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How are identity narratives maintained over one's lifetime when neither the enactment of one's work role nor the organised holding environments can be assumed? In his autobiography, Ahluwalia continues to narrate himself as a mountaineer, despite the end of his mountaineering career following a war-induced disability. Locating his account alongside the existent literature on identity work within holding environments, I clarify the processes through which different holding environments – the interpersonal and the relatively impersonal – can facilitate the maintenance of individuals’ identity narratives and how the environments themselves may be shaped over time.

Coaches need to expand their repertoires for developing leaders in turbulent contexts. From the leader-client perspective, this interpretive qualitative study investigated how executive coaching facilitated leaders' identity work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings indicated that leaders faced identity uncertainty in transitioning to virtual leadership - and how coaching supported leaders with their identity work. While the outcomes of the coaching were shifts in leader identity, it seemed that coaches did not work explicitly with an identity lens. This finding suggests identity and identity work be adopted as a theoretical lens to enhance the coaching of leaders in changing contexts.

Background: Nurses play a remarkable role in our healthcare system and contribute to the wellbeing of communities at large. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, nurses faced various challenges to provide adequate patient healthcare. Objectives: This study aimed to explore the identity work of public hospital nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: The study followed a phenomenological qualitative approach with an interpretive view, employing two sampling methods: purposive and snowball sampling. The sample comprised 11 nurses from a public hospital in the Gauteng province. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: The findings revealed that the nurses faced identity demands, which resulted in them experiencing identity tensions. There was also a need for recognition and support; their work served a greater purpose and was meaningful to them. The nurses used different identity work strategies, such as family support, spiritual upliftment and meaningful work to deal with the identity tensions and demands they experienced. Conclusion: Strategies such as counselling and wellbeing programmes should be implemented to assist nurses in dealing with the physical and psychological effects of working in the health sector during pandemics and epidemics. Hospitals and governments should create healthier working environments by conducting workshops, training and upskilling initiatives, encouraging nurses’ inclusion in policymaking and implementation. Contribution: The study provided insight into the challenges nurses encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic, how these challenges affected their nursing identity and roles, and the strategies they used to maintain their sense of self in their work.

This qualitative study investigates refugees’ socio-professional trajectories in France. Our findings suggest that refugees follow different socio-professional paths shaped by identity work and acculturation mechanisms as they go about integrating in the French context. We identify three socio-professional trajectories: ‘adjusting’, ‘enhancing’, and ‘detaching’. This study contributes, firstly, to research on refugees’ socio-professional adjustment and vocational adaptation, and secondly, to the literature on identity work. It does so by offering novel insights into the processes of repairing, reorienting, and reconstructing cultural and professional identities in the context of refugees’ relocation to host countries, in this case, France.

When a person is diagnosed with a condition leading to vision loss, life cannot go on as before. As well as developing new ways to manage their daily activities, people must manage the shock to their identity and decide how they now wish to present themselves. These add to the cognitive load of people with who experience vision loss over and above that of their sighted peers. Our qualitative interview study used a thematic analysis to explore the experiences of people with a condition causing vision loss to understand the work they undertook to integrate this diagnosis into their identity (or not) and to decide how and when to communicate their vision loss to others. People often navigated between identities: their identity prior to the diagnosis, and “the blind person” – an identity forced upon them. Linked to this, but a separate task, was deciding how they wished to present themselves to the world – to fully acknowledge their disabilities, to completely cover them, or to choose a path between these extremes. Self-presentation also depended on the audience (family, friends, colleagues, strangers) and this decision was not a single event: most people faced the necessity of repeating this process many times as their vision fluctuated or circumstances changed, and the cognitive effort this required exacted a toll. We build on the work of the disabled identity, identity continuity and self-presentation theory to describe the experiences of people managing their sense of self when faced with the uncertainty of deteriorating vision and deciding how to present themselves to others. This work requires considerable cognitive effort, adding an additional cognitive penalty of disability to those already coping with the practical difficulties of vision loss.

