Occupational boundary play: Crafting a sense of identity legitimacy in an emerging occupation

• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2473
• Author: Glen E. Kreiner,Chad Murphy
• Published date: 01 November 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Occupational boundary play: Crafting a sense of identity

legitimacy in an emerging occupation

Chad Murphy

1

| Glen E. Kreiner

2

1

College of Business, Oregon State University,

Corvallis, Oregon, U.S.A.

2

David Eccles School of Business, University

of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A.

Correspondence

Chad Murphy, College of Business, Oregon

State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.

Email: chad.murphy@oregonstate.edu

Funding information

Institute of Coaching at McLean, Harvard

Medical School Affiliate

Summary

In emerging occupations, individuals are given very little prepackaged identity “con-

tent”—for example, occupational values, legitimating ideologies, clear goals, tasks,

and/or routines—to help them build their individual-level occupational identities. By

contrast, individuals in well-established occupations (e.g., professions) are given

ample identity content, and prior identity research has examined identity work pro-

cesses almost exclusively in the context of such occupations. Consequently, prior

theory assumes that identity work is mostly a matter of tailoring prepackaged iden-

tity content to fit one's individual-level preferences and objectives. Prior theory is

therefore of limited use in emerging occupations, where the key identity problem is

not one of tailoring identity content effectively but creating an identity in the first

place—more specifically, an identity whose existence feels justified and valid. Thus, in

this paper, we ask: how do individuals in emerging occupations construct an internal

sense that “who they are”is necessary, desirable, and appropriate (i.e., legitimate)

within the broader occupational landscape? On the basis of a grounded theory study

of health coaches, we suggest that individuals in such circumstances can craft this

sense of “identity legitimacy”via a sensemaking process we call occupational bound-

ary play. This process consists of both “occupational boundary setting”and “occupa-

tional boundary blurring,”the former providing for individuals a sense of identity

novelty and the latter providing a sense of identity familiarity. Taken together, this

subjective experience of both novelty and familiarity provides for individuals the

sense that “who they are”is legitimate within the broader occupational landscape.

KEYWORDS

identity construction, legitimacy work, occupational identity, professions

1|INTRODUCTION

[For health coaches] I do not think there's a clear iden-

tity to step into like there was, say, when I graduated

as a physician and you get your white coat and you

step into that mode. You stepped into a very well-

established, predefined role and there were a lot of

people that were going to tell you what that meant.

(Interview #2)

I've got to confess, I did not know who I was [as a

health coach] or if it was sustainable, too. I always

felt like “What am I going to make up today?”

(Interview #3)

With the rise of newtechnologies and the decline of the traditional

employment relationship (Ahmadjian & Robinson, 2001; Barley &

Kunda, 2001; Spreitzer, Cameron, & Garrett, 2017), we are witnessing

an influx of emerging occupations (Barley, Bechky, & Milliken, 2017;

Received: 12 February 2018 Revised: 13 March 2020 Accepted: 8 July 2020

DOI: 10.1002/job.2473

J Organ Behav. 2020;41:871–894. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 871

Curchod, Patriotta, & Neysen, 2014). These include such roles as

“wantologist,”“social media influencer,”“personal concierge,”“entre-

preneur coach,”and “content creator”(Barley et al., 2017; Bartel &

Wiesenfeld, 2013; Brake, 2014; Freberg, Graham, McGaughey, &

Freberg, 2011; Fuchs, 2010; George, 2008; Graeber, 2018;

Hochschild, 2012; Hotho, 2008; Kessler, 2014; Palmer, 2011; Peticca-

Harris, deGama, & Ravishankar, 2018) as well as emerging organiza-

tional roles such as sustainability officer and portfolio coordinator

(Light, 2011; Muckensturm, 2014). Given theiremergent nature, these

occupations are notoriously vague and their added value is debatable,

and virtually anybodycan claim to be qualified to do them. As a result,

such occupations oftenlack not just external legitimacy (i.e., legitimacy

with the general public)but internal legitimacy as well—that is, the col-

lective sense among members that their own work is worth doing and

provides value and therefore ought to exist as a job (Brown &

Toyoki, 2013; Glaser, 2014; Graeber, 2018; Nelsen & Barley, 1997;

Sherman, 2010).Such occupational conditions can have significantneg-

ative consequences for individuals, depriving them of accessto certain

key sources of self-worth (e.g.,a sense of legitimacy around “who they

are”at work) (Galperin, 2017; Graeber, 2018; Nelsen & Barley, 1997;

Petriglieri, Ashford, & Wrzesniewski, 2018; Petriglieri, Petriglieri, &

Wood, 2017).

