Identity work in organizations and occupations: Definitions, theories, and pathways forward

• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2318
• Author: Brianna Barker Caza,Heather Vough,Harshad Puranik

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW

Identity work in organizations and occupations: Definitions,

theories, and pathways forward

Brianna Barker Caza

1

|Heather Vough

2

|Harshad Puranik

2

1

I.H. Asper School of Business, University of

Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

2

Carl H. Lindner College of Business,

University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio

Correspondence

Brianna Barker Caza, I.H. Asper School of

Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg

MB, R3T 5V4, Canada.

Email: brianna.caza@umanitoba.ca

Funding information

University of Manitoba; University of

Cincinnati

Summary

Understanding how, why, and when individuals create particular self‐meanings has

preoccupied scholars for decades, leading to an explosion of research on identity

work. We conducted a wide‐ranging review of this literature with the aim of present-

ing an overarching framework that comprehensively summarizes and integrates the

vast amount of recent research in this domain. Drawing on our analysis of the empir-

ical literature, we present an enhanced conceptual understanding of identity work.

We then summarize the four dominant theoretical approaches researchers have used

to explain how, when, and why individuals engage in identity work. This side‐by‐side

comparison of these theoretical perspectives allows us to parse out the unique contri-

bution of each theoretical lens and highlights how these theories can be integrated

into a holistic view of an inherently multifaceted concept. Lastly, we critically analyze

the state of the field and lay a detailed roadmap for future researchers to draw from

to expand our current understanding of how individuals work on their identities in

occupations and organizations.

KEYWORDS

identity work, identity, self, self‐concept

1|INTRODUCTION

Identities are individuals' subjective interpretations of who they are,

based on their socio‐demographic characteristics, roles, personal attri-

butes, and group memberships (e.g., Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Brewer &

Gardner, 1996; Gecas, 1982). Alongside self‐esteem, individuals' mul-

tiple identities make up the content of their self‐concepts (Gecas,

1982). As a “root”organizational construct (Albert, Ashforth, &

Dutton, 2000, p. 13), identity “can be linked to nearly everything: from

mergers, motivation and meaning‐making to ethnicity, entrepreneur-

ship and emotions to politics, participation and project teams”

(Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008, p. 5). Work identities, in partic-

ular, are self‐meanings tied to participation in work‐related activities,

such as organizational, occupational, and role identities (Dutton,

Roberts, & Bednar, 2010). Prior examinations of the extant identity

literature have indicated that individuals' self‐understandings are mul-

tidimensional and dynamic rather than simple and static (Ashforth,

Harrison, & Corley, 2008; Brown, 2015; Horton, Bayerl, & Jacobs,

2014). This insight reflects the movement toward understanding the

processes underlying identity, in addition to the traditional focus on

identity strength (e.g., identification). The result is a dramatic surge

in studies focused on identity work, or the range of activities individ-

uals engage in for “forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or

revising”their self‐meanings (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002, p. 626) in

the context of their occupations and organizations.

The swell in scholarly interest in identity work is warranted in the

age of protean, boundaryless, digitized, and often plural careers, where

many employees need to create new work identities or revise existing

work identities several times in their careers (Caza, Moss, & Vough,

2017; Ibarra, 1999). Thus, workers today must be agentic in crafting

who they are and what they do at work (Arthur & Rousseau, 2001;

Hall, 2004). Yet, although recent investigations have yielded important

and relevant insights about identity work, this knowledge has emerged

in piecemeal fashion, often bounded by distinct theoretical

approaches and assumptions. For instance, authors' decision to use a

particular theoretical lens, such as social identity theory, identity

Received: 30 November 2016 Revised: 6 April 2018 Accepted: 12 June 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2318

J Organ Behav. 2018;39:889–910. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 889

theory, critical theory, or narrative theory to explain identity work

often leads their insights to mainly influence others also subscribing

to the same approach. The time is ripe for a higher level conceptual,

theoretical, and empirical integration. As such, our objective here is

to bring together the currently fragmented identity work research by

looking across theoretical, terminological, and disciplinary boundaries.