Dealing with change and the resulting process of transition is challenging. In today’s workplace, where change and innovation are increasingly a fact of life, too many transitions end in failure, at a high cost to both people and organizations. Interest in the identity work integral to career transition has grown rapidly in recent years and it is now recognized that career transition is more than simply a change in status, salary and role description. It involves social, relational and personal shifts, conscious and unconscious processes, and identity work—agentic, holistic engagement in the shaping and sustaining of who we become. Evidence suggests that specifically addressing identity work in coaching leaders, teams and groups significantly increases the success rate of transitions. And yet topics around identity and identity work are given little prominence in coaching education, leaving many coaches unaware of these basic constructs. This paper presents a new coaching framework, the MAP (Me-As-a-Process) coaching model, to support coaches and their clients as they embark on the process of identity work in voluntary career choices and transitions. It draws on research from my qualitative doctoral study (2021) which identified four stages in the process of women’s identity work in voluntary career change and choice. It synthesizes academic theory, evidence from coaching practice, and findings from 53 women who had recently experienced career choice or change.

Latinas, along with many other minoritized groups, are underrepresented as inventors in the United States. Despite accounting for over 9% of the population,

Orientation: Coaching facilitates identity work, and metaphors are often used in coaching to make sense of the self. Research purpose: To explore coaching clients’ coaching experience as expressed through metaphors, from an identity work perspective. Motivation for the study: The use of metaphor in coaching has not been realised, and coaching as a vehicle for identity work is underexplored. Research approach/design and method: A hermeneutic phenomenological methodology and qualitative design directed the study. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven clients who had participated in a coaching programme. Reflective metaphors from the interviews constituted the data set, which was analysed through hermeneutic phenomenological analysis. Main findings: Guided by identity theory, four themes were co-constructed from the data, which describe how coaching develops a self-processing competence reflected in these iterative cycles: (1) self-exploration and self-reflection; (2) self-awareness and self-insight; (3) self-acceptance and self-determination; and (4) self-actualisation and self-transcendence. These cycles of identity work align with transactional and transformational identity work to enable construction of an independent and interdependent self. Practical/managerial implications: The findings highlight the value of metaphors as a self-reflective sensemaking tool. Coaching is aligned with integrated transactional and transformational identity work, which can be used to assess the transformational value of coaching as a process. Contribution/value-add: The study describes the personal transformational value of coaching through metaphors, and it establishes identity work as a key process outcome of successful coaching. The findings offer a novel conceptualisation of transactional and transformational identity work as a process perspective to effective coaching.

IntroductionThis study aims to understand how new CEOs construct, revise, and maintain in their narrative, repertoire stories that represent their identity as it is associated with their new occupational role.MethodsFor this purpose, we conducted a qualitative study using the Grounded Theory method, involving 47 CEOs from different sectors residing in Brazil.ResultsOur results allowed for the construction of a central category called Storytelling Identity Work, which refers to stories that individuals tell about themselves, and enable them to propose and redefine who they are during major life transitions. This paper seeks to explain: (a) under what conditions this phenomenon tends to occur; (b) what characterizes the success of Storytelling Identity Work and; (c) what leads to the revision or retention of stories in the self. Our results show that storytelling identity work tends to be used by new CEOs during their transition period into the role, and when their new position involves higher levels of visibility and alteration of prestige levels in comparison to their previous position. They also suggest that storytelling identity work tends to be more successful when the stories are co-constructed and validated with other significant individuals and when they enable new CEOs to feel “sufficiently authentic” and “sufficiently impressive.” Finally, we theorize that such feelings, along with a sense of coherence between the story being told and other narratives consciously or unconsciously being narrated by the interviewees throughout their lives, lead to the retention of the story within the individual’s self.DiscussionThis article innovates by connecting the literature on personal storytelling with identity work and exploring processes that are not only useful during the process of transitioning into the role of new CEOs but also influence the constitution of the narrative repertoire and, consequently, the identity of these individuals.

IntroductionBreastfeeding is much more than a biological event. It is a social construction, full of cultural meanings and framed by social structures. Being, simultaneously, a natural event and a social practice, breastfeeding poses challenges to feminist approaches in the sense it may be acknowledged as an empowering practice for women and/or as a setback in the process of women's social emancipation. Often focused on the product, i.e., the milk and its beneficial properties for the infant's health, the dominant discourse on breastfeeding makes it a trait of good mothering, withdrawing the understanding of the particular (but also structural) contexts in which this practice occurs.MethodsBased on results from a focus group with five mothers of a first child, this paper addresses first-person testimonies about breastfeeding and transition to motherhood, aiming to capture eventual self-concept dilemmas, impacts of social judgments, difficulties related to the work-family balance, as well as negotiation processes taking place within couples and early-parents.Results and discussionDespite being subject to tensions and sometimes stressful adaptation processes, motherhood and breastfeeding tend to be ultimately described by women as experiences that enhance welcome changes in personal trajectories, life priorities and identities.

