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Many professionals want to both achieve professional success and contribute to society. Yet, in some professional contexts, these aims are in tension because serving elite clients is considered the pinnacle of professional success, but professionals themselves may view serving this clientele as antithetical to making a societal contribution. Drawing on interviews with 84 architects and designers who self-identify as people seeking to contribute to society—that is, who hold a prosocial identity—we develop theory about how professionals navigate tensions between their prosocial and professional identities and with what consequences for their work with clients. We identified four strategies that professionals used to ease these tensions, all of which gave the prosocially oriented professionals a sense of identity integration. However, these strategies differently shaped professionals' approach to power relations with the client, depending on the client's status and the types of knowledge and skills each professional viewed as central to their work. Professionals with marginalized social identities, such as women and ethnic/racial minorities, were more likely than others to embrace working with low-status clients and to use broader definitions of the knowledge and skills required for their work. Our findings contribute to scholarship on professional identity construction and prosocial work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in adjustment issues Veterans face following incarceration has grown rapidly in response to the prevalence of stress-related disorders as well as the physical, social, and occupational challenges when reintegrating into communities. While reintegration may be a positive event that includes the reunification of family, friends, and a return to civilian life, transition can also involve a wide range of difficulties and crises impacting readjustment. Veteran reintegration has been understood as a complex process influenced by different levels, such as at the individual, interactional, and socio-cultural level. This article takes a Veteran standpoint to explore how Veterans' lived experiences are a basis to understand their transition readiness. Specifically, identity work clarifies the empirical self-constructions of Veterans' standpoint and their everyday strategies used for post-incarceration transition efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Drawing on an intersectional perspective on racial, migrant and entrepreneurial identities, this paper investigates the identity work of racial minority entrepreneurs with native-born and migrant backgrounds, confronted to experiences of othering in a White entrepreneurial ecosystem. Design/methodology/approach: The study takes a qualitative-interpretivist approach and builds on six cases of racial minority entrepreneurs in nascent stages of venture development within the Dutch technology sector. The dataset comprises 24 in-depth interviews conducted over the course of one and a half year, extensive case descriptions and online sources. The data is thematically and inductively analysed. Findings: Despite strongly self-identifying as entrepreneurs, the research participants feel marginalised and excluded from the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which results in ongoing threats to their existential authenticity as they build a legitimate entrepreneurial identity. Minority entrepreneurs navigate these threats by either downplaying or embracing their marginalised racial and/or migrant identities. Originality/value: The study contributes to the literature on the identity work of minority entrepreneurs. The paper reveals that, rather than "strategising away" the discrimination and exclusion resulting from othering, racial minority entrepreneurs seek to preserve their sense of existential authenticity and self-worth, irrespective of entrepreneurial outcomes. In so doing, the study challenges the dominant perspective of entrepreneurial identity work among minority entrepreneurs as overly instrumental and market-driven. Moreover, the study also contributes to the literature on authenticity in entrepreneurship by highlighting how racial minority entrepreneurs navigate authenticity threats while building legitimacy in a White ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between emotions and identity work is well established, yet the dynamic between emotional dissonance and identity work remains under-researched in organizational studies. We explore this relationship in the context of organizational scandal, examining the required and experienced emotions of organizational members when 'working in the shadow of shame'. Drawing on an in-depth ethnographic study of Danske Bank collected at the peak of its money-laundering scandal, the article makes two contributions to the emerging interest in the intertwined nature of emotions and identity in organizations. First, we challenge the literature on emotional dissonance by demonstrating that employees do not attempt to resolve or reduce their emotional dissonance, but instead sustain it. Second, we advance the literature on identity work by showing how emotional dissonance can be understood as a trigger and resource for strategic and preferred identity work to maintain a positive social identity and self-identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that emergent AI systems should be viewed as working partners rather than tools. Building on this perspective, this study investigates the process through which academics develop a working partnership with generative AI chatbots using a relationship lens and collaborative autoethnographic methods. Based on a collaborative autoethnographic analysis of our experiences of working with AI, we identify five stages of relationship development in building a successful working partnership with generative AI: Playing Around, Infatuation, Committing, Frustration, and Enlightenment and Readjustment. In reporting each stage, we provide vignettes to illustrate the emotional and cognitive challenges and rewards involved, the developing skills, and the experienced anthropomorphic dimension of this emerging relationship. Drawing on prior theory, we identify and examine three types of work that are required in developing this working partnership: articulation