BAM 2013

This paper is from the BAM 2013 Conference Proceedings

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Ingo Winkler University of Southern Denmark

How About the Emotional Element in Identity Work? The Story of an Ongoing Literature Review. The following story originates from the research diary I kept while performing a literature review of identity work research with a particular focus on how this research addresses . The purpose for introducing the story is to illuminate the research process and to provide insight into the preliminary results. Hence, this paper does not present a fully developed analysis but invites the reader to share my experiences and to discuss my thoughts.

How it Began It all started quite some time ago. As far as I remember it was about one and a half year ago. I was reading Sturdy et al.’s (2006) article about management ideas, education and identity work in order to include some of their ideas in the theoretical part of the text I was writing at that time. Reading the article, I – rather coincidentally – came across their argument that conceptualizing identity work in terms of Sveningsson and Alvesson’s (2003) definition (i.e. “being engaged in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising’ their personal constructions or narratives”, p. 1165) might neglect the emotional character of this process. Supporting their argument, Sturdy et al. (2006) referred to Mirchandani’ s (2003) paper about emotional work and how this calls for forming various identities. The authors emphasized that identity work and emotions are relevant “particularly in periods of life transitions where -identity may be experienced more acutely as well as conditions of paradox or contradiction between self-identities” (Sturdy et al., 2006, p. 845). Reading this I thought, well an interesting insight that I should elaborate on in the future, but not now. And so I did, I continued working on my stuff, yet, also developed the assumption that emotions or the ‘emotional element’, to use my current working term here, have not been recognized much within the current research on identity work. What I did was to echo Sturdy et al.’s point of view on this and discussed the issue with colleagues. Especially at conferences and workshops I tended to emphasise that there is not much information about emotions and identity work. Receiving acknowledgements from colleagues fuelled my to pursue a more serious research on the topic. Well, be it as it is, some time later I managed to read Mirchandani (2003) to finally find out more about this article and the supposed connection between emotional work and identity work. The article’s theme was to study emotion work of self-employed women with particular focus on the racialist dimensions of such emotion work. Reading the text it turned out that the article was not about identity work, meaning that processes of identity formation and reformation did not constitute the main focus of analysis. Additionally, I was able to find only one tiny place in the text where Mirchandani writes about any link between emotion work and identity construction. On page 736, she explains that one of the women, while relating to the customer, engages in emotion work to shift her and the customer’s social position. I found myself being rather disappointed because I was not able to find more direct indications of any interlink between identity work and emotion. From reminding what Sturdy et al. wrote about Mirchandani’s work, I expected more. However, I learned a lot about how gender, race, and social location are related to emotion work and, thus, how the women who participated in the study, while doing emotion work, draw on existing “race, class and gender hierarchies” (Mirchandani, 2003, p. 721). It was perhaps the lacking answer of how emotion work and identity work are interconnected that fuelled my to continue on this topic as I was only left with ‘hints’ of how these aspects might be related to each other. To commit myself to this project, I submitted the idea to the BAM 2013 in the form of a developmental paper. It was a rather rushed submission as one of the reviewers noticed. Basically, it constituted a sketchy text that mainly summarized my assumptions so far and which promised to deliver some kind of (surely incomplete) overview of the existing body of research about identity work and to what extent this research emphasises or neglects emotions.

The First Serious Step I began the more serious research on the topic by learning whether previous research considers any link between identity and emotions. I did so by reading a variety of literature on this topic including authors such as Stryker and Burke (2000), who hold a social psychological perspective, and Jenkins (2008), who represents a more interpretive anthropological point of view. As a result I learned that for example Stryker and Burke note that: “A further, critical challenge lies in the need to detail more explicitly how emotions fit into the framework of identity theory” (2000, p. 293). Accordingly, Jenkins claims that although identification is emotionally charged “we do not have a clear picture of the relation between emotion and identity” (2008, p. 7). However, even if the above citations indicate a certain lack of knowledge, there is a considerable body of research concerning identity and emotions. Performing searches at Google Scholar and the EBSCO Business Source Complete database, I found quite a few manuscripts on identity and emotions both within Organisation Studies (e.g. Dutton et al., 2010; Ibarra & Petriglieri, 2010; Haines III & Saba, 2012; Carroll & Levy, 2008; Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993) and other fields (e.g. Exley & Letherby, 2001; Wolkomir, 2001, Zembylas, 2005). Thus, although it might very well be that we lack a clear picture about the relationship between identity and emotion, as Jenkins (2008) suggests, this does not mean that there is no research about this relationship.

