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In this paper, we aim at exploring whether and how 'organised' clusters can be conceived of as deliberate actors within their contexts. Seeing such clusters as meta-organisations, we suggest that these can make 'organisationality' design choices, or decisions regarding full or partial implementation of the five elements constitutive of formal organisations: membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctions. To explore the relationship between clusters' organisationality and actorhood, we conduct two qualitative case studies of organised clusters in Australia. Our findings suggest that clusters can deliberately 'construct' themselves both as organisations and social actors. Furthermore, drawing upon the institutional work perspective, we propose that clusters can engage in deliberate identity, boundary, and practice work. However, in doing so, they address both internal and external legitimating audiences. Finally, our findings suggest that clusters' organisationality design choices may influence the locus of their actorhood resulting in more or less collaborative approaches to institutional work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As concerns spread about the capacity of teacher education programmes to prepare preservice teachers for entry into the teaching profession, literature and policy have begun to scrutinise the knowledge and skills of teacher educators. Some publications have focused on the professional development needed by teacher educators to align their teaching with standards-based reform policies. Little attention has been paid, though, to the complex ways teacher educators, individually and in communities, negotiate these policies in the course of their day-to-day practices. This qualitative study examines how standards-based reforms have come to dominate teacher education policy in the English speaking world, and how they have influenced the practices and identities of teacher educators over the past three decades. It employs reflexive autobiographical narratives written by five English teacher educators from different generations in one Australian university to investigate how their practices and identities are shaped by, or resistant to, the de-professionalising potential of standards-based reforms. The authors advocate for the concept of ideological becoming to better understand the formation and development of English teacher educators, and they identify a number of 'enablers' which can activate and sustain teacher educators' becoming throughout their careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese people have actively engaged in transnational and cross-cultural business activities in recent decades. Some Chinese people have moved their business activities to overseas countries, in particular, to developed countries. Some of them have migrated and settled down in a host space. About the case: This study aims to examine the identity work—in particular, the construction of a hybrid identity—and the business communication of a Chinese–Australian migrant, Jack, from the perspective of Chinese researchers. Situating the case: The communication characteristics of Chinese people are reviewed, and some factors related to identity work are examined. These interrelated strands provide a foundation for analyzing Jack's business communication and identity work in a host context. Research questions: (1) As an immigrant, how has Jack managed his identities in his business communication with self and Others during his life experience of more than 20 years in Australia? (2) Has Jack achieved a hybrid identity that enables him to switch his identities as he confronts the communication challenges of business situations? (3) What forces affect Jack's everyday business communication and identity work as a Chinese–Australian migrant in Australia? Methodology: Theories are applied to analyze anecdotes relating to the business communication and identity work of the migrant chosen for this case study. The first author is positioned as a cultural insider and ethnographer, observing, experiencing, and reflecting on some episodes in Jack's everyday business communication and identity work. The second author's informed input as an outsider to the case study provides interpretation of data and adds balance and a measure of objectivity. Results: Jack's communication with self and cultural Others is presented and analyzed to examine his complicated identity work in a host business arena. His shifting hybrid identity helps him to cross the border of his host culture and obtain privileges in business competition. These stories reveal that Jack's identity is continually changed and reconstructed as he builds social and cultural capital in his new business arena. Conclusions: This study captures characteristics of the transnational and cross-cultural business communication practices of Chinese migrants from the inside looking out, and it suggests that identity work is an ongoing and complex project, and that stereotypes should be avoided in transnational and cross-cultural business communication practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We examine how physical and psychotherapeutic discourses regulate the identity work of older workers. We show that they have separate effects: physical discourse inferred that the loss of work for older workers would be permanent whereas psychotherapeutic discourse suggested that the solution to unemployment lay in the mind of older workers themselves. They also have combined effects through the notion of grief: older workers are expected to progress through the normative stages of grief to arrive at acceptance of job loss and continued exclusion from the labour market. Despite moments of resistance in the identity work of older workers, these individuals were subjected to these regulatory effects through three key processes: participation by individual older workers in these discourses through their own identity work; collaboration from a range of diverse actors in contributing to this identity work; and translation of the meaning as initial narratives are retold by other actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]