work, relationship work, and identity work. We analyse how each type of work unfolds with the stages of relationship development and consider implications for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Finland, a grassroots initiative for accommodating asylum-seeking migrants in local homes took off in 2015. This hospitable initiative is about offering asylum seekers the chance to live with locals during the asylum process rather than in a reception centre. Drawing on the voices of local hosts, the article investigates how the racialised and gendered public discourses on asylum-seekers are challenged and reproduced in home accommodation. Moreover, it examines the identity work undertaken by hosts in the context of home, here conceptualised as contested and meaning laden space between the political and the intimate. Empirically, the article is based on qualitative interviews conducted with local hosts who accommodated asylum seekers in Southern Finland. The analysis shows how intersectional power relations structure the hosts' expectations and the relationships formed in complex ways, as they narrate the cohabitation experience in relation to gender, sexuality, class, and cultural differences and in relation to broader societal discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how homeroom teachers construct meaningfulness in their work and in their professional identity, and how this meaningfulness serves them as they interpret and react to public criticism of their profession. Our study relies on interviews with 95 teachers working in Israeli elementary‐, middle‐ and high schools, and draws on the theoretical lens of discursive identity work. We argue that meaningfulness is at the heart of homeroom teachers' identity. Accordingly, when faced with public criticism that questions the meaningfulness of their work, teachers experience threats to their professional identity. Notably, such identity threats are of a gendered nature, as teachers make sense of public criticism by conceptualising it through the gendered stereotype of 'babysitting'. Furthermore, female teachers are much more likely than male teachers to face criticism from family members and friends. We identify remedial identity work strategies that teachers employ in the face of such identity threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an expansion of the perspective on 'differences' by proposing a novel theoretical concept: 'differences work'. Differences work is the subjective and intersubjective effort that is put in place to approach differences from a dynamic stance, to encompass the different processes – identity, relational, and cultural – intertwined in experiencing ourselves and the relationship with differences. The concept is illustrated in its cognitive and emotional components. The paper contributes to developing new sensitivities to the in-situ work on differences, advising to investigate empirically how differences work deploys. The paper suggests methodologies for digging into dialogues and conversations, for entering the self-constructions and others' counter-constructions of differences, and for observing their dynamic and fluid evolution as it happens. The new concept enriches the possibility of going beyond category-oriented policies and orientations in organizations, which are generally aimed at proposing activities not always sufficient to represent all the differences circulating in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worker mothers still struggle to find a good balance between their care and work identities. Most research on motherhood at work focuses on how organizational structures can enable professional women to find a balance between caring and work identities neglecting their personal experiences and how they understand themselves in relation to both motherhood and work. We propose to use a liminal identity work perspective to explore the identity tensions that professional women experience during their transition into motherhood and how they manage it. To explore this question, we conducted a qualitative study over 2 years with worker mothers in Latin and North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Africa. The thematic and narrative analysis of 80 individual narrative interviews shows the emergence of two coexisting identity narratives. The first narrative understands motherhood as a linear process, where women experience liminality, uncertainty, and identity loss but eventually return to work after having aggregated their new worker mother identities during maternity leaves. The second coexisting narrative challenges this linear and finite view by highlighting the transition to motherhood as a continuous, liminoid, and never‐ending process. The two narratives are contextualized and managed differently according to the different cultural, historical, and social contexts where they are developed; the overall results present motherhood as a 'liminoid' experience that requires constant identity work to navigate the tensions emerging between potentially new and customary identities and behaviors in work contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

Based on narrative interviews with late-phase doctoral candidates and early postdoctoral researchers, complemented by an autoethnographic diary, this study analyses the experiences of junior academics. A rational ideal of the doctoral process is identified, and its implications for doctoral students’ identity work are discussed. While the rational ideal of the doctoral process has its uses, it prescribes the preferred conduct of doctoral studies and regulates doctoral identities through preferred conceptions of the self. Consequently, doctoral identity work often involves the construction of one’s self in ways that seek to conform to the rational ideal while continuously failing to do so, making deviance from expectations a prevailing feature of it. These experiences of deviance from the elusive ideal both increase the precariousness of doctoral identities and reproduce the regimes of power in which doctoral students are embedded. Thus, this paper challenges the rational ideal and provides a more nuanced understanding of doctoral studies as a precarious, emotional and embodied identity construction process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the challenges Muslims face because of their