Search

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.

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., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Snape.)

Childhood vaccination consultations are considered an important phase in parents' decision-making process. To date, only a few empirical studies conducted in the United States have investigated real-life consultations. To address this gap, we recorded Dutch vaccination conversations between healthcare providers and parents during routine health consultations for their newborns. The data were analysed using Conversation Analysis and Discursive Psychology. We found that the topic of vaccination was often initiated with 'Have you already thought about vaccination?' (HYATAV), and that this formulation was consequential for parental identity work. Exploring the interactional trajectories engendered by this initiation format we show that: (1) interlocutors treat the question as consisting of two types of queries, (2) conversational trajectories differ according to which of the queries is attended to and that (3) parents work up a 'good parent' identity in response to HYATAV, by demonstrating that they think about their child's vaccination beforehand and make their decisions independently. Our findings shed new light on the interactional unfolding of parental vaccination decisions., (© 2023 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)

Introduction: This 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., Methods: For this purpose, we conducted a qualitative study using the Grounded Theory method, involving 47 CEOs from different sectors residing in Brazil., Results: Our 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., Discussion: This 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., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Felix, Santos and Teixeira.)

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.

The changing organisation and governance of healthcare work represents a persistent focus of micro-politics. Whilst there is a developed literature describing the micro-political struggles that occur amongst healthcare occupations, there is little understanding about how, when and why actors become politically aware and active. Framed by research on political activation and the concept of identity work, this paper reports on a narrative interview study with 65 people, specifically doctors, nurses and managers, working in the English healthcare system. The narratives show that healthcare workers become increasingly aware of and engaged in micro-political activities through incremental stages based on their accumulating experiences. These stages are opportunities for identity work as actors make sense of their experiences of micro-politics, their occupational affiliations and their evolving sense of self. This identity work is shaped by actors' changing views about the morality of playing politics, the emotional implications of their engagement, and their deepening political commitments. The study shows that political socialisation and activation can vary between occupations and rather than assuming political affiliations are given or acquired the papers highlights the reflective agency of healthcare actors., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Breastfeeding 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., Methods: Based 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 Discussion: Despite 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., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Augusto, Neves and Henriques.)

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., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling editor SE declared a shared affiliation with the author at the time of review., (Copyright © 2023 Quinones.)

Sport represents a prominent topic for public and scientific debates on national identity. Looking at Germany, public discourses on national belonging have primarily focused on national elite football and on German-born international football players with Turkish background. Representing the biggest ethnic community in Germany and being highly represented in German youth elite football, athletes with Turkish background are prime examples for the complexity and ambiguity of identity formations in modern immigration countries in general and in youth elite football in particular. Current research has particularly focused on national identity formations of (youth) elite players with migrant background. However, there is a lack of studies that address the process of national identity development in youth elite sport. For that reason, the study aimed to explore stories of national identity development from the perspective of youth football players with Turkish background in German youth elite football. By conducting 10 expert interviews and biographical mappings, we identified specific types, strands, and trajectories of national identity development. Overall, we identified three types of narratives on national identity development: "going with the nomination(s)," "reconsidering national belonging," and "adding up chances". Our findings illustrate that national identity development in youth elite sport is particularly shaped by youth elite sport and the national team question. Hence, the stories indicate that international careers not necessarily foster national identification with a nation but can also reduce feelings of national belonging sustainably., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Seiberth, Thiel and John.)

Law enforcement poses a difficult work environment. Employees' wellbeing is uniquely taxed in coping with daily violent, aggressive and hostile encounters. These challenges are compounded for women, because law enforcement remains to be a male-dominated occupational context. Yet, many women in law enforcement display resilience and succeed in maintaining a satisfying career. This study explores the experience of being authentic from a best-self perspective, for women with successful careers in the South African police and traffic law enforcement services. Authenticity research substantiates a clear link between feeling authentic and experiencing psychological wellbeing. The theoretical assumption on which the study is based holds that being authentic relates to a sense of best-self and enables constructive coping and adjustment in a challenging work environment. A qualitative study was conducted on a purposive sample of 12 women, comprising 6 police officers and 6 traffic officers from the Western Cape province in South Africa. Data were gathered through narrative interviews focussing on experiences of best-self and were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. During the interviews, participants predominantly described feeling authentic in response to work-related events of a conflictual and challenging nature. Four themes were constructed from the data to describe authenticity from a best-self perspective for women in the study. These themes denote that the participating women in law enforcement, express feeling authentic when they present with a mature sense of self, feel spiritually congruent and grounded, experience self-actualisation in the work-role and realign to a positive way of being. Women should be empowered towards authenticity in their world of work, by helping them to acquire the best-self characteristics needed for developing authenticity., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Jacobs and Barnard.)