Under such conditions, then, how do individuals create the sub-

jective sense that “who they are”in their occupational role is neces-

sary, desirable, and appropriate (i.e., legitimate) within the broader

occupational landscape? Existing identity work research does not

directly address this question, instead focusing on other types of iden-

tity objectives such as crafting a sense of personal authenticity, tem-

poral continuity, and/or coherence between multiple identities at

work (Ashforth & Johnson, 2001; Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Dutton,

Roberts, & Bednar, 2010; Roberts, Cha, Hewlin, & Settles, 2009;

Walsh & Gordon, 2008; Ladge, Clair, & Greenberg, 2012; Pratt,

Rockmann, & Kaufmann, 2001; Ramarajan, 2014). This oversight is

largely due, it seems, to the strong tendency to study identity work in

the context of well-established occupations (e.g., longstanding profes-

sions), which typically provide to their members a substantial amount

of legitimating identity content during the onboarding process. Thus,

prior theory assumes—perhaps not surprisingly—that identity work is

mostly a matter of tailoring prepackaged identity content to fit one's

individual-level preferences and objectives, thereby overlooking what

it takes to create the more fundamental sense that “who one is”at

work is valid and ought to exist in the first place. Research on stigma-

tized occupations gets closest to our research question here, particu-

larly work on “morally tainted”jobs for which certain sectors of

society might doubt the need for their existence (e.g., strippers and

exotic dancers); even in that context, however, such occupations have

existed for quite some time and therefore benefit from ready-made

ideological techniques for identity sensemaking (Ashforth &

Kreiner, 1999; Ashforth, Kreiner, Clark, & Fugate, 2007).

In this paper, we draw on qualitative data from health coaches to

build a grounded model that takes some initial steps toward

addressing our research question. Our model suggests that, to craft a

legitimate sense of self (hereafter “occupational identity legitimacy”),

individuals working in emerging occupations can engage in a sen-

semaking process we call occupational boundary play. This process

consists of “occupational boundary setting”and “occupational bound-

ary blurring,”the former providing for individuals a sense of identity

novelty and the latter providing a sense of identity familiarity. Achiev-

ing both self-perceptions at once—novelty and familiarity—is, we

suggest, core to constructing the sense of oneself as a legitimate actor

in the occupational landscape when operating in an emerging role.

Our model also suggests that individuals tend toward using one or the

other of these strategies more often—boundary setting or boundary

blurring—depending on certain aspects of their prior/concurrent

occupational history.

Our study makes two main contributions. First, we provide a

grounded model of how individuals construct a sense of identity legit-

imacy in an emerging occupation. Prior identity work tactics do not

speak to how legitimacy perceptions regarding oneself are constructed

in any context, much less an emerging occupational context, and thus,

we extend this literature (Ibarra & Petriglieri, 2010; Kreiner,

Hollensbe, & Sheep, 2006; Pratt, Rockmann, & Kaufmann, 2006). Sec-

ond, by means of our model, we highlight the role of occupational

boundaries—that is, the subjective experience and conceptualization

of them—in individual-level identity work. Prior identity work research

has only implicitly considered (if at all) how occupational boundaries

factor in to the individual's identity work process, and thus, we add a

hitherto underexplored dimension to this literature (Petriglieri

et al., 2018; Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010; Watson, 2008). Taken

together, these two contributions significantly change our under-

standing of occupational identity work, suggesting that there is a

stage of self-legitimation that precedes—and likely runs parallel to—the

extensive catalog of identity work tactics documented by prior

research, which are all aimed at self-refinement and self-customization

(Lepisto, Crosina, & Pratt, 2015; Pratt, 2012). Put differently, our

model suggests that you must first be able to see yourself as someone

who ought to exist before you can ever even consider how to exist.

Finally, on a practical level, an increasing number of people are work-

ing in emerging occupations, prompting organizational behavior and

management scholars to repeatedly call for more engagement—both

theoretically and empirically—with people's subjective experience of

such nascent work realities (Barley et al., 2017; Barley & Kunda, 2001;

Cappelli & Keller, 2012; Okhuysen et al., 2013; Spreitzer et al., 2017).

Although such research is scarce, anecdotal evidence suggests that,

when individuals do not see their work—and their identity that

necessarily emerges out of it—as legitimate, they pay significant psy-

chological and productivity costs (Graeber, 2018).

In the following sections, we review existing literature relevant to

our research question, namely: How do individuals in emerging occu-

pations create the subjective sense that “who they are”in their occu-

pational role is necessary, desirable, and appropriate (i.e., legitimate)

within the broader occupational landscape? As there is little research

that directly answers this question, we adopt a qualitative, theory-

building approach in this paper, and our literature review is thus

necessarily brief (Edmondson & McManus, 2007; Murphy, Klotz, &

Kreiner, 2017).

872 MURPHY AND KREINER