The concept of identity work calls for a management style that promotes individuals’ identity construction and reconstruction processes. Hence, as one can imagine, many aspects fall into this concept. There are three critical perspectives to consider in this concept: the sovereign individual, social self, and decentred subject. The sovereign individual gets their identity from being independent and free from external influence. The social self develops identity from membership, association, and engagement with social groups, for example, by professional relationships, class, age, gender, race, religion, and other diverse aspects of society. The decentred subject promotes the understanding that identity is not a fixed concept because life experiences transform identity. Hence, identity work involves a set of processes that version how people develop narratives of self within contexts where external influences also seek to regulate the nature of self-meaning (Beech, 2008). Identity work involves managing all these influences of self to promote productivity and well-being. Individuals face several challenges in regulating identity work, which limit their freedom to choose individual identities in organizational contexts.
Individuals in organizational contexts might get subjected to conventional expectations that limit their freedom to choose their identity. The journal article by Rostron (2021) reveals one critical challenge faced by managers that leaves them unable to choose or determine their identity is the confusion and dilemma of understanding what makes a good leader. Indeed, many people overlook this subject and its implications on identity work. According to Rostron (2021), much of the available literature on this topic only provides managers with directions on what to do to be a good manager; they do not guide them on how to explore and determine what they seek to become. Rostron (2021) proposes that managers can address this challenge to improve identity work, for example, by constructing a personal version of the organization as part of narrative identity work. Rostron (2021) proposes that further management research should shift from describing management as a set of activities to a discipline that involves meaning-making, identity-forming, and order-producing. Hence, further research on the subject is key to addressing this challenge.
Conforming to conventional discourses is also a limiting factor for working on the sovereign self. Like Rostron (2021), the journal article by Hay (2014) discusses challenges faced by managers and also reiterates that contemporary management education constrains rather than enables managers to engage in identity work. The available managerial discourses teach managers to present themselves as rational actors in charge and employ analytical skills in implementing strategies for achieving organizational goals (Hay, 2014). According to Hay (2014), this only influences their social identities, leaving them with emotional struggles unable to reconcile their social with personal identities. Indeed, identity work involves taking on a conversation between internal ideas, wishes, or affections, and external images and evaluations (Hay, 2014). Hay’s (2014) research shows that the social identities of a manager are demanding to the point they make it difficult for the identity work process and the individual ends up struggling to come to terms with expectations of how they should be as a manager. It can cause guilt, frustration, anxiety, and worry (Hay, 2014). To meet social identity expectations as interpreted by managerial discourses, the manager may enter a destructive process where they channel attention inwards and take their negative emotions as signs of personal identity weakness (Hay, 2014). Managers struggle with choosing their identity in organizational contexts due to social discourses and expectations on what they should be.
Organizational systems also fail to consider that identity work is a dynamic project, limiting the freedom of the decentred self. The journal article by Watson (2008) explores solutions for managing identity work embedded in the concept of sociological imagination formulated by Wright Mills in 1970. However, Watson (2008) explains some of the challenges in identity work hindering individuals from choosing their own identity. One challenge might be that, even in contemporary times, many are unaware or fail to put into the essence that constructing identity is a dynamic process (Watson, 2008). Like Rostron (2021) and Hay (2014), Watson (2008) also points out that many people still have the conventional assumption that organizational members are fixed entities with dictated personalities. Watson (2008) even mentions how contemporary discourses have contributed to this issue. Therefore, another aspect limiting the freedom of individuals in choosing their identities in organizational contexts is the failure to understand identity work as a dynamic process, where new experiences and insights will yield new meanings for the individual. Watson (2008) emphasizes that this problem is persistent, particularly in organizations that maintain high surveillance on members, and it causes a tendency to only do outward-facing identity work, neglecting self. Hence, another eminent challenge limiting individuals from choosing their identities in organizational contexts is increased surveillance for ensuring they still to the code of work, fueling incongruence between social and self-identity.
Structural characteristics like high surveillance limit the freedom of the authentic self. Collinson’s (2003) journal article supports Watson’s (2008) view that high-surveillance organizations present significant challenges in managing identity work, adding that they cause individuals to become insecure. Collinson (2003) argues that surveillance systems “render individuals ‘calculable’ and even ‘confessional’ selves who collude in their own subordination” (p. 535). Indeed, workplace surveillance systems nurture conformist selves who get tied to individual identities, leaving no room for identity regulation as a dynamic process (Collinson, 2003). Collinson (2003) adds that high-surveillance based organizations also face the risk of nurturing resistant selves, people who develop a higher self-identity and get critical of organizational norms, leading to conflict and poor productivity, and dramaturgical selves, they emerge to present themselves in favorable light only because they feel highly visible, threatened, defensive, subordinated, or insecure. Insecurities can even to mental health issues and underperformance in individuals.
The following paper critically analyzes the concept of identity work from the view that several issues derail identity regulation and control, taking away individuals’ freedom to choose their identities in organizational contexts. Several aspects interfere with identity work. They include facing pressure from social expectations, conventional rather than contemporary discourses, and high organizational surveillance. Research shows that these challenges induce emotional frustrations and sometimes conflict.
References
Beech, N., 2008. On the nature of dialogic identity work. Organization, 15(1), pp. 51-74.
Collinson, D. L., 2003, Identities and insecurities: selves at work. Organization, 10(3), pp. 527-547.
Hay, A. (2013). ‘I don’t know what I am doing!’: surfacing struggles of managerial identity work. Management Learning, 45(5), pp. 509-524.
Rostron, A., 2021. How to be a hero: how managers determine what makes a good manager through narrative identity work. Management Learning, pp. 1-22.
Watson, T. J., 2008. Managing identity: identity work, personal predicaments and structural circumstances. Organization, 15(1), pp. 121-143.
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