Social Sciences
Workplace Identity
Workplace identity refers to the way individuals perceive themselves within the context of their work environment. It encompasses how employees define themselves in relation to their job roles, organizational culture, and professional relationships. Workplace identity can influence job satisfaction, motivation, and overall well-being, as it shapes individuals' sense of belonging and purpose within the workplace.
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eBook - PDFWork and Identity
Historical and Cultural Contexts
- J. Kirk, C. Wall(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
77 3 Identity in Question and the Place of Work The rise of identities Work is declining in social primacy. Social meaning and solidarity must, eventually, be found elsewhere (Casey, 1995: 2). It means everything [teaching], it’s huge, I’m in an amazing pos- ition, you know, I count my blessings every day (Andrea aged 26, secondary school teacher). Studies of identity have not centred to any consistent extent on the importance of work, or the place of work in the context of identity for- mation and practice. Outside the sub-discipline itself of work socio- logy, or the more technical preoccupations of employment studies, the significance of work identity has been less a focus of attention than that of identity as understood and explored in relation to the impor- tance of race or gender or even – if profoundly diluted since around the 1980s – questions of social class. Since the 1980s, the very concept and idea of identity has been pluralised becoming re-constituted and re-presented as identities. The growing influence of postmodernism shaped this event, compounded by a growing concern with ‘otherness’ in academic spheres in the United States in particular. In this emergent view to read identity through the notion of ‘essence’ became radically challenged in key areas of postmodernist thought: fixed notions of gender, class or ‘race’, for instance, was discarded as ‘essentialist’ thought, while at the same time it came to be coded positively by other radical (and sometimes postmodernist) thinkers concerned with the significance and struggle for notions of recognition. 1 The purpose of this chapter is to map some forms through which identity and culture has become central to understanding social change in radically altering times, particularly from the 1980s. Furthermore, our second aim will then be to place such arguments and perspectives in the context of work and working lives.
eBook - PDF- Douglas T. Hall(Author)
- 2001(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Because the literature on career identity, attitudes, and adaptability is not as extensive as that on perfor-mance, our discussion in these two chapters will not be organized in terms of the type of predictor data considered (background, career process, assessment, personality characteristics, and person-organization fit). Career Identity Personal Identity via Work Identity From the point of view of the individual, identity is probably the most important of the four facets of career development. It is the person’s sense of identity that, by definition, helps her evaluate herself. It tells her how she fits into her social environment. It also tells her about her uniqueness as a human being. In Western society, the development of one’s personal sense of iden-tity is closely tied to the establishment of one’s occupational identity. Often, a person “finds herself” through finding work that she loves; conversely, a person’s work commitment may increase sharply after she resolves a personal identity problem. Therefore, we find that the age at which people generally work through their personal identity “crises” (late teens and early twenties) is also the age at which individuals in our society are expected to choose occupational identities. The question “What do you do?” is often a more acceptable way of asking, “Who are you?” To give a strong sense of the self-discovery aspect of identity, Erik Erikson (1966) quotes William James: As a subjective sense of an invigorating sameness and continuity, what I would call a sense of identity seems to me best described by William James in a letter to his wife. “A man’s character,” he wrote, “is discernable in the men-tal or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most 170 ELEMENTS OF THE CAREER
eBook - PDFSocial and Caring Professions in European Welfare States
Policies, Services and Professional Practices
- Blom, Björn, Evertsson, Lars(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Policy Press(Publisher)
21 TWO The impact of education on professional identity Kåre Heggen and Lars Inge Terum Introduction The role of a professional social worker requires knowledge, skills, practical wisdom and certain norms and standards. Professional practice depends on the ability to combine these elements. Professional identity refers to social workers’ motivation for doing good work and their identification with the profession. The formation of professional identity is closely connected to socialisation and is a part of a dynamic process of professional development. The aim of this chapter is to examine the impact of social work education on professional identity. In the literature on professional education, the concept ‘professional identity’ is frequently used, but in a variety of different meanings and contexts (Beijaard et al, 2004; Sims, 2011; Johnson et al, 2012; Wiles, 2012; Trede et al, 2013) and remains ‘fuzzy’ and ‘elusive’ and with ‘no explicit definition’ (Lamote and Engels, 2010, p 4; Sims, 2011, p 266). Professional identity refers to ‘… the principles, intentions, characteristics and experiences by which an individual defines him or herself in a professional role’ (McSweeney, 2012, p 367), as a lens through which to evaluate, learn and make sense of practice (Trede et al, 2013) or the ‘… perception of her/himself in the context of nursing practice’ (Steinbock-Hult, 1985). In some authors’ work, the perception is that identity as a professional primarily is developed in the community of practice to which one belongs and where knowledge from outside has a minor influence on professional identity (Wenger, 1998). In this approach, a strong professional identity will be shaped and reinforced by strong and stable communities and social processes generated within them (Henkel, in Reid et al, 2008).
