studies in corporate entrepreneurship have theorized on the top-down dynamics instilling entrepreneurial features in an organization's identity, but have neglected the role of bottom-up dynamics. This study reveals two bottom-up dynamics that involve organizational members' agentic role in co-constructing and clustering around a collective entrepreneurial identity. This study contributes to the middle-management literature, uncovering champions' identity work in constructing a “corporate entrepreneur” role identity, with implications for followers' engagement in constructing a collective entrepreneurial identity. This study also contributes to the organizational identity literature, showing how tensions around the entrepreneurial group's distinctiveness may hinder the process of instilling entrepreneurial features in an organization's identity.