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., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Hosszu, Rughiniş, Rughiniş and Rosner.)

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., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Jiang.)

Background: In the past years an increasing amount of research has been done on the experiences of adult children of a parent with early-onset dementia. However, little is still known about how the socio-cultural context influences the narratives of these children., Aim: This study aimed to provide insights into the far-reaching consequences of parental early-onset dementia for adult children in the Netherlands. It illustrates how the experiences of these adult children are shaped by the context they live in., Method: 16 in-depth interviews were conducted with adult children of a parent with early-onset dementia in the Netherlands. The interviews offered the children space to reflect on the impact the illness of their parent had on them and their lives. The data were analysed using thematic analysis., Findings: This article illustrates that the comparative processes of relating to others' experiences help the children to reflect on the impact that their parent's illness has on their own lives, which in turn aids them in contextualising and making meaning out of their changing lives and relationships. This contextualization and recovery of meaning is shaped by three processes. The first concerns the ways these adult children draw comparisons between their own lives and experiences and those of their peers of the same age group. The second process entails comparative understandings of having a parent with early-onset dementia versus having a parent with late-onset dementia. The third process explores how having a parent with early-onset dementia compares to having a parent with other diseases. The processes of contextualisation which the adult children engage in are shaped by what the children perceive to be normal and thus also by their socio-cultural contexts., Conclusions: This article reveals how meaning is created in a constant interplay between the primary experiences of having an ill parent and the socio-cultural context in which the experiences take place. It illustrates how this context provides for particular narratives, which in turn shape how the children are able to give meaning to their experiences.

This article reports a study illustrating the relationship between digitalization and professional development from an identity-centered perspective. Drawing on a unique data set of 101 empathy-based stories from 81 Finnish government workers, the findings show how workers might experience and respond to work-identity alignments and misalignments in a digitalized working life and how this might influence their professional development. We identify four typifications-the thriving developer, the loyal transformer, the stagnant self-doubter, and the career crafter- and illustrate how digitalization can either support or hinder professional development by inducing work-identity (mis)alignments and how workers may respond to these in different ways by engaging in identity work and job crafting. In particular, our findings emphasize the role professional identity and agency play in professional development and highlight the importance of recognizing how digitalization of work can threaten or support workers' professional identities to build a supportive working environment where the workers feel like they are valued and able to develop in a meaningful way., Competing Interests: Conflict of InterestThe authors declare that they have no relevant financial or no-financial interests to disclose., (© The Author(s) 2022.)

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., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Wendling and Sagas.)

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities facing educators who wish to facilitate management students' identity construction as a means to foster their students' emergent professional identities and post-graduate career attainments. We look to medical and law schools' recent advancements, alongside their traditional dissemination of knowledge and technical skills, in better aligning students' developing identities and related behaviors with respective professional ideals. Drawing on insights from these professional schools, we examine whether the concept of "professional virtues" that's proven valuable in these contexts might also be used to facilitate students' professional identity construction within management education., (© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Using data from in-depth interviews with 38 U.S. service-women, this article explores women's responses to sexual harassment in the military workplace. I argue that in an extremely gendered and masculine institution, sexual harassment threatens service-women's identities as military insiders, presenting an identity dilemma for them. To resolve this dilemma, women prioritize their masculinity and downplay and excuse harassment. In contrast, service-women who have experienced sexual assault or combat confront sexual harassment. I argue that this is possible because for these two groups of women, sexual harassment does not present an identity dilemma. I show how masculinity is used to downplay and normalize harassment as well as to resist it.