stigmatized religious identity, little is known about how they navigate that identity in the workplace. Adopting an interpretivist perspective of identity work, this study investigates this issue by building on two‐round in‐depth interviews (35 in round‐one and 21 in round‐two) with skilled practising British Muslim professionals. It extends work on power positions to show the privileges those in senior managerial positions have, including assertiveness and control over workplace interactions and outcomes. It further advances understanding of authenticity, revealing that, despite their experiences of stigmatization, these professionals tend to remain true to their religious identity, openly practising their religion in the workplace. They perceive identity re‐interpretation to be part of authenticity, and a responsibility to contest religious stigma. Importantly, this study conceptualizes proactive religious coping as an identity work response to workplace stigmatization, theorized in this organizational context as turning to God and religious rituals for meaning, comfort, resilience and reconciliation, whilst also being proactive and fighting to challenge experiences of stigmatization. However, unlike for other stigmatized groups, inclusive organizational practices, particularly religious accommodation, are not a driver for authenticity, but rather a signal for environment‐fit and authenticity is instead driven by religious identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As ventures grow, founders must decide between hanging on to control over venture decision‐making or delegating authority to professional managers. This decision is challenging since founders are typically driven by strong feelings of ownership toward their ventures. Adopting a qualitative research design with a grounded theory approach, we investigate the psychological ownership impacts on self and others within the venture when founders delegate decision rights to professional managers. Our analysis draws on in‐depth interviews with 30 founders and 14 professional managers hired by the founders. We develop the first process model of founders' dynamic venture‐targeted psychological ownership and demonstrate how recalibrating psychological ownership is key to the successful delegation of authority to professional managers. Our conceptual model also outlines a novel relationship between recalibrated psychological ownership and founder identity work. We outline our theoretical contributions to psychological ownership and identity control theory and offer practical advice to founders and their professional managers to help with the successful recalibration of founders' venture‐targeted psychological ownership in support of effective delegation and venture growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses epistemic violence in social science research, drawing on a multiyear study with marginalized teenagers in Old Havana, Cuba to articulate an onto-epistemological approach to knowledge production that can contribute to the decoloniality of knowledge production. Building on decolonial, feminist, Indigenous, and poststructuralist theories, the heuristic presented here contributes an alternative to conventional positivist understandings of knowledge, by defining knowledge as social, created, performed and resistant, and illustrates how these theoretical tenets can be made material in research practice, in this case through the use of arts-based methods. Responding to calls to decolonize knowledge within the field of children's geographies and adjacent disciplines, this paper addresses the attendant need to reconceptualize what counts as knowledge and identify methodological innovations to support the achievement of these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic paper explores attitudes and perceptions of Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) regarding Palestinians from the West Bank (PWB). It focuses on the semantic complex of ḍaffāwi ('who comes from the West Bank'), which entails a combination of cultural superiority, distrust, romanticizing, and ambivalence. Treating the ḍaffāwi as a speech act and reading it as a cultural text that is rooted in PCI's collective political unconscious, we argue that their mixed attitudes of superiority and idealization with regard to WBP, and by implication their self-Orientalism, reflect a deep sense of deadlock that characterizes their identity work, as indigenous citizens of an ethnocratic state that has been colonizing their people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how the identities of frontline professionals are (re)constructed in their talk about their everyday work activities. Based on a study of a mental health and addiction counselling service organization in Ontario, we illustrate that when talking about acting in accordance with their organizational policies, the social workers' identities are disciplined by and appropriated from addressing the practices of documentation and regular meetings with their supervisors that constitute the routine processes of organizing. However, when discussing instances where they override the organizationally sanctioned rules, their identities are disciplined by the aspiration of fabricating a client-centred caregiver identity adopted from the dominant discourse in their profession. We, therefore, counterbalance the understanding that professionals' identity work related to their deliberate micro-emancipation acts are merely an expression of agency and argue that their preferred resistant identities pertaining to their self-declared apparent deviation from the organizational order are also made within frameworks of disciplinary power. By delineating that both discursive conformity and resistance cut across the boundaries between acting in alignment with and against organizational guidelines, we unveil an underexplored complexity of conducting professional identity work associated with the interrelationships between practices of talk and action that has largely been overlooked in prior scholarship. We, therefore, offer an action-related analysis of discursive identity work that extends beyond the context of this study and informs future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the discursive manifestation of normativities and participants' orientation to them for identity work in