In this autoethnographic article, I discuss the consequences of being exposed to two competing breastfeeding discourses during my first mothering experience—the “self-regulated dyad” and the “externally regulated dyad” discourse. The former represents the ideal scenario and the evidence-based practices recommended by the World Health Organization (i.e., breastfeeding on demand, internally regulated by the dyad). The externally regulated discourse refers to the standardized health interventions that take over when difficulties arise (e.g., weight gain deviations and latching issues). Building on Kugelmann's critique about our blind reliance on “standardized health,” existing evidence, and my breastfeeding journey, I argue that unqualified and unindividualized breastfeeding interventions are highly counterproductive. To illustrate these points, I discuss the implications of the polarized interpretation of pain and the limited dyadically focused support. I then move on to analyze how ambivalent social positioning around breastfeeding impacts our experience. In particular, I found that I was highly regarded as a “good, responsible mum” up till my baby was 6 months, and how breastfeeding became increasingly challenged by others when my daughter was approaching her first birthday. Here, I discuss how performing attachment mothering identity work allowed me to navigate these challenges. Against this backdrop, I reflect upon feminist ambivalent positionings on breastfeeding and the complexity of balancing the promotion of women's hard-earned rights while supporting them to engage in whatever baby-feeding choice they feel appropriate. I conclude that unless we acknowledge the physical and social complexities of the process, and our healthcare systems seriously invest in allocating human resources and training them appropriately, breastfeeding rates may continue to suffer and women continue to interiorize it as their own failure.

Between 1960 and 1980 Italy experienced several waves of terrorism (extreme right, extreme left, state terror). In order to understand the passage toward illegal political militancy and armed action, we conducted a qualitative sociological inquiry involving 33 militants from extra-parliamentary organizations characterized as extreme left. There we exhibited forms of “identity-related work” that led certain people from legal political action into clandestine operations, thus allowing us to propose a critical look at the work thus far accomplished on the Red Brigades. We have also placed in evidence the prevalence of phenomena of “identity-related amplification” in relation those of “appropriation of identity”, “transformation of identity”, or even “search for identity”.

The identity work process allows athletes to achieve a continuous development, revision, and maintenance of themselves. It provides insight into their self-perceptions and particularly intensifies during critical life events. While this process has been widely acknowledged, scant attention has been given to explicitly identifying the specific activities (i.e., identity work modes) involved in athletic identity work and integrating an overarching framework to inform coherent and continuous identities. Thus, we conducted a systematic review of the athletic identity literature to assess how this perspective is represented. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we reviewed 54 articles and analyzed the overall characteristics, bibliographical networks, and accumulated empirical findings. Through this process, we were able to identify the impact of having a strong athletic identity on key variables within and outside of sport. Based on the findings, we examined how identity work modes are depicted and discussed in the literature. Further discussion on how athletic identity literature can contribute to the broader body of knowledge is outlined.

An organization’s identity, as defined by its members, must be aligned with its collective identity prescribed by institutions. This alignment is broken when an institutional change threatens the collective identity and jeopardizes the existence of a group of organizations. They then undertake to carry out identity work, both internal and external, in order to establish a new alignment. Based on a single case study, this research article explores the interplay between the two forms of identity work: internal and external. The findings of this study reveal that introspective internal identity work feeds the work to repair the collective identity with traditional values that have been rediscovered thanks to a reflexive examination of self by the organization. By internal extrospection identity work, the external identity repair work is fed with new values that the organization internalizes and enacts in its practices. Based on these findings, this article puts forward new theoretical propositions, as well as a model of the interplay between internal and external identity work that aims to realign the organization’s identity with that of the collective.

Emotions have always been invested in politics. Politicians and politically biased public intellectuals manage citizens’ emotions for various purposes: to alienate them from the rival political camp and to make them participate in elections or in politics in general. Ressentiment is an affective style of great political potential and it is present throughout democratic European societies. By analysing the discourses of the culture war between the political camps in Hungary since 2018, this article presents the components, drivers, mechanisms, and some typical outcomes of ressentiment on the levels of the individual and the political communities. It argues that in political communication both political sides are trying to appeal to the citizens’ ressentiment. Both camps use communicative means to incite, channel, and reorient ressentiment by, e.g., scapegoating, identity work, and transvaluation to attract citizens, stabilize their own support, and nudge followers towards specific political activities.