To remain relevant and valuable, the psychology profession in South Africa continues to transform and evolve in response to the changing needs of society. Some psychologists embark on development opportunities to advance their professional qualifications and skills. In doing so, they experience identity tensions inherent to professional identity development and transformation. Understanding how psychologists cope with professional identity transition will enable them to develop a self-efficacious service offering and broaden the reach of psychology in the South African context. The aim of this study was to explore the identity work of a group of eight consulting psychology doctoral students to develop a system psychodynamic understanding of their coping dynamics while transitioning to a professional role identity. Students' self-reflective essays about becoming a consulting psychologist constituted the data protocols for the study and were analysed through hermeneutic phenomenological analysis. Findings describe how students cope with performance and survival anxieties through anti-task behaviour and immature as well as sophisticated psychodynamic defences. The study contributes to the exploration of the coping concept and its manifestation, by proposing defensive coping as a natural dynamic phenomenon in the process of adapting to a transforming professional identity.

Human sexuality is a highly regulated but fluid construct that people communicatively organize around. What has been socially constructed as "normal" sexuality (e.g., preferences, rights, vocabulary, etc.) has shifted dramatically over time, and differently between communities and geographic boundaries. In workplace contexts, where policies and daily practices explicitly and implicitly regulate performances of and communication about sexuality, regional and cultural sexual "norms" can affect how people of diverse sexualities understand and experience their jobs. The Midwestern United States is a particularly complex and diverse region when considering sexual equality in the workplace. Using the lens of co-sexuality, this study explores how people identifying with varying sexual, gender, and professional identities in Midwestern workplaces explained their perceptions of "normal" sexuality and how it affected their workplace experiences. Participants drew on the master narrative of the Midwest, composed of perceived Judeo-Christian norms and a cultural discomfort with difference, and described feeling simultaneously pulled toward and pushed away from cultural sexual "norms" in their day-to-day work environments.

This article explores the relationship between personal sacrifice and identity work within conditions of profound structural insecurity. We develop the concept of sacrificial labour to describe how individual self-sacrifice aligns workers' identities to the needs of organizations while gradually foreclosing the actualization of individuals' desired future selves. Drawing upon qualitative data from a longitudinal study of healthy individuals who enrol in paid clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry, we make two contributions to the identity-work literature. First, we argue that the ongoing project of building stable and secure identities may become damaging when structural and cultural conditions defy even provisional, fragile attainment of this goal. Second, we reflect on how racialization and social marginalization erode identities and constrain possibilities for identity recuperation. Whereas the identity-work literature often focuses on the agential accomplishments of individuals, we provide a troubling account of how persistent social and economic inequalities confound identity realization efforts.

Purpose: Examining the self-identification of physician managers with their manager and clinician roles, and its impact on the state and professional powers in healthcare governance., Design/methodology/approach: With purposive sampling, a total of 15 frontline clinical department managers (mainly principal consultants) and directorial managers (mainly Hospital Chief Executives) were recruited to elite interviews. The themes for data collection and analysis were based on a systematic scoping review of previous empirical studies., Findings: Physician managers maintained respective jurisdictions in policymaking and clinical governance, as well as their primary self-identification as rationalizers or protectors of medicine, according to their managerial roles at a directorial or departmental level. However, a two-way hybridization of physician managers allowed the exchange of clinical and managerial authority, resulting in cooperation alongside struggles among medical elites; while some frontline managers were exposed to managerial values with the awareness of budget and organizational administration, some directorial managers remained aligned to a traditional mode of professional communication, such as persuasion through informal personal networks and by using clinician language and maintaining symbolic contact with the clinical field., Originality/value: This study identifies the inconsistency in physician managers' identity work, as well as its patterns. It goes beyond a dichotomized framework of professionalism versus managerialism or an arbitrarily blurred identity., (© Emerald Publishing Limited.)