coming-out-to-family discourses in Japanese YouTube videoclips posted by self-identified gay men. The study focuses on how the participants – the YouTubers and their family members – use discourses of normativity as a resource to illegitimize and legitimize sexual identities. It also touches on the conceptualization of homonormativity in the Japanese context. The analysis suggests that in societies like that of Japan, where heteronormative ideals are deeply entrenched in the culture, homonormativity may not be fully conceptualized at the level of local gay male communities, while the dominant heterosexual community, conversely, may have a clear vision of homonormativity for these individuals. It thus further considers the viewpoints that shape normativities for marginalized social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a collaborative ethnography told through narratives and a counter-map drawn from Mapuche ontology, we determine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) simultaneously fractures and strengthens the collective identity of an Indigenous community through the mechanism of community benefit sharing. This study reveals how a young Mapuche Indigenous leader, Simón, and his allies underwent the re-rooting and resurgence of their ancestral identity while resisting the construction of a hydropower project and the company's CSR, as well as their neighbours who supported the project. This study also discusses the emergence of repoliticized spirituality because of the collective identity work dynamics. We propose that this form of spirituality is particularly salient within groups whose ancestors endured colonization. This phenomenon unfolds through a sequence of mechanisms, including collectively reaching breaking points catalysed by external threats (e.g. large-scale projects) that prompt group self-reflection regarding their identity and history. Subsequently, Indigenous communities mobilize to safeguard their ancestral ontologies and spirituality. This, we assert, is a political act. We conclude by reflecting on the social responsibilities of businesses when interacting with Indigenous communities and territories. Managers and policymakers need to comprehend the potential impact of CSR initiatives on the intricate fabric of Indigenous identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing interest in STEM education and imminent curricular reform places new demands on teachers, giving impetus to re-examining how we prepare primary teachers for more integrated approaches. In addition to the acquisition of knowledge and skills, sustainable change demands the development of teacher identity, in which teachers are seen by themselves and others as STEM teachers. This paper reports on the emerging STEM teacher identities of five preservice primary teachers. Using STEM story-lines as an innovative graphing exercise, participants were prompted to reflect on key events that shaped their journey and share future-oriented narratives through drawing and storytelling, as they negotiated becoming STEM teachers. Findings suggest that although their own school experiences were varied and influential, an integrated STEM intervention was the common turning point in their STEM identity development, whereby participants aligned critical components of STEM with personal experiences and values. The reflective tools used supported identity work, by triggering a rediscovery and reinterpretation of their experiences with the benefit of increased knowledge for teaching STEM and, in turn, provided a means to re-envisage the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to synthesize the extant literature that brings sociological analysis to the context, production and perpetuation of the antiracist identity. Our aim is to distinguish this analysis from the huge body of literature written from inside antiracism. Antiracism began in the latter half of the twentieth century. This examination reveals antiracism as an identity and a project of organizational production maintained through discursive and symbolic formations and institutionalized forms of governance. Its members espouse easily digestible 'common sense' ideologies of racism and anti-racism premised on a belief in the 'absolute nature' of categories of ethnicity and race. It then builds on this discursive framing with commensurate solutions at these levels. It does this through discursive projects and codification of institutional self governance. However, this racializing identity work may perpetuate racism through its classifications and its obfuscation of class privilege and economic inequalities. Its ever-expanding codified extension into organizations, businesses and global grassroots movements calls for a critical lens to direct historical, economic and political analysis onto the obfuscating work of this identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores vulnerable clients' techniques of identity talk, drawing on interviews with clients in Danish job centers. We combine the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism with the sociology of nothing to explore techniques of disidentification from the nonworker identity. The study demonstrates how the actors perform agentic vulnerability to resolve their identity dilemmas. We identify three techniques of identity talk: (1) hero‐talk to reassert their hard worker identity, (2) victim‐talk to excuse their current positions, and (3) resister‐talk through commissive and omissive responses to digital demands and requirements. The latter involves different forms of negational action: doing something, nondoing, and doing nothing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the identity (re)work undertaken by junior doctors during the junior doctors' contract dispute of 2015–16 in the National Health Service (NHS). A qualitative, longitudinal approach was used, consisting of 31 interviews with 18 junior doctors across two time periods. Findings show that the junior doctors' strike represented a major threat to their professional identities, and that the strike action instigated significant identity (re)work for the doctors. Furthermore, findings reveal three overlapping 'identity threat alleviation' strategies that were constructed by striking doctors: reluctant acceptance of their weak bargaining power due to their professional identities; a subsequent reattachment to their normative professional values; and a focus on their future careers. This study examines the effects of a 'white collar' industrial dispute through the lens of professional identity, showing how medics employ identity (re)work as a resource to help them cope with perceived assaults on their professional identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

