Identities in and around organizations: Towards an identity work perspective

Identities theorizing

Sensemaking, discourse and critical management studies

Three further sets of – to an extent interconnected – resources for contemporary identities theorizing that have shaped profoundly the identity work perspective (and in turn been influenced by it) are the OMS literatures on sensemaking, discourse and CMS.

The reflexive, actively worked-on self

Scholars aligned with the identity work perspective regard the self as a reflexive process ‘that regulates the acting, agentic organism’ (Callero, 2003: 120). Influential in this regard has been Mead’s (1934: 134) oft-quoted statement that ‘[i]t is by means of reflexiveness – the turning back of the experience of the individual upon himself [sic] – that the whole social process is thus brought into the experience of the individuals involved in it’. Similarly well-referenced is Giddens (1991: 53) formulation that ‘[s]elf-identity . . . is the self as reflexively understood by the person . . . self-identity is continuity (across time and space) as interpreted reflexively by the agent’. In this respect, the identity work perspective is indebted to several established streams of identities theorizing. For example, most narrative approaches assume an agentic narrator, role theory ‘presumes a thoughtful, socially aware human actor’ (Biddle, 1986: 69), and in SIT ‘the self is reflexive in that it can take itself as an object and can categorize, classify, or name itself in particular ways in relation to other social categories or classifications’ (Stets and Burke, 2000: 224). ⁵ In today’s organizations, all participants, from CEOs to shop floor workers, are recognized to be self-aware, practical authors of social realities and identities (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000; Hardy et al., 2001).

Analyses of people’s ascriptions of meaning to themselves and to others, together with processes of repair, maintenance and revision, have most often implicated interlocking discursive, dramaturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive and psychodynamic processes (Brown, 2017; Caza et al., 2018b). These forms of identity work occur both intra-personally, i.e. in soliloquy, and with others in social interaction. While the most famous statement of the self as soliloquy is Descartes’ argument cogito ergo sum, it is Mead’s (1934) conception of the self as a conversation between an ‘I’ and a ‘me’ that is most often referenced by OMS scholars and sociologists generally. Blumer (1969: 13), for example, writes that ‘the human being has a self . . . in the form of interaction . . . the interaction is social – a form of communication, with the person addressing himself as a person and responding thereto’. More recent is Athens’ (1994) contention that ‘[s]oliloquizing is the key to the self. Soliloquies supply the vital sustenance without which the self can not live.’ People, Athens (1994) contends, converse with their selves both alone and in social interactions, and in so doing make use of phantom others – what Sampson (1993) refers to as the ‘serviceable other’ – with whom we dialogue both consciously and subconsciously as we author our identities (Skovgaard-Smith et al., 2019). ⁶

Identities, of course, are not constituted by individuals in isolation, rather identity work is profoundly social and not infrequently contested. As has frequently been stated, ‘identity formation involves processes of negotiation between social actors and institutions, between self and others’ (Ybema et al., 2009: 303) and ‘[i]t is in the meeting of internal and external definition that identity . . . is created’ (Jenkins, 1994: 199). ⁷ This strand within the identity work perspective has been influenced both by role theory and most especially dramaturgical/symbolic scholarship that emphasizes how identities are ‘staged’ or ‘performed’ (Goffman, 1990 [1959]). Studies have shown how identities are constituted behaviourally through the consumption of different kinds of food (Kenny, 2010), prayer (Giorgi and Palmisano, 2017; Gutierrez et al., 2010), refraining from actions such as swearing, speeding and both playful and overbearing conduct (Kreiner et al., 2006), and through celibacy, abstinence and engaging in purifying rituals such as singing hymns and communalistic labour (Kanter, 1968). These identity performances often involve the use of object symbols, especially various forms of attire, which take on significance in the context of sociality (see Patriotta and Spedale, 2009; Pratt and Rafaeli, 1997). In sum, ‘the self is . . . a product of social interaction’ (Callero, 2003: 121), and in processes of identity work ‘relational and individualistic discourses and practices are interwoven’ (Mason, 2004: 163).

