New Perspectives on Individual Identity Work, Organizational Arrangements, and Institutional Logics

This symposium aims at providing theoretical reflections and empirical evidence on how processes of identity work originating from individuals’ efforts to deal with identity challenges can influence existing organizations, create new organizational arrangements, and eventually affect institutional dynamics. We intend to highlight how recent perspectives on identity related to possible and alternative selves can help us appreciate the motivations in prompting individuals to change not only their work, but also their organization and beyond. The four papers triangulate on this topic by empirically examining: how individuals struggle with identity issues through the experience of alternative selves, and how their attempts to deal with multiphrenia impact organizations and institutions; how individuals handle the relationship between destabilized identification with their organization and identity through the identity-work enacted while interacting with multiple external audiences; how the search for enacting possible selves, when undertaken collectively, can extend beyond individual self crafting and play a role in creating new organizational forms; and how individual processes of identification with institutional logics influence the way employees organize their work and develop certain attitudes towards particular organizational practices. Presenters will explore these issues through field studies in a variety of settings and will offer new insights to the recent streams of research interested in identity work and in exploring the microfoundations of organizational and institutional change and transformation.