Conceptual Encounter, a constructivist research methodology, was first introduced by de Rivera in 1981. Its key output is a conceptualisation that contributes to an ‘ever-broadening map of human experience’ (de Rivera & Kreilkamp, 2006, p.24). As there are limited existing studies using this approach, the purpose of this article is to describe the researcher’s experience of using and adapting the methodology to co-create with research partners a model for coaching practice. The research topic, women’s identity work in career choices and transitions, features frequently in coaching sessions and has been the subject of studies in career counselling and psychology, but in the field of coaching it has ‘yet to emerge, and presents as an opportunity for future research’ (Parker, 2016, p.419).

Curriculum reform urges teachers to constantly reflect on existing identities and develop probably whole new identities. Yet, in the wake of the poststructuralist view of identity as a complex matter of the social and the individual, of discourse and practice, and of agency and structure, teacher identity is a process of arguing for themselves and hence ethical and political in nature. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of ethical self-formation and its adoption by Clarke (2009a) “Diagram for Doing Identity Work” in teacher education research, this 2-year-long case study explores how two Chinese English-as-foreign-language (EFL) teachers engaged in identity work in a changing curricular landscape. The analysis of narrative frames and semistructured interviews reveals the relations between the relative stable and the evolving elements of teachers’ identity work, and the essential role of teachers’ ethical agency based on reflective and critical responsiveness to the contextual reality and the dynamic power relations during the reform. The findings argue for the importance of nourishing teachers’ reflective identity work and ethical agency during the turbulence of educational change.

The well-being of children and young people has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The shift to online education disrupted daily rhythms, transformed learning opportunities, and redefined social connections with peers and teachers. We here present a qualitative content analysis of responses to open-ended questions in a large-scale survey of teachers and students in Romania. We explore how their well-being has been impacted by online education through (1) overflow effects of the sudden move to online classes; (2) identity work at the individual and group levels; and (3) Students’ and teachers’ presentations of self in the online environment, with a focus on problematic aspects of webcam use. The results indicate that both students and teachers experienced ambivalence and diverse changes in well-being, generated by the flexibility, burdens, and disruptions of school-from-home. The identities associated with the roles of teacher and student have been challenged and opened for re-negotiation. Novel patterns have emerged in teachers’ and Students’ identity work. Failure or success at the presentation of self in online situations is relevant for the emotional valence of learning encounters, impacting well-being. Online classes have brought about new ways to control one’s presentation of self while also eliminating previous tactics and resources. The controversy regarding webcams has captured this duality: for some, the home remained a backstage that could not be safely exposed; for others, the home became a convenient front stage for school. Well-being was affected by the success of individual and collective performances, and by student-teacher asymmetries. Overall, our study of online learning indicates powerful yet variable influences on subjective well-being, which are related to overflow effects, identity work, and presentation of self.

Athletes’ identity development upon retirement from elite sport was examined through a model of self-reformation that integrates and builds on the theoretical underpinnings of identity development and liminality, while advancing seven propositions and supporting conceptual conjectures using findings from research on athletes’ transition out of sport. As some elite athletes lose a salient athletic identity upon retiring from sport, they experience an identity crisis and enter the transition rites feeling in between their former athletic identity and future identity post-sport life, during which a temporary identity moratorium status is needed for identity growth. Given the developmental challenges encountered in moratorium and psychosocial processes necessary to establish a new, fulfilling identity for life after elite sport, we identified key conditions, triggers, and processes that advance how a journey of identity growth paradox experienced during liminality serves as a catalyst toward identity achievement. Elite athletes must be encouraged to persevere in this challenging identity search and delay commitments for as long as it is necessary to achieve identity growth despite experiencing uncomfortable feelings of confusion, void, and ambiguity during the liminal phase. Reforming into an achieved identity for life after elite sport would corroborate the successful navigation of transition, as elite athletes evolved into a synthesized sense of self by cementing, through a negotiated adaptation pathway, constructed identity commitments that will provide new beginnings and meaningful directions to their life after elite sport.

