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

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

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

Despite the emerging attempts to integrate identity work into teacher education programs, how identity can be incorporated into professional development of in-service teachers is still an open question. This study reports on a professional development program on productive teacher questioning that was offered to secondary school English teachers in Hong Kong. The program aimed to pedagogize identity work for the native English-speaking teacher participants while they were engaging in the target pedagogic knowledge-base through identity-oriented activities. Using a comparative case study design, we drew on data collected with narrative frames, stimulated recalls, and semi-structured interviews. Our thematic analysis revealed that the teachers juxtaposed their enacted and narrated identities by negotiating multiple externally defined roles, that they identified professional tensions while reflecting on the academic cultures as transnational teachers, and that their identity work unveiled the emotion labor of becoming a native speaker teacher in Hong Kong. The findings highlight the interface of identity work and teacher learning and call for an identity focus in in-service teacher learning as well as the betterment of the native English-speaking teacher policy in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine reports of poetic confluence, in which one person's utterances seems to connect with another's unspoken or unarticulated thoughts. We argue that analysis of these narratives can be investigated as a window onto social reality, and as a site in which social realities are produced, especially with respect to identity work. We show how this approach complements and develops from the small story paradigm in narrative inquiry. In our discussion we try to identify common principles that may underpin work on both the content of poetic confluence narratives, and the work done in the features of those narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research was to understand the current effects on professional identity during the move to online learning from traditional class-based learning among higher education English lecturers in Hanoi, Vietnam, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst multiple studies have focused on the storied experiences of teachers in multiple contexts during this period, few have utilized the lens of teacher professional identity as a tool to understanding reported successes and challenges at the classroom and institution level. Semi-structured interviews took place with six higher education lecturers of English across two universities in Hanoi, Vietnam. Data was analyzed in NVivo using deductive thematic analysis, based on a conceptual framework of identity congruence and incongruence. The study found that sites of identity congruence during the move to online learning in this context included values of efficacy, professionalism, and innovation, while sites of incongruence included student motivation, social connection, and control. The study highlights the potential of using the lens of professional identity as a tool for greater insight into rationale and potential remedying of challenges within educational settings, particularly when observing the notion of change in teaching delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emergent identity work perspective that draws on multiple intertwined streams of established identities theorizing and identities-related research. This perspective is characterized loosely by five broad sets of assumptions: (i) selves are reflexive and identities actively worked on, both in soliloquy and social interaction; (ii) identities are multiple, fluid and rarely fully coherent; (iii) identities are constructed within relations of power; (iv) identities are not helpfully described as either positive or authentic; and (v) identities are both interesting per se and integral to processes of organizing. Recognition of an emergent identity work perspective is valuable in part because this may act as a counterbalance to centrifugal tendencies – fed by myopia, insularity and ethnocentrism – which might otherwise lead to blinkered research and fragmentation. The contribution of this article is to provide a baseline for identity work scholars, and to promote collective critical reflection on identities in and around organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we explore the underlying processes of identity work in teaching from a critical management education (CME) perspective. Identity is a concern for both teachers and students and especially where the assumptions and routines on which it is grounded are challenged as in a CME learning environment. Through auto-ethnographic accounts of our teaching experience, we focus on the problems that result from being attached to an identity and how this might be explored through reflexive participative learning. Identity work describes the pursuit of these attachments without challenging the pursuit itself. A distinctive part of o2ur contribution is to consider how in taking identity for granted as a laudatory accomplishment, CME scholars often fail to recognise how our attachment to it can be an obstacle for management learning. To conclude, we speculate on the implications of our pedagogy for inculcating more critical forms of identity work, through which we might free ourselves to think and engage with the world differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The turn to identity within management studies has revealed important insights into management, by recognising its complex, contingent and relational nature, and through focusing on the personal experiences of managers and how they develop an identity as a manager. However, research has focused on processes of being and becoming a manager, rather than how individuals determine what makes a good manager, and what they are actually seeking to be. I therefore present an extended theorisation of narrative identity work which highlights the overlooked role of the 'personal social landscape' constructed through narrative, which gives meaning to the actors and actions within it. The theory is illustrated through detailed analysis of three manager accounts, which reveals processes by which managers construct personal versions of the same organisation, as social landscape to their self-narratives, and how these different organisational constructions create different meanings to their self-narratives as acting well as a manager. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a narrative analysis of 33 interviews with Vietnamese early career academics, we explore whether a Confucianist/collectivist academic context in Vietnam has a key influence on academics' identity work, within the embrace of encroaching managerialist practices. We show how these academics from 11 universities negotiated identity alignment and identity tensions between such cultural orientation and managerialism. On the one hand, a Confucianist ethic underpinning higher education in Vietnam is likely to encourage academics to engage in managerialist practices, as it promotes harmony and loyalty to their respective university and its global, 'excellence' goals. On the other hand, a cultural underpinning of collegiality can create tension with the individualist nature of managerialist practices. Our recommendations for universities in a similar context are to adapt the more individualistic performative approaches borrowed from the West by crafting their own collegiate, soft managerialist hybrid practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disruptions of life in late modernity render self-identity fragile. Consequently, individuals must reflexively manage their emotions and periodically reinvent themselves to maintain a coherent narrative of the self. The rise of psychology as a discursive regime across the 20th century, and its intersections with a plethora of wellness industries, has furnished a new language of selfhood and greater public attention to emotions and personal narratives of suffering. Celebrities, who engage in public identity work to ensure their continued relatability, increasingly provide models for navigating emotional trials. In this article we explore representations of selfhood and identity work in celebrity interviews. We focus on media veterans Nigella Lawson and Ruby Wax, both of whom are skilled in re-storying the self after personal crises. We argue that interpretive capital as a peculiarly late modern resource confers emotional advantages and life chances on individuals as they navigate upheavals, uncertainties, and intimate dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study takes a cross-domain identity transition perspective to explore the development of work-related identities by trailing wives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Biographical-narrative interviews with 28 expatriate wives were conducted and analysed using thematic analysis. The findings indicated that these women approached their cross-domain identity transition sequentially through a process of work identity pause and reactivation. Gendered family demands and contextual constraints led them to temporarily pause their work identity while adjusting to non-work domain changes. The reactivation of the work identity domain prompted them to redevelop a work identity aligned to their new reality. Four manifestations of identity redevelopment status emerged: hobbyists, adaptors, explorers and re-inventors. For some women, their emerging work identity was just a way to escape the 'expat wife' stigma, for others it was an opportunity to develop a new career. This article introduces the concepts of identity pause and reactivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends toward convergence on common methodologies and standardized templates restrict the diversity of qualitative methods in organizational research. Considering that graduate education is a critical process in the socialization of researchers into the norms and dominant practices of their discipline, graduate students' socialization into research methodologies is vital for understanding methodological convergence. The purpose of our study was to understand how graduate students' socialization shapes their methodological and paradigmatic preferences. Showcasing methodological bricolage as an alternative to qualitative templates, we constructed a research design that combined thematic, discourse, and narrative analyses to investigate graduate students' reflections throughout a qualitative methods course introducing alternative research paradigms. Our findings highlight the role of institutional, disciplinary, and personal influences as well as identity work in researchers' socialization and trace alternative trajectories by which socialization and methodological identity construction processes may unfold. We offer a sketch of methodological socialization and suggest that its understanding should be central to nurturing paradigmatic and methodological plurality in qualitative research. We conclude with implications for future research and for research methods training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the experiences of Vicky, a female entrepreneur who runs a circular business that produces swim and activewear from regenerated fishing nets. The idea of a circular economy, which moves away from the linear economic model based on a make-use-dispose logic towards the elimination of waste and a sustainable use of the world's resources, has rapidly gained popularity. Vicky's story highlights the often overlooked but critical role of small businesses and their owners in this systemic change. Vicky performs three intertwined but distinct forms of work – entrepreneurial work on the business, identity work on the self and institutional work on the wider world – that all contribute to the circular transition. At the same time, Vicky exemplifies an alternative approach to entrepreneurship through a relational interpretation of circularity. Her case draws attention to how the labour of actors in the grassroots propels large-scale transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically analyses the complexities of identity work among refugee women entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom. Once labelled as refugees, individuals are homogenised and disadvantaged by association with this stigmatised identity. We explore how women refugees undertake dynamic identity work to recreate themselves as entrepreneurs attempting to ameliorate such stigma. Using case study evidence, we find that claiming an entrepreneurial identity enables the refutation of the stigmatised refugee label and as such, it can be personally enhancing by improving well-being and socio-economic standing. The vestigial negative effects upon access to entrepreneurial resources arising from gendered constraints and a refugee background however, persist. Thus, these refugee entrepreneurs face a double-edged sword; while challenging stigmas through entrepreneurship is potentially liberating, having a refugee background acerbates the impact of enduring structural challenges upon women's entrepreneurial activity. This has implications for venture potential and relatedly, to the sustainability of fragile entrepreneurial identities among a cohort of vulnerable women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article answers the call for more research on Millennials' experience of the graduate transition to work (GTW). Using an identity perspective, it investigates how Millennials explored and developed their career identities after the GTW, with a particular focus on traits often associated with younger generations such as boundaryless, protean and intrinsic motivations. Interviews were conducted with 36 Millennial graduates from U.k. and Irish universities. Findings confirmed that graduates largely avoided identity exploration until the GTW, with the latter perceived as a boundary experience and self-learning event. Four main themes of identity work developed from the data analysis: restraining the ideal self; reasserting the ideal self; revising the ideal self; and re-exploring possible selves. Participants appeared to increase their