Physicians are known for safeguarding their professional identities against organisational influences. However, this study shows how a medical leadership programme enables the reconstruction of professional identities that work with rather than against organisational and institutional contexts to improve quality and efficiency of care. Based on an ethnographic study, the results illustrate how physicians initially construct conflicting leadership narratives - heroic (pioneer), clinical (patient's guardian) and collaborative (linking pin) leader - in reaction to changing organisational and clinical demands. Each narrative contains a particular relational-agentic view of physicians regarding the contexts of hospitals: respectively as individually shapeable; disconnected or collectively adjustable. Interactions between teachers, participants, group discussions and in-hospital experiences led to the gradual deconstruction of the heroic -and clinical leader narrative. Collaborative leadership emerged as the desirable new professional identity. We contribute to the professional identity literature by illustrating how physicians make a gradual transition from viewing organisational and institutional contexts as pre-given to contexting, that is, continuously adjusting the context with others. When engaged in contexting, physicians increasingly consider managers and directors as necessary partners and colleague-physicians who do not wish to change as the new 'anti-identity'., (© 2019 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL.)

Despite common experiences of identity damage, decline, and deterioration, many brain injury survivors succeed in reconstructing robust identities in the wake of injury. Yet, while this accomplishment greatly benefits survivors' quality of life, little is known about how positive identity work might be facilitated or enhanced in therapeutic institutions. Drawing on data from a women's self-help group, we argue that an egalitarian, reflective, strength-focused, and gender-segregated environment can provide female ABI (acquired brain injury) survivors with a fertile scene for identity enhancement and offer unique opportunities for collective identity development. Sociolinguistic interactional analysis revealed four types of positive identity work undertaken within the group: constructing competent selves; tempering the threat of loss and impairment; resisting infantilisation and delegitimisation; and asserting a collective gender identity. This identity work was facilitated by specific programme attributes and activities and contributed to the global project of decentring disability and destigmatising impairments and losses. We call for increased attention to identity issues in brain injury rehabilitation and argue that gender-segregated programming can provide a unique space for female survivors to construct empowering individual and collective identities after injury.

Using a longitudinal in-depth field study at NASA, I investigate how the open, or peer-production, innovation model affects R&D professionals, their work, and the locus of innovation. R&D professionals are known for keeping their knowledge work within clearly defined boundaries, protecting it from individuals outside those boundaries, and rejecting meritorious innovation that is created outside disciplinary boundaries. The open innovation model challenges these boundaries and opens the knowledge work to be conducted by anyone who chooses to contribute. At NASA, the open model led to a scientific breakthrough at unprecedented speed using unusually limited resources; yet it challenged not only the knowledge-work boundaries but also the professional identity of the R&D professionals. This led to divergent reactions from R&D professionals, as adopting the open model required them to go through a multifaceted transformation. Only R&D professionals who underwent identity refocusing work dismantled their boundaries, truly adopting the knowledge from outside and sharing their internal knowledge. Others who did not go through that identity work failed to incorporate the solutions the open model produced. Adopting open innovation without a change in R&D professionals' identity resulted in no real change in the R&D process. This paper reveals how such processes unfold and illustrates the critical role of professional identity work in changing knowledge-work boundaries and shifting the locus of innovation.

Health social work is a field with challenges, opportunities, and ways of professing social work that may vary between different national contexts. In this article, we look at how Romanian health social workers construct their professional identity through their everyday identity work. Drawing on a qualitative study based on interviews with 21 health social workers working in various organizational contexts, we analyze what health social workers say they do and how this shapes their self-conception as professionals. Four main themes emerged from participants' descriptions: being a helping professional, being a mediator, gaining recognition, and contending with limits. Through these themes, participants articulated the everyday struggles and satisfactions specific to working as recently recognized professionals in Romanian health and welfare systems not always supportive of their work.

The relationship between private security professionals and the military in Israel is complex. While there is growing attention to the fact that security and military actors and their activities are becoming increasingly blurred, the Israeli case shows something different. In this ground-up analysis of the relationship between private security practices and the military, I investigate its constant negotiation by private security professionals through their identification with and differentiation from the military, whereby they reconfigure the meaning of military capital. This identity work should be understood, I propose, within the strongly militarist context of Israeli society, where military capital is highly valued. I argue that actors who exit the military system feel the need to demonstrate the added value of their work in the private sector in order for it to gain value in the light of the symbolic capital given to the military. I analyse these processes as leading to a new kind of militarism, which includes security skills and ideas about professionalism. Such an approach sheds new light on the ways in which security actors can actively reconfigure the workings of military capital in and outside the nation-state and produce a different kind of militarism.