This Qualitative Research Synthesis (QRS) explored how K-16 students of color make meaning of their disability labels and negotiate the prevailing dominant ideologies surrounding dis/ability labels, race, gender, and other forms of identity. Scholars in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) have explored critical connections between Disability Studies (DS) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Annamma, Connor & Ferri, 2013; Erevelles, Kanga & Middleton, 2006). This study identified such critical connections by synthesizing 13 qualitative studies from 2006-2018 and explored the lived experiences of students of color labeled with disabilities. Our goal for this QRS was to advance the theoretical work in DSE through a synthesis of qualitative literature within the field. QRS is a methodologically rigorous approach that "uses qualitative methods to analyze, synthesize, and (re)interpret the results from [existing] qualitative studies" (Major & Savin-Baden, 2010, p. 10). We employed a resistance theory of disability at the intersections (Gabel & Peters, 2004; Giroux, 1983a, 1983b), that foregrounded the psycho-emotional disablism model of disability (Thomas, 1999), to recognize that students' acts of resistance directly relate to systematic oppression within the education system. Findings from our second order thematic analysis suggest that students identified disability labels as an assigned identity, which limited their educational opportunities and left a psychological and emotional impact on their well-being. However, students also used multiple strategies and acts of resistance to negotiate the stereotypical master narratives surrounding their intersectional identities. Through a timely methodological and conceptual counter-narrative of its own within educational equity research, our QRS contributes to theory, research, and praxis, with implications for a more humane and just education system for all students.

Over 40 years have passed since the coup d’état in Chile on September 11th 1973. Although Augusto Pinochet’s military regime officially came to an end in 1990, the political and societal consequences of the coup and 17 years of dictatorship live on to this day, both in and outside of Chile. In this article I discuss hip hop practice as a form of identity and memory work in, and in-between Chile and Sweden, the country that welcomed the highest number of Chilean refugees in Europe after the coup. I focus on those instances in which rappers in both Sweden and Chile refer to specific versions of the past in their lyrics, music, videos, biographies, and in TV programs. My analysis shows that artists in both countries use hip hop culture in order to create meaning and a sense of shared history by engaging in strategic and self-conscious identity and memory work.

In this article, I explore the researcher identity of senior women academics in a South African institution of higher education. The aim was to uncover the identity tensions they experience in relation to being a researcher and to understand how they respond to and resolve these tensions. Three focus groups, based on the socioanalytic method of social dream drawing, provided the data. Data were analyzed through hermeneutic phenomenological reflection. Identity theory was applied as a conceptual framework to guide my interpretation of the data. Through their collective reflection on being researchers, the women became cognizant of identity tensions and their engagement with these reflected intrapersonal processing akin to identity work. In the findings, I highlight purposeful, collective identity work as a resource that enabled these women to re-construct self-defeating gendered conflicts in their researcherhood. By uncovering their identity tensions and related emotions, a sense of researcher self-efficacy emerged. They consequently reframed research success as meaningful self-expression and knowledge dissemination. I propose that collective identity work is a valuable endeavor for women researchers because it facilitates role identity development and a collective voice in responding to the demanding and constantly changing academic work context.

Este trabajo aborda una revisión y desarrollo teórico del concepto Identity Work a partir de la lógica del acontecimiento y la multiplicidad para poner de relieve las potencialidades creativas de lo colectivo en los entornos organizacionales. Se introduce una nueva perspectiva sobre los procesos de control normativo más allá de la mera problematización de los discursos organizacionales y su impacto en nuestra construcción identitaria. La sensación de sentirse atrapado por…, o inmerso en…, o comprometido con la dinámica de la empresa se presenta como un proceso complejo, no unidireccional, lleno de ambivalencias, contradicciones y reformulaciones que nos llevan a entender la identidad como un campo de batalla organizacional, como algo contingente que surge, que acontece, que se crea colectivamente y no tanto como algo que se tiene, se adopta o se impone indefinidamente.

Drawing from extensive fieldwork among graffiti writers in Sweden this article investigates gendered identity work and its consequences. It points to how potentially inclusive aspects of disembodied subcultural performances—that identities are negotiated through the material representation of the writer rather than on basis of the physical body—nevertheless work excludingly, especially so in terms of gender. This is so because identity work in graffiti revolves around a re-embodiment of identities through normative notions of the able, male and invisible body.