Identities are multiple, fluid and fractured

Drawing on established traditions, and most often the work of James (1890) and Mead (1934), identity work scholarship has explored people’s adoption (and performance) of multiple role and social/group identities (Caza et al., 2018b; Cooley, 1902; Gergen, 1991; Ramarajan, 2014). These are not just personal and social or connected to specific attributes such as ethnicity, nationality and gender, but embrace diverse types, templates and scripts. Identities may, inter alia, be past, present or future (McAdams, 1993), possible (Markus and Nurius, 1986), ideal/ought (Gecas, 1982), provisional (Ibarra, 1999), aspirational (Thornborrow and Brown, 2009), alternate (Obodaru, 2012), preferred (Brown et al., 2019), threatened (Petriglieri, 2011), paradoxical (Cuganesan, 2017) and lingering (Wittman, 2019). Although well-recognized in principle for many years, as recently as 2014 Ramarajan argued that there is a surprising ‘scarcity of multiple identity research’ (2014: 591; see also Stryker and Burke, 2000: 291). It has, however, become progressively evident that, when it comes to organizational participants, severe limitations may attach to studies of a single identity, and that there are often good reasons to focus on the intersectionality of individuals’ multiple identities (Atewologun et al., 2020; Caza et al., 2018b).

While acknowledging that selves are generally sufficiently continuous that we do not every day embark on novel forms of identity construction on entirely new identities, identity work scholars often emphasize how even apparently stable sets of cultural meanings ‘can never be permanent or unchanging’ (Callero, 2003: 127). For some, temporary stability of identities is possible, with identity work associated mainly with major life events such as transitioning into a new professional role (Ibarra, 1999; Pratt et al., 2006) or organization (Beyer and Hannah, 2002), exiting a role (Ebaugh and Ebaugh, 1988) and experiencing identity threat (Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock, 1996; Snow and Anderson, 1987). Most, though, agree that identities are ongoing accomplishments (Creed et al., 2010: 1341) ‘constantly “under construction”’ and that apparent identity stability is ‘either a momentary achievement or a resilient fiction’ (Ybema et al., 2009: 301). For those with postmodern inclinations, identity is little more than a convenient label that refers to ‘an assembly of fragmented, perpetually shifting discursive positions and performativity effects’ (Webb, 2006: 18; see Gergen, 1991). From this vantage, identities are not merely fluid and migratory, destabilized and displaced (e.g. Bauman, 2000), but continuously liminal (Beech, 2011), ‘a collage of fragments’ (Sennett, 1998: 133), or ‘points of temporary attachments’ (Hall, 1996: 6).

Those working within the identity work perspective most often reject the notion that identities are generally unified, integrated or coherent and that successful identity work reduces inconsistencies (Down and Reveley, 2009; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1187). Recognition that people may describe their identities as internally coherent and indeed that western thinking has ‘traditionally viewed human beings as unitary’ (Collinson, 2003: 527) is complemented by understanding that these symbolic structures are best regarded as ‘multidimensional and diverse’ (Callero, 2003: 127). Research demonstrates that people avow identities that are loosely coupled (Ashforth and Mael, 1989), tensional (Beech, 2008), contradictory (Antaki et al., 1996), antagonistic (Clarke et al., 2009), hybrid (Lam, 2020) and hypocritical (Brunsson, 1989). Such analyses are most often accompanied by recognition that identities are generally far from neatly integrated, being ‘cracked and fissured’ and ‘tenuous, fragile and elastic’ (Brown, 2015: 28). Moreover, these are not temporary states but permanent, intrinsic and defining characteristics of identities that may be anxiety provoking but which also afford people scope to cope with the often discontinuous, ambiguous and conflicting demands of work organizations.