Defining the Term ‘Emotion’ During this initial search and review I came across two observations. Firstly, I sensed a need to define the term ‘emotion’ or at least to develop an understanding, which would support me through my review. Therefore, I began to develop a working definition of emotion, yet only to stumble over the related concept of . Defining each of these terms and, in doing so, developing an understanding of how they are related, was not an easy task. For example, Webster’s online dictionary provided the following explanation. Emotion is a) “the affective aspect of consciousness: feeling”, b) “a state of feeling” and c) “a conscious mental reaction (as or ) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body”. Well, replacing the term ‘emotion’ with the term ‘feeling’ while explaining the former was not very revealing. Thus, I looked further finding for instance Fox’s (2008) definition that emotions are an individual’s responses to significant internal or external events. Emotions seem to be more universal and general, whereas, how they are subjectively felt may vary from individual to individual. Hence, are subjective representations of (and objective set of) emotions (Fox, 2008) defined in psychological terms. Seeing things a bit clearer, I looked into Watson (2012), Sociology, Work and Organization. The comprehensive list of key terms in organisation and management research this book offers proofed to be helpful during my previous work and will in this case here, I believed. He provided the following definition: “Feelings are sensations relating to a psychological state that are felt bodily and emotions are the way these sensations are culturally interpreted” (p. 330). With this definition, Watson echoed a different understanding of emotions and feelings that is not grounded in psychology and social psychology. Earlier Fineman (2003) provided a similar view. He explained: “There is the subjective element of emotions, what we feel. And there is the displayed feature of emotion, what we show” (p. 8). Hence, emotions are displayed feelings and by implication, emotions are influenced by social norms and processes of relational positioning within social interaction (Fineman, 2003). Adopting this point of view as a working definition enables me to establish a link between emotions and identity, since emotional performance, amongst others, seems to be closely related to processes of identification (Fineman & Sturdy, 1999). However, as you will experience in the remaining text, I am not always able to maintain the (more or less) clear distinction between the terms emotions and feelings. This is partly due to the circumstance that the research on identity work, which addresses emotions and feelings, is also not clear about differences between these concepts.

Turning Towards Social Psychological Research on Identity and Emotion A second observation during my initial literature search was that social psychological research on identity and identification seemed to have the issue of emotions rather high on its agenda (e.g. Stryker & Burke, 2000; Stets, 2004; Stryker, 2004; Dutton et al., 2010). Hence, I did a more elaborated study of this field. Social psychological research on identity and identification distinguishes between cognitive and affective identification. Following social identification through categorisation (Tajfel, 1978), cognitive identification comprises an individual’s knowledge about group membership, whereas affective identification contains the emotional significance that is attached to this membership. This distinction, according to Johnson et al. (2012) resulted in “two streams of research: self-categorization theory (largely the basis of the cognitive aspect of identification) and social identity theory (largely the basis of the emotional aspect of identification).” The latter stream is particularly interested in how experienced emotions are linked to self-categorisations (Stryker, 2004). In a nutshell, “(s)ocial categorisation generates social identity, which produces social comparison, which produce positive (or negative) self-evaluation.” (Jenkins, 2008, p. 112). Hence, positive or negative emotions, which - due to social categorisation - are in various ways related to positive or negative self-evaluation, form the core interest of social identity theory. Emotions, in this regard, can be outcomes of self-processes, expressions of self-processes as well as cues for self-categorisation (Stryker & Burke, 2000).

Focus on Identity Work in Organisation Studies However, social identity theory did not constitute my “primary” focus in this review. I believe that research on identity work in Organisation Studies prioritises different theoretical backgrounds. Therefore, I decided not to continue reading social psychologically inspired identity research. Instead I turned to the literature on identity work in Organization Studies. In so doing, I focused on a field that relates to poststructuralist/postmodernist ideas about identity (non essentialist, identity as illusion, identity as something people experience, identity as bricolage of self-notions) and to broad social constructionist thinking (identity as constituted within social interaction, identity as relational concept). Identity, hence, is neither fixed nor stable but something (a human experience to be precise) in the state of becoming (Alvesson et al., 2008). Therefore, identity is understood as an ongoing process of identification (Thomas & Linstead, 2002; Ybema et al., 2009) and this process of becoming is also labelled ‘identity work’. During times in which identification becomes conscious and actively pursued “everyday, unselfconscious identity work becomes acutely mindful” (Lutgen- Sandvik, 2008, p. 98, similarly Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Beech et al., 2008). Hence, people actively engage in identity work during life situations where they experience difficulties to smoothly (thus, unconsciously) operate a coherent sense of the self (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). I focused on research of identity work within Organisation Studies by carefully re-reading Alvesson and Willmott (2002) and Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003), for many scholars the foundational articles on identity work within Organisation Studies. There is clearly older literature using the term (and, hence, a concept) of identity work but according to the numerous articles I read, most organisational studies researchers ground their understanding in the two articles above. The following ‘search-read-analyse’-process, which I performed in several sequences and with varying degrees of intensity, is perhaps best described as one in which I oscillated between the literature that I came across as a result of searching for relevant research (e.g. articles included in the special issues of Organization (2008) and Scandinavian Journal of Management (2012)), my database of articles on identity and identity work which I used in previous projects (e.g. Ashforth et al, 2008; Beech, 2011; Down & Reveley, 2009), and the sources I found within the list of references of the articles I read (e.g. Clarke et al., 2012; D’Cruz & Noronha, 2012).