Bloggers are increasingly viewed by public relations practitioners as important influencers within the online media environment, yet research that explores relationships between bloggers and PR practitioners, particularly in the UK, is relatively limited. This paper reports on findings from a small-scale, in depth qualitative study of food blogger-practitioner relationships within the hospitality sector in the UK. The study explored why bloggers write about their restaurant experiences and how they view their relationships with PR professionals; while PR practitioners were questioned about their relationships with bloggers and the influence bloggers are having on PR clients’ reputations. In keeping with previous research, this study found that the practitioner-blogger relationship is complex. The PR practitioners interviewed within the hospitality sector viewed restaurant review bloggers as highly influential to their clients’ reputations and view the relationship as one that is built on mutual interests and trust. However, bloggers do not perceive the relationship in this light and are sceptical of PR practitioners’ motives. While bloggers had different motivations for blogging, they shared a common passion for blogging and a drive to provide reliable information and objective advice to their readers. Concerns within the blogging community were highlighted in regard to accepting incentives (free meals) from PR practitioners, and how this can be damaging to bloggers’ reputations. While some bloggers claim to resist PR practitioners’ attempts to influence their blog content, other bloggers take an active role in building relationships with PR practitioners. It is argued that both parties are engaged in ‘identity work’ in order to protect their respective identities and practices and that emotion management plays a part in the practitioner-blogger relationship.

South African managers in public service consistently face challenges related to managing a well-adjusted and productive diverse workforce. Following the notion that leadership authenticity fosters positive psychological employee capacity, the aim of this study was to explore the meaning essence of authenticity as lived in the work–life experiences of senior managers in public service. Five senior managers in public service were purposefully selected based on their articulated challenges with being authentic at work, whilst attending a diversity sensitivity workshop. From a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective, in-depth interviews were used, and an interpretative phenomenological analysis yielded two predominant themes offering a description of what it means to be authentic. Authenticity is experienced as an affective state that results from a continuous self-appraisal of the extent to which expression of self is congruent with a subjective and socially constructed expectation of self in relation to others. Authenticity seems to develop through a continuous process of internal and external adaptation, and it leads to ultimately building a differentiated yet integrated identity of self. A reciprocal dynamic between feeling authentic and self-confidence alludes to the potential importance of authenticity dynamics in identity work.

This article draws on accounts of white working-class boys (age 14-16) from South London in order to explore how they reconstitute their learner-identities within the ‘raising aspirations’ rhetoric. The current dominant neoliberal discourse in education, which prioritises a view of aspiration that is competitive, qualification-focused, and economic, shapes the subjectivities of these young males though there exist nuanced strategies of resistance. In an era of high modernity where youth feel increasing risk, the identities of young people are subject to tremendous change where traditional class and gendered boundaries are being subverted, reimagined, and reconstituted. Focusing on academic engagement as an identity negotiation, this research critically considers where young men enact strategies to construct themselves as ‘having value’ in spaces of devaluing where they reconcile competing and contrasting conceptions of aspiration.

Abstract Pristine placenaming or pristine toponymy is a concept first put forward by : 333). Ross considers a toponym pristine ‘if, and only if, we are cognisant of the actual act of its creation.’ This paper redefines and extends Ross’s definition of pristine toponymy and considers the role of pristine toponyms and pristine toponymies on small islands which were ‘toponymically uninhabited’ prior to European colonization, that is, they had no recorded toponymic history.

Orientation: This study explored strategies for identity work that are central to the negotiation and regulation of employee work identity.Research purpose: The main aim of this study was to explore employee narratives and identify the strategies available to them in the process of identity work, as they defined themselves at work.Motivation for the study: As there is a scarcity of research on identity work in South Africa, this study wanted to advance knowledge about identity work and the strategies used for regulating and negotiating an identity at work by exploring these constructs in this context.Research design, approach and method: A qualitative research process formed the basis for this study. Nineteen employees from a global manufacturing company participated in two semi-structured in-depth interviews. Grounded theory was applied to analyse and interpret the data.Main findings: Nine strategies for identity work were identified and categorised into four broad themes (personal philosophies; relationships; career management and negotiating balance).Practical/managerial implications: Employees followed various strategies for defining themselves at work and this may have some implications for employee work engagement and productivity.Contribution/value-add: This study expands on current theoretical knowledge of identity work, and provides insights into the strategies people use to regulate and negotiate their identities at work.

Orientation: The study explored the dynamics of work identity negotiation and construction. Research purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate identity tensions and demands that mobilise identity work in the work environment. Motivation for the study: The study hoped to improve the understanding of the dynamics of identity construction and negotiation. Research design, approach and method: Using grounded theory methodology in the context of qualitative field research, the researchers conducted two unstructured interviews with 28 employees of a South African manufacturing company. Main findings: The five primary dimensions the data yielded were personal identity, individual agency, social identity, social practice and job. Practical/managerial implications: This study has implications for organisations that want to improve productivity through understanding work identity. Contribution/value-add: The article presents a conceptual model of the demands and tensions that influence work identity.