adaptability, self-drive and intrinsic motivation after the GTW in a way different from previous generations. Moreover, they continued to develop and change their career-identities long after the first few transitional years. Implications for Higher Education and organisational practice are accordingly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding what ties precarious workers to online organizations and what makes them drift away is a key issue in today's digitalized world. In this article, we present a study of a blog portal developed for commercial purposes and show how professional and amateur bloggers engage in this emerging online community and organization. We develop new understandings of dynamic relationships between boundaries, roles and identities, and offer an analysis of how identities are (re)constructed in interaction with others in fluid online spaces. We theorize boundary work as a form of identity work, elucidate how roles influence the way individual and collective identity constructions are intertwined, and highlight the importance of emotions in conformist and resistant identity work online. Our study has broader implications for understanding identities in the age of technology and precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive body of knowledge exists concerning the experiences and personal characteristics of successful PhD students. However, the unconscious role behaviour of the PhD student in an Open Distance and e-Learning (ODeL) academic environment is less well explored. The aim of this article was to study and describe the unconscious role behaviour of a PhD student at a South African ODeL university. Data collection entailed the author reflecting on and writing an essay on his phenomenological PhD experiences and choosing the most appropriate vignettes for thematic analysis. The findings indicated high levels of free-floating and performance anxieties in the researcher's unconscious existential and phenomenal roles, primarily emanating from conflicting projections and introjections about his competence and perceived incompetence as a PhD student. The feedback process manifested as a potential space as it became a precious social and psychological environment to hold and contain his transformational anxieties as a student. Practical implications are presented and recommendations suggested to students, supervisors and academic institutions, aimed at enhancing the supervisory relationship in the interest of increased higher degree research outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how entrepreneurs within different settings reflect on social interactions to work on their identity. Using life story narratives, we explore a business membership network and a creative hub in the central belt of Scotland. Our subsequent model shows how individuals in these settings use different dominant interpretive repertoires, as represented by structural-instrumental work in the business network and relational work in the creative hub. We also show how the interpretive repertoires both shape and are shaped by what individuals strive for in their identity work: striving for esteem and striving for closeness. We discuss how our findings offer insight into the dynamics of social identities and how they are reproduced and maintained through situated exchange using specific interpretive repertoires and striving agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In U.S. society, Native Americans face invisibility, stereotypes, discrimination, and structural barriers. In this article, we employ a symbolic interactionist approach, embedded in critical analysis, to explore how this social context impacts the conveyance and interpretation of Native American identity among people who are not Native American. Participants, 213 White American and 104 Native American people, replied to open-ended questions about Native American identity conveyance and interpretation. We employed an inductive thematic approach to analyze their written replies. The majority of Native American participants discussed their identity in the context of limited public knowledge of, and/or oppression faced by, Native Americans. For most Native American participants, this context generated strain and struggle associated with conveyance and interpretation of their identities. Despite this, some Native American participants engaged in identity work to educate others and reduce oppression. Without prompting, some White participants expressed positive attitudes toward Native Americans and their identity revelation. These positive attitudes evidence both hope for social change and problematic fetishization based on romantic stereotypes of Native Americans. We argue that society-wide change is necessary to reduce strain in, and enhance the effectiveness of, identity work by Native American people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People who have a sense of calling to their work are more inspired, motivated and engaged with what they do. But how is calling constructed and maintained within organizations? More importantly, how do people maintain a sense of calling to their work when this is a source of ongoing material and existential hardships? This article seeks to address these questions by looking at the artistic setting of theater where actors maintain their calling despite their precarious work situation. The study employs a narrative approach to illustrate how three dominant narratives—religious, political and therapeutic—are central in constructing theater work as deeply meaningful. Specifically, each narrative explains how theater actors maintain their calling through different processes of identity work enacted through sacrifice (religious), responsibility (political) and self-care (therapeutic), with corresponding role identities as martyrs (religious), citizens (political) and self-coaches (therapeutic). We contribute to the literature on callings by: (a) showing how different processes of identity work are central to maintaining callings in precarious work situations, (b) exploring the role played by the 'other' as an interlocutor in accounting for and maintaining callings, and (c) advancing a theoretical explanation of callings that illustrates how callings contingently emerge as acts of elevation, resistance or resilience within contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the theoretical lens of identity work, the objective of the article is to explore how the identity of an entrepreneurial, female, artisan food producer is constructed and enacted. Emphasis is given to a gendered examination of how artisan and entrepreneur as facets of identity co-exist, compete or integrate. The article relies on a phenomenologically oriented case study that comprises numerous sources including primary data from multiple, in-depth, interviews. The data are used to examine identity work undertaken by the case subject across the following categories: dramaturgical, socio-cognitive, psycho-dynamic, discursive and symbolic. The article makes a modest contribution to furthering understanding of the female entrepreneurial identity from a novel perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]