Constructed within relations of power

Overwhelmingly, identity work scholarship, taking its lead from narrative and more broadly discursive traditions, and the CMS agenda, is sensitive to the ways in which identities are construed and performed within relations of power (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Webb, 2006; Ybema et al., 2009). One stream of theorizing emphasizes the extent to which people are subject to ‘forces of domination and control’ (Callero, 2003: 120), their subjectivity ‘manufactured’ and identities regulated (Deetz, 1992). A substantial corpus explores how people’s identity work is manipulated, reprogrammed and subject to concertive controls through totalizing discourses associated with culture management, team working, training and coaching that colonize them from the inside (Barker, 1993; Boussebaa and Brown, 2017; Casey, 1995; Covaleski et al., 1998; Kunda, 1992). Much of this literature is influenced by Foucault’s (1972, 1977) analyses, which represent individuals as inventions of power constructed by discourses of power/knowledge and related practices ‘that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972: 49). Relatedly, there is a substantial literature on how ‘women’s bodies are controlled and ordered’ by ‘disciplinary regimes of femininity’ (Trethewey, 1999: 424). At the extreme, some have argued that, so effective are the regimes of truth constructed by elites, almost all dissent is silenced, and employees disarmed and entrapped so that ‘the institutional organization of our lives is total’ (Burrell, 1988: 232; Fleming, 2014; Rose, 1991).

Most analyses, however, acknowledge that identity work is an effect not just of power but individual agency, and reject the idea that identities can be ‘engineered’ (Kunda, 1992) to produce ‘designer’ selves (Casey, 1995). Webb (2006: 33), for example, criticizes applications of Foucault’s work that accept without challenge a deterministic view of identities, arguing that while a person’s biography is made in organizational circumstances they did not choose, ‘people may make very different biographies out of those circumstances’. Alvesson and Willmott (2002: 621) accompanied their arguments on how organizations seek to regulate the identities of members, with the statement: ‘We reject any suggestion that management is omnipotent in its definition of employee identity.’ Indeed, much theorizing centres on the ways ‘resistance is always on the horizon of the possible’ (Callero, 2003: 120), how organizational prescriptions are generally only partially effective and always prone to contest, adaptation and reversal (Fleming and Spicer, 2003). These assertions are supported by a plethora of empirical studies that analyse how attempts to regulate identity are often counter-productive and may be creatively appropriated by individuals or lead merely to cynicism, scepticism, dissent and distrust (Bardon et al., 2017; Ezzamel et al., 2001).

Unfashionable too are ‘postmodern pick ‘n mix’ conceptions that sometimes seem to suggest that people have unfettered agency to (re)create themselves in any way they choose (Gergen, 1991). Most scholars adopt an under-specified and equivocal stance that positions social identities ‘as the refracted articulation of agency and structure, playing out in different forms in different discursive domains and temporal spaces’ (Ybema et al., 2009: 303). These are accompanied by pleas to recognize the diversity of institutional settings, the existence of multiple and often competing identity discourses, the tensions, gaps and looseness inherent in them that permit multiple interpretations, and the scope that individuals have to blend, borrow, deform, corrupt and appropriate creatively distinct discourses for their own ends. Resistance in this sense ‘is understood as a constant process of adaptation, subversion and reinscription of dominant discourses’ by individuals intent on ‘knowing ourselves’ (Thomas and Davies, 2005: 687; see also Moonesirust and Brown, 2019). Identities, in the main, are regarded as imposed upon but not defined, shaped but not determined; continuously improvised and crafted by agile practitioners, they are accommodations negotiated within relations of power (Coupland and Spedale, 2020).

