Identity boundaries and
transitions in current work
environments
•Dr Kate Mackenzie Davey
•Head of Department of Organizational Psychology
Work and identity
• Outline classic approaches to work and identity
• Focus on identity and transition
• Describe recent research
– Occupational image and identity
– Boundaries and identity
Work and social identity
• Social identity theory (Tajfel, Haslam, 2000)
– Self categorisations
– Ingroup-outgroup
– Maintain positive self image
– Socialised
• Organizational/occupational identity
– Individuals are socialised to identify with organizations or
occupations to which they belong (Elsbach and Kramer,
1996)
• Role identification: internalisation of values and beliefs (affective
and cognitive components) through socialisation (Ashforth &
Mael, 1989)
Social construction
• Social constructionism emphasises ongoing ‘identity work’
(Sveningsson and Alvesson 2003)
• Identity is fluid, fragmented, socially constructed through
language, negotiated in interactions and contingent on context.
• Identity is “something people perform or do rather than
something they have”. (Smith and Sparkes 2008: 25).
• The self is constructed by and through language and “identities
are “performed within relationships”, “done in interactions”
and/or “talked into being” (Smith and Sparkes 2008: 25).
• Rather than having one fixed, all purpose identity, individuals
can invoke a range of identities according to different
circumstances and different needs.
Performative identity
(Butler, 1999)
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Calls the subject into question: not natural
Asserting ways of doing identity to cause trouble for oppositional identity
Identity enacted
Performance without a separate performer
Parodic proliferation undermines dialectic: drag
‘The laugh of recognition is the occasion of insight’
Performative acts and a performative economic context (Case & Pineiro, 2006)
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Discourse “ a connected set of statements, concepts, terms and expressions
which constitutes a way of talking ..about a particular issue, thus framing the
way people understand and act with respect to that issue” (Watson, 1994, p.113)
Particular interests become taken for granted
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Productive and reflective of power relations
Constructs identities and subject positions
Continuity and change
Focus on stability and continuity
• Links to maintaining identity and stable self concept (Sugarman,
2001)
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External continuity: context, familiar environment, activity, people.
Pressure to maintain career and construct cv accordingly
Internal continuity: maintenance of sense of identity: our awareness of
consistent structure of ‘ideas, temperament, affect, experiences,
preferences, dispositions, skills (Atchley,1989)
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Career embeddedness (Cooper & Mackenzie Davey, 2011)
Change seen as in line with capacity to cope (Atchley,1989)
• Emplotment (Cochran, 1997) “a comforting story we tell
ourselves” Nicholson & West (1988)
Institutionalised socialization
(Jones, 1986, Saks et al 2007)
Which of these apply to the
armed services?
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Collective or individual
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Formal or informal
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Sequential or random
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Fixed or variable
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Serial or disjunctive
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Investiture or divestiture
Leads to passive acceptance of
pre-set roles
Reproduces the status quo
Reduces uncertainty
Reduced role ambiguity
Reduced role conflict
Lower intention to quit
Increased fit to job and
organization
Increased job satisfaction,
commitment, performance
Custodial approach to role
Reduced innovation
Transition stages
Hayes et al 1976
• Immobilisation
• Minimization
• Depression
• Letting go
• Testing
• Searching
• Internalization
This is based on studies of bereavement. Is it
appropriate for all work transitions?
Work role transitions
• Any move into and/or out of a job, any move
between jobs, or any major alteration in the content
of work duties and activities (Nicholson & West,
1988)
Transition cycle
(Nicholson 1987)
Preparation
(I&V)
Expectation,
desire
Encounter II
Sense making
copying
Stabilisation IV
Commitment
effectiveness
Adjustment III
Personal change
Role innovation
relationships
Transition cycle
Nicholson 1987
• Preparation
– expectation
– desires
– resources
• Encounter:
– coping
– sensemaking
• Adjustment:
– personal change,
– role innovation,
– developing relationships
• Stabilization:
– commitment
– effectiveness
Identity and work
• Identity research indicates that people typically seek
to see themselves in a positive light, and this positive
sense of self is largely grounded in socially important
and salient roles - including occupations- and how
these roles are perceived by others. (Ashforth &
Kreiner, 1999:413)
Investment
bankers, stigma
and identity
Kate MacKenzie-Davey and Liz
Stanley
What does it feel like to be
an investment banker in
the face of this hostility?
Coping with stigma and
taint at work
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Established body of research on ‘dirty work’ – occupations that are
physically, morally or socially tainted
Despite acknowledging the stigma, individuals often maintain positive,
self-esteem enhancing work identities
Ashforth & Kreiner (1999, 2007) argue people ‘normalise’ taint by
engaging in proactive tactics to counter it
– developing occupational ideologies
– creating social buffers
– confronting client and public perceptions
– defensive tactics, both cognitive and behavioural
– blaming – distancing from clients and role
Static, based on existing rather than changing stigma
Defensive reframing
• Little use of occupational ideologies, social buffers or confrontation as
tactics
• Some (limited) reframing to stress banks’ importance
“I mean, whatever way you look at it, banks are, are a critical
component of any functioning society, You can’t do without banks,
okay, so there is the need for some perspective on the whole thing.”