We build a comprehensive and coherent understanding of organizational purity as an organization's steadfast adherence to a single institutional logic. This logic becomes the core tenet of its identity, an end in itself rather than a means toward survival. Instead of responding to institutional pressures, pure organizations may self-categorize vis-à-vis a potentially threatening 'other' through their own identity work. They mark and pursue their distinction from others, structure themselves to preserve their purity, and favor strategies that express the logic they embody. In so doing they may fail more often than organizations that are more responsive to institutional pressures. When pure organizations enter new institutional fields they can act as change agents, but where their logic dominates, they may block change. Different audiences, in turn, affect the success and survival of pure organizations by conferring authenticity, legitimacy or contempt, depending on their alignment with the pure organization's logic. Further examining purity will enable organizational theorists to better account for non-rational action and extend work on institutional logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the national, linguistic and ethnic profiles of students in UK higher education mean that students’ names are also likely to have become increasingly culturally diverse. In this article, we develop new empirical and theoretical understandings about how student-facing staff working in higher education in England experience cultural diversity in students’ names and the accompanying uncertainty of how some names should be pronounced. Using data from our qualitative studies we show that staff typically framed the pronunciation of names as an equalities issue, including in terms of power relations between themselves and students. Drawing on theorisations of identities as social processes, we analyse the ‘front stage’ and ‘backstage’ activities used by staff to manage the pronunciation of students’ names. We argue that, through these equality-framed activities, staff are doing ‘identity work’ in relation to their own selves and, importantly, also for students whose named-linked identities are minoritised within the ‘whiteness’ and ‘Englishness’ of higher education institutions in England. We conclude that, to support the pioneering identity work already undertaken by individual staff, policymakers in higher education should develop and implement ‘whole institution’ initiatives in recognition of the pronunciation of students’ names as a key equality, diversity and inclusion issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinas, along with many other minoritized groups, are underrepresented as inventors in the United States. Despite accounting for over 9% of the population, <1% of U.S. patent holders are Latina. In an effort to increase diversity among inventors and patent holders, a number of K-12 programs have been created to provide opportunities for students to participate in the iterative and recursive processes of inventing. One example is the emerging field of invention education. Invention education is an educational approach which teaches students how to identify and solve problems within their communities. Little is known about the experiences of Latina students who have participated in invention education and have begun developing identities as inventors. Through narrative methodology, we analyzed how the life experiences of one Latina student contributed to her identity development as an inventor. Four themes were developed through the analysis of the Latina student's narrative. The first was the early and consistent support of her family members. The second theme was the student's understanding of the importance of Latinx representation in STEM. The student's participation in extracurricular STEM activities was the third theme that contributed to the development of her identity as an inventor. The final theme was her continued involvement in engineering at the university level. While early, consistent, and continued identity work in extracurricular invention and STEM activities contributed to the development of an inventor's identity, literature has shown that opportunities such as these are not available to all students, especially those who have been historically underrepresented as inventors. We argue for making access to invention education more equitable by embedding it within the school day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientific research has become increasingly aware of power asymmetries and the elitist and exclusive nature of scientific knowledge production. These debates have resulted in more inclusive and participatory research practices. In this article, we focus on co-research, which is a participatory and multi-perspective research strategy that invites the people whom the research concerns to participate as active and influential agents throughout the research process as experts on 'the studied world.' Co-research is increasingly being adopted in research involving people who belong to marginalised groups or who face the threat of stigmatisation. Despite its increasing applications, engaging in co-research requires reflection on several methodological and ethical questions that so far have been underexplored in the methodological literature. In this article, we address challenges in practicing inclusion and overcoming power asymmetries in co-research, particularly when it is conducted with people who inhabit societal positions with institutionalised stigma and whose participation in research is usually highly limited. In this article, building on our own experiences from different co-research projects—with care leavers, experts-by-experience with a history of crime and mental health recoverers—we aim to contribute to this literature by specifically focusing on issues of inclusion of co-researchers who face the need to negotiate with institutionally stigmatised positions. We