Identities, positivity and authenticity

Identity work scholars, often drawing on dramaturgical identities theorizing that focuses on impression management (Beech, 2008; Down and Reveley, 2009; Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010), and the CMS agenda, tend to be sceptical of the use of the epithets ‘positive’ and ‘authentic’ to characterize identities, and of the claims made regarding them. Assertions that individuals are motivated by the desire for positive meaning and to construct positive identities are widely made by scholars; a positive identity being defined as one that is ‘favourable or valuable in some way’ (Dutton et al., 2010: 266) and thus ‘beneficial, good, or generative’ (Dutton et al., 2009: 3; Gecas, 1982; Kreiner et al., 2006). Often these identities are associated with traits such as competence and resilience (Kreiner and Sheep, 2009) and correlated with notionally felicitous ‘outcomes’ in the form of the capability to deal better with adversity and stress (Caza and Wilson, 2009), greater creativity (Cheng et al., 2008), an ability to adapt to new settings (Beyer and Hannah, 2002) and satisfaction and enjoyment (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003). Sometimes linked with positivity is a concern for authenticity, defined variously as ‘the loyalty of one’s self to its own past, heritage and ethos’ (Heidegger, 1962: 117), and as a person’s ‘true’ or ‘real’ or ‘inner’ core self (Caza et al., 2018a; Ybema et al., 2009).

While not denying that individuals in general seek to work on desired or preferred identities (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999), there is considerable doubt as to whether these are best described as ‘positive’ (Brown, 2015; Learmonth and Humphreys, 2011). Identity work researchers often take their lead instead from long-established theorizing that regards people as suffused with uncertainties, insecurities and anxieties (e.g. Becker, 1969; Durkheim, 1951 [1897]), and gnawed at by a fear of freedom (Fromm, 1942), the dread of death (Freud, 1922) and other existential concerns (Sartre, 1956). They point out that for all the various ways in which stigmatized individuals seek to repair their spoiled identities they may nevertheless feel viscerally the force of their disqualification from full social acceptance (Goffman, 1963; Toyoki and Brown, 2014). This scholarship references also the notionally meritocratic, while actually stratified and class-ridden nature of western society, which cultivates self-doubt among working-class people and deprives them and others of dignity and respect, replacing them with neoliberal imperatives to be ‘competitive’ and to prove themselves (Luckmann and Berger, 1964; Sennett and Cobb, 1977). Threats to identity are ‘ubiquitous’ (Petriglieri, 2011: 641), none survive an entire career ‘without loss of a cherished sense of self’ (Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly, 2014: 67), and unemployment, illness, injuries, changes in occupational structures and other traumas can lead to chaotic, unfulfilling or otherwise unsatisfactory identities (Gabriel et al., 2010).

Relatedly, although identity work scholars acknowledge that many individuals speak about themselves as possessing an authentic identity or self (Ybema et al., 2009: 305; see also Creed et al., 2010; Watson, 2009), they mostly question its utility as an analytic concept. Claims to authentic identities are accounted for as responses to ‘crises’ of modernity and the stretching of people simultaneously across multiple relationships that place competing burdens on them that they seek to reconcile through the fiction of a fundamentally ‘true’ identity (Erickson, 1995; Howard, 2000). Tracy and Trethewey (2005) and Tracy and Town (2020) deconstruct what they refer to as the real/fake self-dichotomy perpetuated by an emphasis on ‘authenticity’, and show how it can lead people to subordinate themselves to others’ (especially organizational leaders’) definitions of who they ‘ought’ to be. Scholars point out also that the idea of a single authentic identity jars with well-established theorizing and research demonstrating that people have multiple identities and that these are fluid constructions (Gergen, 1991; Ramarajan, 2014). For most, if authenticity, in the sense of being true to one version of the self (one identity) is a useful notion, then it refers to transient, context-dependent claims that may be accepted or rejected by others (Erickson, 1995). For the identity work community, ‘authenticity’, perhaps, is best considered as a discursive resource that people may employ to construct ideal or desired versions of their selves.