“I feel okay. If we weren’t here, well there’d be lots of other people
that wouldn’t be working out there.”
• Most tactics were defensive – behavioural and cognitive
Social comparison
• Most common tactic was social comparison – differentiating self
from others you judge more harshly
“Um, so you get this phenomena that the banks overcharging kind of retail
customers, and you get tarred almost with that brush, working in banking, being
a banker”
“Um, well the industry isn’t all that bad, okay? I think that the industry on the
whole isn’t like that at all. It’s just that there are a few areas in the industry that
are like that.”
“Um, I feel quite resentful actually about, um, if, if I’m honest, I feel quite
resentful about the fact that, you know, a relatively small number of people,
um, have caused quite a big problem.”
Distancing
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Distancing from role was common as people stressed separation of
personal and work identity
“I think the problem is slightly different in that the circle of people I mix with are
not… don't tend to be professional people, so family and friends are not
professionals. So I don't think they… this sounds as though it's… I'm not saying
they don't comprehend, but it's just not… So they… I'm just the same person
that I've always been.”
“Even now most, most of the people we socialise with now 20 years on have no
clue what I do. Ah, it’s quite tricky, because it’s very, it’s very varied, so some
people in our little local village where we… we don’t socialise with people of our
own profession so we very rarely socialise with people in the industry, and we
live in a tiny little village. Out there,we don’t socialise with people in the
industry.”
Taint and banker identities in the financial crisis
• Nature of the taint
– Where taint established, more time to develop occupational
ideologies and shared responses
– For bankers faced with emerging taint, no established resources to
draw on
– Attack on character of people not nature of work
• Nature of the workers
– More collectivism in low prestige occupations
– Banking culture focused on individual performance and reward,
not unionised
• Strength of taint
– Values focussed as personal and separate from occupation
Press representation and
individual identity
• Case of Lynndie England and Jessica Lynch and the position of
female soldiers in the USA
• ..the two most famous American soldiers to emerge from the
war in Iraq are women:Fessica Lynch and Lynndie England […]
On a startling number of basic resume entries, Lynndie England
and Jessica Lynch have an awful lot in common. Then again,
the last time I saw a photograph of Lynch, she was at the White
House Correspondents’ Dinner with Ben Affleck, who told her
she was “even more beautiful in person,” while the last time I
saw a photo of England, she had a naked Iraqi man on a leash
(Chicago Sun-Times, May 12) Cited in Just (2006)
Image and identity
• Identity is social and linked to groups
• Group image impacts on individual identity
• Some occupational groups have a more publicly recognised
identity
• Press coverage influences and may create identity positions
available to members of occupations (Dutton and Dukerich, 1991).
• Mismatches between perceived personal and occupational
identity may create discomfort
• Need to make sense of identity
• Responses may be to try to change the occupation or to leave.
Occupations and boundaries
• Strong occupational identities create boundaries between ingroups and out-groups
• Collaboration between these groups can present problems
• Partnership may present an alternative identity position (Hardy
Lawrence & Grant, 2005)
• Individuals in boundary spanning roles may oscillate in their
identification (Jarzabkowski, Sillince & Shaw, 2010)
• Ambiguity in collaborative relationships may be creative or
provoke anxiety
• Especially complex in the NHS where there are power and
status differentials between groups
Occupational embeddedness
(Ng & Feldman 2007)
• Teachers find it difficult to leave the profession even when
unhappy with their work
• Occupations may embed individual’s in work and social
networks
• Occupations with a clear social identity provide status
• Social life may be focussed within the occupational group
• Structuring of time by work may impact on personal life
• Work life balance may impact the identities available to those in
an occupation
• These occupations may be especially salient by eroding
boundaries between personal and occupational identity
Doctors into management
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Medical directors have difficulties in practice
Political context
– New public management in NHS: Management v medicine
– Regulation of medical standards
Leadership: ambivalent, unclear
– Charisma or instrumental (Alimo-Metcalfe & Alban-Metcalfe, 2004)
– Competence framework
Hybrid role: leadership and medicine
Identity struggles
– Social identity theory and transition (Turner, 1999; Haslam, 2001)
– Critical discourse analysis and power (Fairclough, 2005)
– Performativity and instability (Butler, 1999)
NHS initially profession dominated “achieved for the medical profession a
constitutional position in the realm matched only by the Church and the Law”
(Parry & Parry 1976, p.208)
Doctors and managers
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Expert power (Blake & Mouton)
Knowledge power (Foucault, 1963)
Status
Professional self regulation
– Control by mutual consent,
peer review
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Motivated by achievement
Autonomy
Maintaining skill
Lengthy training and socialisation
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Legitimate power (Blake & Mouton)
Motivated by advancement
Maintaining the organization
Hierarchical control
Shifts in political context (Griffiths,
DHSS1983)
– Budgets
– Performance indicators
– Work load monitoring
– Customer focus
– Appraisal
– Quasi-market to NPM & Clinical
governance