Objectives: Research on the health-enhancing effects of later life activities gives limited attention to the age-segregated nature of many organizations; such consideration draws into focus identity processes contributing to these benefits. Studies also focus more on social than on educational organizations. We address these limitations by examining older adults' identity work within the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), a not-for-credit later life educational organization., Method: We use qualitative data from three sources: interviews with OLLI participants and staff (n = 32); observations at OLLI courses, events, and two regional conferences (118 hours); and content analysis of program materials. Data analyses followed a grounded theory approach., Results: Analyses revealed identity work allowing members to view themselves as "lifelong learners." This work involved four processes: (a) framing as a college experience, (b) distancing from nonacademic pursuits, (c) embracing the mature love of learning, and (d) (re)casting themselves as lifelong students., Discussion: Our study contributes to research on the benefits of later life activity by illuminating identity work processes operating within an age-segregated educational organization. These processes allow members to positively frame themselves as older adults; however, they not only reinforce stereotypes of younger and older adults but also devalue older adults unable to participate or uninterested in lifelong learning programs., (© The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

This article analyzes the concept of "grand challenges" as part of a shift in how scientists and policymakers frame and communicate their respective agendas. The history of the grand challenges discourse helps to understand how identity work in science and science policy has been transformed in recent decades. Furthermore, the question is raised whether this discourse is only an indicator, or also a factor in this transformation. Building on conceptual history and historical semantics, the two parts of the article reconstruct two discursive shifts. First, the observation that in scientific communication references to "problems" are increasingly substituted by references to "challenges" indicates a broader cultural trend of how attitudes towards what is problematic have shifted in the last decades. Second, as the grand challenges discourse is rooted in the sphere of sports and competition, it introduces a specific new set of societal values and practices into the spheres of science and technology. The article concludes that this process can be characterized as the sportification of science, which contributes to self-mobilization and, ultimately, to self-optimization of the participating scientists, engineers, and policymakers.

This study examines "identity work" among hybrid doctor-managers (DMs) in the Spanish National Health System to make sense of their managerial roles. In particular, the meanings underlying DMs experience of their hybrid role are investigated using a Grounded Theory methodology, exposing distinctions in role-meanings. Our findings provide evidence that using different social sources of comparison (senior managers or clinicians) to construct the meaning of managerial roles leads to different role-meanings and role identities, which are the source of the two established types of DM in the literature, the reluctant and the enthusiast. The contribution is twofold: our findings lead us to theorize DMs' identity work processes by adding an overlooked role-meaning dimension to identity work; and raise practical reflections for those who wish to develop enthusiast doctor managers., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This article develops theoretical understanding of the involvement of wealthy entrepreneurs in socially transformative projects by offering a foundational theory of philanthropic identity narratives. We show that these narratives are structured according to the metaphorical framework of the journey , through which actors envision and make sense of personal transformation. The journey provides a valuable metaphor for conceptualizing narrative identities in entrepreneurial careers as individuals navigate different social landscapes, illuminating identities as unfolding through a process of wayfinding in response to events, transitions and turning-points. We delineate the journey from entrepreneurship to philanthropy, and propose a typology of rewards that entrepreneurs claim to derive from giving. We add to the expanding literature on narrative identities by suggesting that philanthropic identity narratives empower wealthy entrepreneurs to generate a legacy of the self that is both self- and socially oriented, these 'generativity scripts' propelling their capacity for action while ensuring the continuation of their journeys.