Identities are both per se interesting and consequential

Identity work research has taken as its focus both the nature of identities per se and how identities are implicated in individual and collective (mostly group and organizational but also sometimes network and societal) processes and outcomes. There is a vast literature that explores the nature of selves and identities (Callero, 2003; Cerulo, 1997; Ybema et al., 2009). Researchers interested squarely in identities have often focused on the ‘toolkits’ (Swidler, 2001) or ‘resources’ (Callero, 2003: 125) on which individuals draw in the context of specific forms of identity work (see Learmonth and Griffin, 2020). In so doing, particular attention has been devoted to different forms of identity work; for example, as people experience identity transitions (Ibarra, 1999; Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010; Reay et al., 2017) and cope with identity threats (Brown and Coupland, 2015; Petriglieri, 2011). A renewed appreciation that selves are not just historically, politically, culturally and spatially but also organizationally and professionally located has led to the development of a similarly impressive oeuvre on different kinds of identities (Alvesson, 2010; Knights and Clarke, 2014; Wright et al., 2012). While some of these are associated with specific individuals (Watson, 2009), or types of person (Maclean and Harvey, 2020; Maclean et al., 2015), groups (Wright et al., 2012) or industry sectors (Knights and Clarke, 2017), others are designated as having more general applicability for example, identities that are portable (Petriglieri et al., 2018), forgone (Obodaru, 2017), agile (Coupland and Spedale, 2020) and preferred (Brown et al., 2019).

Much research by those interested in how identities are consequential has focused on micro or individual-level identity work in relation to domains with a palpable identity component such as gender (Trethewey, 1999), identification (Webb, 2006), impression management (Foley, 2005), socialization (Pratt, 2000), well-being (Kreiner et al., 2006), humour (Huber and Brown, 2017) and fatherhood (Eräranta and Moisander, 2011). However, there is a discernible trend towards connecting identity work with a broader group of key topics in OMS. Increasingly, researchers are concerned to widen the aperture of identities research and to investigate the significance of identity work for understanding and theorizing processes of organizing. Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock (1996: 122) argue that ‘Identity work is . . . a requirement for social life’ and that ‘[t]here is simply no maintaining any activity system without identity work . . . identity formation is . . . the cornerstone of social life’. These sentiments have been echoed in different ways by Karreman and Alvesson (2001: 80) who assert that ‘organizing can be seen as constructing and maintaining identities to facilitate collective action’ and Coupland and Brown (2012: 2, emphasis in original) who maintain that there is a continuing need ‘to expand our understanding of how identities are tied to organizational processes and specific outcomes’.

In an early statement of this enthusiasm, Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003: 1163–1164) suggested that identity is ‘central for issues of meaning and motivation, commitment, loyalty, logics of action and decision-making, stability and change, leadership, group and intergroup relations, organizational collaborations, etc.’. There are now many empirical studies that connect identity issues to knowledge management (Kamoche et al., 2014), organizational routines (Brown and Lewis, 2011), power relations and organizational politics (Koveshnikov et al., 2016), morality/ethics (Weaver, 2006), entrepreneurship (Essers and Benschop, 2009), boundary spanning (Ellis and Ybema, 2010), leadership (Zheng et al., 2020), issues of temporality (Kuhn, 2006) and legitimacy (Brown and Toyoki, 2013) among many others. One rich vein of empirical research analyses how the identity work engaged in by individuals and groups is also a form of institutional work (Creed et al., 2010; Lok, 2010; Seo and Creed, 2002). Scholars working at the intersection of institutional theory and the identity work perspective have shown how as people construct their identities they also engage in various forms of purposive institutional entrepreneurship, effecting, blocking, institutionalizing and legitimating change (Creed et al., 2002; Leung et al., 2014).