suggest that reflexivity on positionalities and attending to plurality in identity work could provide a fruitful tool for increasing inclusivity in co- (and peer) research. We claim that such reflexivity is crucial from the very beginning of a co-research process (including ways of inviting and recruiting co-researchers) because this stage is crucial, as it forms the basis for the following stages and for the possibility of practising inclusion—even if imperfect—throughout the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of interest in responsible leadership has drawn critical attention to how future leaders are formed by academic leadership education. It has forced teachers to increasingly contemplate what leadership ideas and pedagogical practices they bring to the classroom, and who they are in the light of the ideas and practices they adhere to. In this 'Leading Questions' we take an interest in how leadership educators' identities are formed and exploited in everyday teaching. The questions and comments we present are part of an ongoing conversation on identity work triggered by the controversies we experienced when co-teaching a course titled Rethinking Leadership at a renowned international business school. Where most discussions of identity work in a business school context only highlight the distressing and unfavourable aspects of identity work, we take a different approach. We confess how we struggle with our own identities as leadership educators. We then argue this identity work comes with pedagogical potential, yet to be accounted for, especially relevant to future education of critical and responsible leaders. Finally, we confess that even if our years of conversation on our different teacher identities did not result in a distinct pedagogical model, it dramatically changed and charged our ability to intentionally make space for controversial identity work in the leadership classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To increase knowledge about the consequences of introducing strategic measures in public organizations, for both intra- and interorganizational relationships, interviews in eight - and shadowing in two - public facilities management organizations were performed. Using a frame for data analysis based on institutional work, findings show that, when introducing strategic measures, public officials worked to place their organizations in a new position within the institutional field. During this process, officials engaged in both external and internal institutional work. The findings highlight how tensions between working externally and internally, influences public officials' day-to-day practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Danish retail banking is characterized by a role conflict between sales and advice. Through the lens of identity work, this study explores how bankers negotiate this conflict by seeking to make sense of themselves and justify the work that they do. We show that bankers are keenly aware of the role conflicts they face in doing their jobs, but they also discover ways of making these conflicts meaningfully productive for themselves, their employers, and their customers. To explain these findings, we introduce Hartmut Rosa's concept of resonance, provisionally understood as a processual and relational conceptualization of well-being. This leads to a conceptualization of bankers' identity work of managing the sales–advice tension as striving for professional resonance, the attainment of which is possible through three strategies: an advice orientation, which can be understood as a protection of resonance; a sale orientation, which relies on a promise of resonance; and an integration of sales and advice, which can be seen as an incorporation of resonance. Following the analysis, the normativity of resonance theory is leveraged in a critical discussion of the identified strategies of professional resonance, and the potential implications for well-being research and human resource management practices are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

Occupations are increasingly embedded with and affected by digital technologies. These technologies both enable and threaten occupational identity and create two important tensions: they make the persistence of an occupation possible while also potentially rendering it obsolete, and they magnify both the similarity and distinctiveness of occupations with regard to other occupations. Based on the critical case study of an online community dedicated to data science, we investigate longitudinally how data scientists address the two tensions of occupational identity associated with digital technologies and reach transient syntheses in terms of "optimal distinctiveness" and "persistent extinction." We propose that identity work associated with digital technologies follows a composite life-cycle and dialectical process. We explain that people constantly need to adjust and redefine their occupational identity, i.e., how they define who they are and what they do. We contribute to scholarship on digital technologies and identity work by illuminating how people deal in an ongoing manner with digital technologies that simultaneously enable and threaten their occupational identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

Digital microwork consists of remote and highly decontextualized labor that is increasingly governed by algorithms. The anonymity and granularity of such work is likely to cause alienation among workers. To date, we know little about how workers reconcile such potential feelings of alienation with their simultaneous commitment to the platform. Based on a longitudinal survey of 460 workers on a large microworking platform and a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, we show that (1) alienation is present in digital microwork. However, our study also finds that (2) workers' commitment to the platform over time may alter their subjective perceptions of alienation. Drawing from qualitative statements, we show (3) how workers perform identity work that might help reconcile feelings of alienation with simultaneous platform commitment. Our findings contribute to solving the paradox of worker commitment to precarious platform labor, which is an issue frequently raised in the digital labor literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]