Objective: to explore the strategies Chinese midwives employed to work on their professional identity in hospital setting and the consequence of such identity work., Design and Methods: this paper draws upon findings from a Constructivist Grounded Theory study that explored the professional identity construction of 15 Chinese midwives with a mixture of midwifery experiences, practising in three different types of hospital settings in a capital city in Southeast China. The accounts from participants in the form of in-depth individual interviews were collected. Work journals voluntarily provided by three participants were also included., Findings: in everyday practice, hospital midwives in China were working on their professional identity in relation to two definitions of the midwife: the external definition ('obstetric nurse'), bound up in the idea of risk management under the medical model of their work organisations; and the internal definition ('professional midwife'), associated with the philosophy of normal birth advocacy in the professional discourse. Six strategies for identity work were identified and grouped into two principle categories: 'compromise' and 'engagement'. The adoption of each strategy involved a constant negotiation between the external and internal definitions of the midwife, being influenced by midwifery experiences, relationships with women, opportunities for professional development and the definition of the situation. A 'hybrid identity', which demonstrated the dynamic nature of midwifery professional identity, was constructed as a result., Key Conclusions and Implications: this paper explored the dynamic nature of midwifery professional identity. This exploration contributes to the body of knowledge regarding understanding the professional identity of hospital midwives in China, while also extending the current theoretical knowledge of identity work by elaborating on the various strategies individuals use to work on their professional identity in the workplace., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The construction of space in which a story takes place can have important consequences for the evaluation of health interventions. In this article, we explore the ways professionals narratively position themselves in a situation, treating identity literally as "knowing one's place." More specifically, we explore the spatial language health professionals use to describe their work. Using descriptions of professionals in a drug habilitation organization, we illustrate how they use route (i.e., an active tour through the space), survey (i.e., a stationary viewpoint from above), and gaze perspectives (i.e. a stable viewpoint onto a place) to explain the work situations they encounter. Each of these perspectives facilitates a different mode of evaluation in terms of distance, emotion, and identity. We propose opportunities for research and implications of the ways in which spaces and spatial perspectives set the scene in the narratives of healthcare professionals., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

To examine identity work of smokers attempting to quit, we undertook participant observation at an Israeli cessation support group. Grounded theory and thematic analysis of group dialogue permitted identification of recurring themes and the presentation of illustrative vignettes. We found that, rather than the linear, goal-oriented constitution of a univocal non-smoking identity, identity work entailed re-appraisals of the experience of liminality between smoking and non-smoking selves. Although the group participants reduced their tobacco consumption and some even quit, specific technologies of self sustained the smoking self alongside the non-smoking self. We propose that the social contextualisation of the smoker in the context of late modernity may explain the tolerance of chronic ambivalence and the constitution of a 'resistant' smoking- non-smoking self. Phenomenological accounts of the experience of this hybrid self may more fully explain protracted or failed cessation and further deconstruct binary readings of indulgence or control, addiction or abstinence and illness or wellness. Our findings call for the re-conceptualisation of the experience and outcome of protracted cessation and a tolerant policy-driven intervention., (© 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)

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.

Recently HIV has been framed as a 'manageable' chronic disease in contexts in which access to effective care is reliable. The chronic disease paradigm emphasizes self-care, biomedical disease management, social normalization, and uncertainty. Data from a longitudinal study of patients (N = 949) in HIV care at two sites in Uganda, collected through semistructured interviews and ethnographic data, permit examination of the salience of this model in a high burden, low resource context struggling to achieve the promise of a manageable HIV epidemic. Our data highlight the complexity of the emerging social reality of long-term survival with HIV. Participants struggle to manage stigma as well as to meet the costs involved in care seeking. In these settings, economic vulnerability leads to daily struggles for food and basic services. Reconceptualizing the chronic disease model to accommodate a 'social space,' recognizing this new social reality will better capture the experience of long-term survival with HIV.

Individuals who experience speech dysfluency are often stigmatised because their speech acts differ from the communicative norm. This article is located in and seeks to further the identity debates in exploring how individuals who are subject to the intermittent emergence of a stigmatised characteristic manage this randomised personal discrediting in their identity work. Through a series of focus groups and semi-structured interviews participants grudgingly report their management approaches which include concealing, drafting in unwitting others, role-playing and segregating self from their stammer. In describing how they manage their stammer they detail their use of the social space in a number of ways, including as a hiding place; a site for 'it' (the stammer); a gap in which to switch words; and a different area in which to perform. This study offers important insights, increasing our understanding of the often hidden negotiations of identity work and the sometime ingenious use of space in the management of a social stigma., (© 2013 The Author. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2013 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley © Sons Ltd. Published by John Wiley © Sons Ltd.)