To my critics, lest they should feel ignored

In his introductory notes to the play Saint Joan, Shaw (2003 [1924]) wrote directly ‘[t]o the critics, lest they should feel ignored’ in which he recognized that his work may not have an ‘aphrodisiac effect’ on all who watch it. Critics of my theorizing, especially those whose preferences are for unity, coherence and specificity, will complain that a perspective that incorporates influences from so many distinct research traditions, often with quite different research agendas and preferred methods, is no perspective at all, or if it is, then one that is unhelpfully muddled and confusing. An alternative ‘take’ on contemporary identities research is that rather than a single identity work perspective there are multiple such perspectives that are best regarded separately and not in combination. Others may agree that there is an identity work perspective but complain that this has already been observed (see Brown, 2015, 2017; Caza et al., 2018b), that the perspective is in fact well-established, not embryonic, and perhaps even a little past its prime. These, and a wealth of alternative readings of the identities and identity work literature may be made. Although I believe my appropriation and representation of this still burgeoning literature is reasonable and utilitarian, I am not claiming that it is the only or indeed the ‘best possible’ framing of it. As Shaw observed with regard to Saint Joan, not everyone will choose to read it or to read it in-depth, and many who do will disagree with it, perhaps profoundly, and maybe rightly so.

Of note also are the many ‘broadside’ criticisms of identities research in general, many of which have been launched by scholars who have devoted much of their careers adding (not always un-illustriously), to it. A particularly trenchant critique of identities scholarship has been made by Brubaker and Cooper (2000: 1) who argue that ‘the social sciences and humanities have surrendered to the word “identity”’, which ‘tends to mean too much (when understood in a strong sense), too little (when understood in a weak sense), or nothing at all (because of its sheer ambiguity)’. Such sentiments are echoed by Alvesson and Gjerde (2020: 35) who admonish those who ‘use identity in increasingly broad and vague ways’. These and other scholars have sometimes taken aim at the identities literature to argue that the ‘great theoretical promise’ (Alvesson et al., 2008: 7) of the concept ‘identity’ and its cognates such as ‘identity work’ and ‘identity construction’ is yet to be fully realized (Caza et al., 2018b; Knights and Clarke, 2017). These critiques, while not always entirely misplaced, tend often to over-emphasize the problematic origins of identities theorizing rather than contemporary achievements, and to downplay or ignore the insightful analyses into processes of organizing that identity research offers.

Towards an identity work perspective

Recognition of an emergent identity work perspective is valuable because it serves an integrative function and to counterbalance centrifugal tendencies within the identities field – fed by short-sightedness, narrow-mindedness and amnesia – which might otherwise result in blinkered thinking and fragmentation. Another aspect of the value of this delineation of an identity work perspective lies in recognizing that specific intellectual resources both facilitate understanding and are also constraints on our comprehension, what Burke (1965: 49) refers to as ‘terministic screens’ that mean ‘every way of seeing is also a way of not seeing’. This raises the question of whether it is a sufficiently well-stocked perspective, one that affords the requisite variety required for researchers to tackle relevant issues with sensitivity, depth and nuance and offer multiple plausible and generative (perhaps sometimes complementary, at other times competing) explanations for phenomena. The rich and diverse output of the identity work community over several decades is suggestive that it is for many a perspective that provides an adequately lavish repertoire from which to bricolage felicitous analyses that offer novel ways of seeing and understanding (Brown, 2020).

My arguments for acknowledging the emergence of an identity work perspective may be understood as a plea to recognize the folly of engaging unthinkingly in what Freud (1930) refers to as the ‘narcissism of minor differences’. The phrase refers to the tendency for individuals and groups to differentiate themselves on the basis of small, often seemingly (to a third party) insignificant details. While Freud regarded this as a relatively harmless way of satisfying aggressive inclinations, others have suggested that it is a less benign tendency, one that may mitigate empathy and discourage meaningful dialogue. I am not suggesting that identity work scholarship is undifferentiated or homogeneous, and a large portion of this article has been devoted to describing the many variances in orientation, emphasis, tone and texture between distinct strands of theorizing. Nor is it to overlook the valuable lesson of Schopenhauer’s allegory of the porcupines who discover that a comfortable relationship with each other involves maintaining a moderate distance from one another. ⁸ This article has sought merely to demonstrate what a large and heterogeneous community of scholars have in common, and as such is an argument against ‘clinging to the margins of difference that remain’ (Ignatieff, 1988: 58).