- Gerard P. Hodgkinson, J. Kevin Ford, Gerard P. Hodgkinson, J. Kevin Ford(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
This is because social identities are emergent higher-order products that are trans- formed by context, rather than merely aggregated from it (Turner & Oakes, 1986). This means that relevant psychological states and processes (e.g., leadership, culture, gender) cannot be discovered within the disaggregated parts of wholes in the manner that classical organizational approaches suggest. Rather, these identity-based processes need to be understood, and studied, as irreducibly socio-contextual. Organizational contexts do not merely provide milieus within which social identity operates, they also con- tribute to the creation of new identities, just as those identities themselves motivate the creation of new organizational contexts (Fiol & O’Connor, 2002; Gioia et al., 2000). This dynamic is central to organizational psychology and, moreover, is a basic source of organizational vitality and adaptiveness. Social Identity as a Strategic Response to Organizational Context In the previous section we looked at social identity as a contextual product and focused on the cognitive bases for identification—examining the factors that lead to a specific work-related identity becoming salient, and showing 72 I NTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF I NDUSTRIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 2005 that different features of the same social identity can come to define that self- category in different contexts. In this section we will consider more strategic considerations that lead people to define themselves as representative (proto- typical) of certain social or organizational identities rather than others, and the motivational bases for presenting the content of their social identity in a particular way.
eBook - PDF- Jeffrey H. Greenhaus, Gerard A. Callanan, Jeffrey H. Greenhaus, Gerard A. Callanan(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
IDENTITY A person’s identity develops as a consequence of the interplay between biological, psychological, sociologi-cal, and historical influences. At its core, it emerges out of the individual’s efforts to maintain a sense of per-sonal uniqueness and continuity in the face of changing developmental tasks and life circumstances—and at the same time feel a sense of solidarity with a group. Another way to conceptualize identity is to describe the attributes of individuals who have achieved a firm sense of personal identity. They would in all likelihood be described as people who know who they are, and others would be likely to view them in a manner that is gener-ally consistent with how they view themselves. An important feature of identity is that a person’s overall sense of identity is a composite of identity in a number of domains. Although there is some disagree-ment about the number and definition of these domains, there is general agreement that the vocational, sexual, and ideological (e.g., religious and political) domains are among the core components of a person’s identity. More recent research has produced evidence to suggest that ethnic identity, which is derived from a person’s membership in an ethnic group, may also be an impor-tant identity domain that impacts the perceptions and behaviors of individuals in their social and occupational contexts. Ethnic identity, however, appears to be more salient to individuals who are members of minority groups in their societies than to individuals who repre-sent the majority group or individuals who live in a cul-ture with little ethnic diversity. The vocational domain of identity has been described as the most critical component of the young person’s quest for identity, in part because it appears to temporally “lead” identity development in other domains.
eBook - PDFSocial Identity and Conflict
Structures, Dynamics, and Implications
- K. Korostelina(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
By affording security and assurance, social identity deprives individuals not only of their freedom of choice but of their individuality as well, determining their behavior on the basis of group norms, goals, and beliefs. For the study of social sciences, social identity creates a conceptual bridge between individual and social levels of the analysis of social reality. Thus, social identity serves as a link between an individual’s psychology and the structures and processes of large social groups. As a result, the term “social identity” is now included in all fields of social science and has become an important part of numerous theoretical conceptions, from psychoanalytical theories to the models of nation building. The field of psychoanalytic studies focuses on the role of social identity in ethnic conflicts and cycles of violence 18 S o c i a l I d e n t i t y a n d C o n f l i c t (Volkan 1997, 2004). Anthropological research has shown the manifestation of social identity in culture, displaying its meaning and its impact on group boundaries (Barth 1969; Cohen 1986). Social psychologists analyze social identity in the process of intergroup relations, prejudice, and group conflicts (Tajfel and Turner 1986; Turner et al. 1987). Sociologists evaluate it to analyze the interrelations between personality and society (Giddens 1991; Jenkins 1996). Political scientists explore its role in domestic and interna- tional conflicts (Brubaker 1996; Fisher 1997; Gellner 1994; Gurr 1970). All these approaches analyze social identity as a dynamic construct that determines interrelations between individual behavior and social reality. Nevertheless, their understandings of the roots and mechanisms of social identity as a phenomenon vary, as do their methodological approaches and interpretations of results.