Ultimately, we hope that this review will serve as a jumping‐off

point for scholars beginning their foray into the area, as well as a

resource for veteran identity work scholars interested in moving their

research in new directions. To achieve this goal, we begin by providing

an expanded definition of identity work that specifies both identity

work modes and identity types, thereby providing important nuance

to existing definitions. We then articulate the unique contributions

and complementarities of the different theoretical lenses adopted by

identity work scholars. Weaving together various theoretical perspec-

tives around the core questions of when, how, and why of identity

work provides a more thorough understanding of the identity work

tapestry than any one theory could provide by itself. In addition, we

summarize what we currently know about the individual, interper-

sonal, and organizational implications of identity work. This analysis

sets the stage for our final contribution: a critical analysis of the cur-

rent state of the field and the identification of theoretical and method-

ological opportunities for future research. Our overarching goal of

providing scholars with a holistic picture of the identity work literature

sets this review apart from others, which focused primarily on a subset

of the literature (e.g., organizational identification work: Brown, 2017;

professional identity work: Lepisto, Crosina, & Pratt, 2015; emotions

in identity work: Winkler, 2016). By synthesizing identity work

insights from various theoretical perspectives, we hope to shift

the larger identity conversation from focusing on identity debates

(e.g., Brown, 2015) toward understanding complementarities and

points of synergy.

2|METHODOLOGY AND DEFINITIONS

2.1 |Identifying articles for inclusion

We began by performing database searches on Google Scholar,

EBSCO, and Thomson Reuters Web of Science (Social Science) using

the term “identity work”in the context of work and organizations.

As we read the resulting papers, we noticed that scholars largely relied

on the identity work definitions given by Snow and Anderson (1987)

1

,

Alvesson and Willmott (2002), Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003), and

Watson (2008). In the second stage of our search, we used Web of

Science to identify articles that have cited these four foundational arti-

cles. This reverse citation search resulted in papers that used the term

identity work as well as those that used related terms such as identity

construction (e.g., Ashforth & Schinoff, 2016; Pratt, 2012; Pratt,

Rockmann, & Kaufmann, 2006), identity play (e.g., Ibarra & Obodaru,

2016; Ibarra & Petriglieri, 2010), and identity jujitsu (Kreiner & Sheep,

2009). When terms emerged to describe identity work‐related activi-

ties, we compared them with the dominant definitions of identity

work. Those provided by Snow and Anderson (1987), Alvesson and

Willmott (2002), and Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003) consistently

emphasized the types of activities that identity work involves, includ-

ing creating, presenting, sustaining, forming, repairing, maintaining,

strengthening, or revising identities. This shared, broad conceptualiza-

tion of identity work allows many other constructs to be subsumed

within it. For example, Pratt's (2012, p. 28) definition of identity con-

struction concerns “how identities come to be formed.”As such, it fits

squarely within the “forming”aspect of identity work; [see Brown

(2015) and Pratt (2012) for a deeper discussion of distinctions

between terminologies]. In Supporting Information, we list the defini-

tions for the identity work‐related terms that fall under the broad

umbrella of identity work, as commonly defined.

We then looked within the articles identified in the first two steps

for references to additional sources. We combined all of the search

results into a comprehensive list and then read each article, book, or

book chapter to assess whether it met the following three criteria.

First, the item needed to directly focus on how individuals modify

their identities in some way (e.g., forming, repairing, and actively main-

taining). For instance, although Alvesson and Willmott (2002) has been

cited by 414 organizational articles, we only included 120 of those

articles that directly explored identity processes. Second, we selected

research focused on identity work at the individual level. Although

there are studies of how organizational, team, and brand identities

are constructed or modified, these studies were not included in our

review. However, we did include studies that examined cross‐level

implications of individual‐level identity work. Third and finally, articles

had to be in or about work and/or organizational contexts. This filter-

ing procedure resulted in the inclusion of 261 empirical and theoretical

contributions in our analysis, 211 (80.8%) of which were published in

the last decade (after 2007).

We adopted a three‐stage coding process to uncover the central

themes in the identity work literature. First, two of the researchers

went through each article and did a fine‐grained coding of the basic

components of the identity work process—identifying antecedents,

outcomes, mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Second, we then

abstracted up to categorize the codes identified in the first step

(similar to the creation of second‐order themes commonly used in

qualitative research: Van Maanen, 1979). This process led us to iden-

tify different modes, types of identities worked upon, and outcomes

of identity work. For each of these categories, we kept a spreadsheet

with specific examples from the text from each paper. Finally, having

noted the diversity in theoretical approaches taken to study identity

work in the previous two stages, we then went back to each article

and identified the theoretical lens (es) and assumptions used in it. The

results of thisanalysis became the organizingframework for this review.

2.2 |Expanded definition of identity work

While identity work scholars have drawn heavily on the four founda-

tional definitions stated above, they have also expanded upon them

in important ways (see Supporting Information for both sets of defini-

tions). Three of these expansions are widely agreed upon, perhaps

1

Although the term “identity work”had been used by sociologists previously

(e.g., Strauss, Fagerhaugh, Suczek, and Wiener (1982) used it to discuss how

hospital staff help patients deal with the implications of trauma or illness to their

personal identity), most management scholars attribute the term to Snow and

Anderson (1987).

890 CAZA ET AL.