Understanding of the shared assumptions that bind identity work scholarship is valuable in part because it may help foster acceptance that we are a community with some shared aims. Perhaps it will result in symbiotic or commensalistic learning and adaptation. More modestly, it may lead to increased mutual reading and appreciation of the efforts of a larger range of scholars. Greater appreciation of the commonalties, overlaps and synergies between distinctive strands of identity work theorizing may be generative and lead to more combinative and integrative studies. Role theorists might be encouraged to peek beyond a narrow focus on role identities and look afresh at those they study in the context of broader social categories. SIT/SCT scholars could usefully expand their horizons to consider more wholeheartedly issues of agency and its limits. Narrative identity enthusiasts could deepen their analyses by considering the depersonalization, categorization and psychodynamic processes that underpin people’s narrativization of their selves and how these narratives are ‘performed’ dramaturgically. Psychodynamics specialists offer a particular set of explanations for identities and identity work, and these may often benefit from being complemented by other interpretations using other frameworks. Dramaturgical and symbolic analyses are generally more interesting and more insightful when informed by understandings drawn from other (e.g. psychodynamic and/or role theory) approaches.

Increasingly, it should be recognized that it is often best not to take uncompromising stands on identities issues but instead to luxuriate in the wealth of opportunities for theorizing available. Indeed, it is noticeable that scholars in OMS are now more willing to draw on and to meld ideas from approaches inspired by different strands of sociology, psychology, anthropology and philosophy in their pursuit of a unique ‘signature’ blend. Of course, not all communities of identities scholars are equally open to alternatives. SIT/SCT scholars in particular are notoriously insular, preferring in the main to elaborate, test and refine their existing frameworks than engage in cross-border conversations. Yet, when it comes to identities research, creative combinations, simultaneity and concomitant thinking are often more valuable and more prized than narrowly conceived, intellectually parochial theorizing that is less able to capture identities’ always contextual, dynamic and nuanced, often confused and ambiguous, generally tensional, and sometimes contradictory or even paradoxical nature. Perhaps indicative of the future direction of travel for identities theorizing in OMS are works such as DeRue and Ashford (2010), which combines insights from role theory, symbolic interactionism and SIT, Bataille and Vough (2020), which connects theorizing on both multiple identities and identity threat, and Hoyer and Steyaert (2015), which draws on both narrative and psychodynamic theory. There are, of course, many more examples.

In researching identities, it is paramount that we as researchers attend to ‘our own positions and interests’ that influence ‘the questions we ask, the ones we don’t, who we interview and who we don’t, how we interview, how we listen and how we don’t, and ultimately how we understand’ (Phillips and Earle, 2010: 362). My theorizing is open to the charge not just of partiality but of being a ‘struggle for attention, status and power’ using the ‘identity work’ label as a rhetorical device in ways that are ‘potentially harmful’ (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2020: 1296). I am primarily a qualitative, interpretive researcher with critical and postmodern inclinations, and an identities and identity work enthusiast. My prejudices undoubtedly have shaped my arguments. It has meant that I have been much less concerned with issues of ‘construct clarity’, empirical testing, theoretical precision, prediction, generalizability, replicability, the development of propositions and the production of actionable ‘knowledge’. My preference, rather, has been to revel in the ambiguities, uncertainties, indeterminacies, equivocalities, contradictions, plurality, contingencies and antagonisms, appreciation of and sensitivity to which are crucial to an adequately nuanced understanding of literatures and the worlds to which they relate. This article has also been informed by my sense that if the identity work perspective has a long and vibrant future then it will be by encouraging work that is bold rather than cautious, imaginative not conservative, inspirational as opposed to literal.