Medical Directors: Hybrid role
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Senior doctor “drawing a senior ‘strategic’ consultant further into the
management process” (Ashburner Ferlie & Fitzgerald, 1996, p.9)
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Responsible for regulation “difficult distasteful, time consuming and
acrimonious work” (Sir Liam Donaldson, 1994)
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Leadership
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Clinical manager at Trust Board level
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Bridge between medical staff and the board: creating alignment
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Ambiguous and variable despite competence framework
Doctors on management
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Managers as constraining
– I think it’s again universally true and I think there is a bad case of it in the
UK, that those doctors who take on these roles are viewed with a great deal
of suspicion by their colleagues – the wish to remain unaccountable,
autonomous, self propelling that most doctors have, means that those who
take on the role might be seen as constraining, constricting, managing –
are seen as unusual
Translater
– Some of the things the executive do – they’re always doing things which
then have to repair. They’re always writing letters of the sort that people in
authority write to people, the sort of letter that gets right up your nose
even before you’ve finished reading the first sentence. They’ve got an
uncanny knack of doing that. The use of language. The worst ones come
from HR…() So I get a lot of letters- I translate a lot of letters for the
executive into things that are acceptable to the consultants
In the tribe
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But I am very protective, because by and large, these are, they are not only
senior, but they are very busy people. I by and large like them, you know, I like
my consultants, even the ones who have been real really irritating. I like them,
they amuse me and I’m very much part of their tribe, I feel. I am protective
because these are busy people, they don’t want to be drowned out by
loads of emails and loads and loads of stupid stuff coming out from
people.. But an awful lot of people get into very managerial defensive talk, you
know, and they’ll be free with slight threats, which may be appropriate when
you are talking to nurses or just general staff, but totally inappropriate for
managerial staff, totally inappropriate when you are talking to doctors
really
I think it is important to keep a clinical hand on things because there is quite a
serious danger that you end up aligning yourself possibly against your
colleagues if you don’t keep a hand on the clinical side of things......For a year
or two you’d probably still have a lot of credibility amongst clinical colleagues
but I think increasingly as you get more remote from day to day clinical work,
you’d be, accusations would be made that you’d lost the plot really and
become a manager with a medical qualification rather than a doctor
who manages. And I think there’s quite a lot of, there’s a big danger that if
you stop doing medicine you’d lose your colleagues very quickly
Losing credibility
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I have no wish in becoming a manager because if I become a manager the
gap between me and my professional colleagues in medicine will be so
great that they will say that, ....that they will say..... well, they will say
something! They will say goodbye to me so to speak. They won’t be
very keen on that. They won’t respect me. Not only that I won’t be able
to do my job properly because I won’t be able to act as a conduit from
them to the executive
if you’re a medical director and you sit in your office, you lose the, your
colleagues cease to regard you as a clinician, and you become totally a
manager, whereas I think if you are out in the hospital, you actually know the
problems other people experience and you’ve got to be talking to people and be
around – gives people a chance to bend your ear which they do frequently….So
that’s good for me that I still feel that I’m a clinician and that’s always
been my role. That’s actually very important. It’s getting to do what I
know how to do
Bridge or gatekeeper?
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Medical manager seen as bridge (Hoff 2001) and tribe member (Atun,
2003)
Clinical credibility
Translator or gatekeeper role distinct from medicine or management
Undermines managerial role and reinforces special role of doctors
– Trivialises management
– Sustains divide
– Subverts change
Hybrid roles
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The ambiguity of the medical director role means that it is
always defined relative to medicine and management.
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Medical identity robust and yet continuously needing to be
performed.
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Hybrid roles difficult to achieve: Tend to recreate binary
opposition.
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Medical management can be seen as more difficult than
clinical practice. This undermines some elite claims for
medicine and has implications for identity.
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Medical Directors struggle with bridge vs. gatekeepers
dialectic
… Medical directors: doctors in drag?
Summary
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Identity is central to work
It is embedded in social groups and social practices
Socialization can have a powerful impact on identity
Identity positions may be created or threatened by
outside accounts
• And by the boundaries between work and non work
• Powerful occupational identities create boundaries
between professions
• Maintenance of a positive identity is an ongoing
project and many current events will influence
change