eBook - PDF- J. Angouri, M. Marra, J. Angouri, M. Marra(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
And in terms of workplace studies this represents a case for further investigation into the nature of workplace relationships. References C. Antaki and S. Widdicombe (1998) Identities in Talk (London: Sage). I. Arminen (2005) Institutional Interaction: Studies of Talk at Work (Aldershot: Ashgate). J. M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (1984) ‘Introduction’ in J. M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 220 Engaging Identities B. Benwell and E. Stokoe (2006) Discourse and Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). E. M. Berman, J. P. West and M. N. Richter Jr. (2002) ‘Workplace Relations: Friendship Patterns and Consequences (According to Managers)’, Public Administration Review, 62, 2, 217–30. J. Billig (1999) ‘Whose Terms? Whose Ordinariness? Rhetoric and Ideology in Conversation Analysis’, Discourse and Society, 10, 543–58. D. Boxer and F. Cortés-Conde (1997) ‘From Bonding to Biting: Conversational Joking and Identity Display’, Journal of Pragmatics, 27, 3, 275–94. M. Bucholtz and K. Hall (2005) ‘Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach’, Discourse Studies, 7, 4–5, 585–614. D. Collinson (2000) ‘Strategies of Resistance: Power, Knowledge and Subjectivity in the Workplace’ in K. Grint (ed.) Work and Society: A Reader (Cambridge: r Polity Press). A. De Fina, D. Schiffrin and M. Bamberg (eds) (2006) Discourse and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). P . Drew and J. Heritage (1992) ‘Analyzing Talk at Work: An Introduction’ in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) Talk at Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds) (1992) Rethinking Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). F . Erickson, (1986) ‘Qualitative Methods in Research on Teaching’ in M. C. Wittrock (ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching, 3rd edn (New York: Macmillan). G. T. Fairhurst (2009) ‘Considering Context in Discursive Leadership Research’, Human Relations, 62, 11, 1607–33.
eBook - PDF- Stewart R Clegg(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
Furthermore, contemporary practices in ‘post-bureaucratic’ organizations that utilize new technologies to render work more flexible, contract-based, 194 Organizing Identity casualized and ‘nomadic’ can also intensify employee insecurities (Sennett, 2000). By reinforcing individualism, these workplace changes further corrode social relations while increasing material and symbolic insecurity (Kallinikos, 2003). Hence, these interwoven material and symbolic insecurities crucially impact on the selves and subjectivities that currently shape modern work-place practices. Knights and Willmott (e.g. 1989, 1990) argue that in addition to the way that social and economic change can significantly exacerbate anxieties sur-rounding subjectivity, there is another element of insecurity that lies at the very heart of identity formation itself. They contend that insecurities can also be reinforced by individuals’ attachment to particular notions of self. In so far as subjectivity is characterized by a dual experience of self, as both subject (active agent in the world) and object (individuals can reflect back on themselves and on the way others see them), they point to an irreduc-ible ambiguity at the heart of identity construction. As self-conscious human beings we are both separate from, but also interdependent with others in the world. This separation and interdependence is a key source of ambiguity (Collinson, 1992). Knights and Willmott contend that individuals typically seek to deny or overcome this ambiguity through attempts to secure a stable identity, either as separate subjects (domination or indifference) or depen-dent objects (subordination). They argue that this pursuit of material and/or symbolic security through the search for a stable identity is inherently contradictory and is likely to produce unintended and counterproductive consequences.
- Stewart Clegg, James R. Bailey, Stewart R Clegg, James Bailey(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Identity is central to how people recognize each other in the street and how they describe themselves when they look in the mirror. Identity is about sameness—it is the identification of how one sees oneself and others in relation to being the same as some types of other people. Perhaps more importantly, it is also about difference—to whom one is not the same. The sense of self that one has about oneself can refer to characteris-tics, personalities, images, and so forth and relies on self-knowledge in order for it to be expressed. Identity is about who a person is. From an essentialist position—one that sees identity as being grounded in essential aspects of the person—identity is unitary in nature and refers to how people concretely describe “who I am”—white, female, working class, Welsh, hysterical, for exam-ple. This traverses identity descriptors of the skin, social identity categories, language, bodies, knowl-edge, and power practices. From a social construc-tionist perspective, identity is constructed between self and other and focuses, as Robyn Thomas and Alison Linstead suggest, both on “who am I” and “who am I becoming.” However, if one moves from an essentialist position to one where the relation between attributes of the person and identity is more contingent, in keeping with a poststructuralist approach, identity can be regarded not only con-stantly changing but also as fragmented, multiple, and emergent. Conceptual Overview The study of identity has a long history in organiza-tion studies, with an intellectual lineage that traces back, inter alia, to George Herbert Mead’s symbolic interactionist studies of self-making, the functional-ism of Talcott Parsons, the development of role theory by Robert Merton, the dramaturgical sociology of Erving Goffman, and Harold Garfinkel’s ethno-methodological studies of how social membership is achieved through talk.
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