First Insights Reading and searching back and forth, I learned that “identity construction is invariably coloured by emotions” (Ybema et al., 2009, p. 307). Moreover “emotions are a sign of the ‘I’”, hence, “provide strong cues for the construction of identity” (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993, p. 101). Therefore, the process of identity work is of course not “emotionally neutral” (Beech, 2008). And in this sense, “(i)t is recognized that often people construe their identities with an explicit emotional component” (Coupland et al., 2008, p. 331). Hence, various authors acknowledge a relationship between identity work and emotions. What I also learned from analysing the numerous articles that I read was that it proofed to be extremely difficult to clearly separate between literature on ‘identity and emotion’ and more specifically on ‘identity work and emotion’. Especially when authors address processes of identity formation and reformation, yet without explicitly using the term ‘identity work’, I had problems deciding as to what extent they actually refer to identity work. To make a meaningful decision the above understanding of identity as a process of becoming, hence, identity as identification (Jenkins, 2008), provided a sound base. In this sense people always work on their identity (thus, do identity work), however, there are times and situations when this is more actively and consciously done. Turning towards the content of the reviewed articles I developed the impression that emotions and feelings are not at the forefront of research about identity work. In fact, it is not too risky to conclude that emotional aspects rarely constitute the direct focus. (notable exception is Coupland et al., 2008) This does not mean that emotions are completely excluded. However, they are dealt with rather ‘en passant’ and implicit, when for example emphasising people’s struggle to reconcile different identity demands. Hence, I think there is some inattentiveness towards emotions (and feelings) within the process of identity work. This does not necessarily constitute a drawback but it seems justified to claim that emotions constitute an under-researched aspect within identity work research.

Performing a Conceptual Leap Within the more or less systematic process of a) searching relevant literature which should be included in the review, b) reading the various articles and book chapters, c) carefully analysing them in terms of whether the authors reveal anything about the role of emotions in relationship to the process of identity work, and d) continuously pondering about meaningful links between identity work and emotions, a conceptual leap occurred to me. Conceptual leaps are those difficult to describe phenomena in (usually qualitative) research where almost suddenly the researcher identifies an order within the material. Intensively engaging with analyzing the material, conceptual leaps are the moments in which the researcher both ‘sees’ and ‘articulates’ conceptual insights emerging from her/his data (Klag & Langley, 2013). Doing a qualitative literature review, in which I attempt to include research with regards to identity work and emotions, I, after reading numerous articles on identity work, was able to come up with an insight about how I could make sense of the findings of my research. My “consciously realized and abstract theoretical idea” (Klag & Langley, 2013, p. 150) was firstly informed by what Fineman and Sturdy (1999) write about emotions. Reading their argument that “emotions are both conditions and consequences of interacting socioeconomic role and power structures such as those associated with occupations, gender and capitalism” (p. 631), I thought that perhaps a similar statement could be made with regards to emotions and identity work. In this sense, emotions could be both conditions for conscious identity work (i.e. a heightened awareness of who one is or should be in a certain context of social interaction) and consequences of such identity work. Hence, in a simplified input-output model, emotions could be both input (hence, cues) and output (hence, results) of identity work. Secondly, I learned from Marsh and Musson (2008): “Thus far, we have suggested that emotion and identity intertwine in two ways: firstly emotion is one of the key ways by which identity is expressed or ‘performed’ (Butler, 1990); secondly emotional ‘effort’ (Fineman, 2003) or ‘work’ (Hochschild, 1979) is demanded for the construction of identities, especially in ambiguous settings such as home-based telework, (when , , relief, or may all be experienced)” (p. 35, emphasis as original). They conclude that emotions could be understood as input during the process of identity construction and an output during the process of social interaction. Yet, there is another aspect here that is of particular interest for the role of emotions in identity work. The so-called emotional effort that is included in identity construction suggests that emotions could be seen as ‘means’ (or “tools” if one likes to stick to the work metaphor) of identity work. In this sense, emotions (feelings and their expression) are mobilized to accomplish identity work. Or, as Exley and Letherby (2001) suggest, people conduct emotion work in order to reaffirm their identity during difficult or sensitive moments. Emotions, thus, could not only constitute cues and results of identity work. People also might refer to feelings in order to express tensions and identity struggles and therefore to make sense of this experience. Thirdly, both insights (or rather assumption within the process of theorizing) are bolstered by what I learned from social psychological research on identity. This area suggests that emotions can be cues for self-categorisation, expressions of self-processes, and outcomes of self-processes (Stryker & Burke, 2000). Although my focus here is clearly not on self- categorization but on identity work, the various links between identity and emotions identified by social psychological identity research informed my sense making within the review project.

Making Sense of What I Learned The outcome of the insights that emerged was to develop three particular themes along which lines my results could be organized. These themes, to partly reiterate what has been written I the previous section, are a) emotions can cause identity work, b) emotions are part of identity work and c) emotions are an outcome of identity work. This is a first concept, though. The three themes constitute an analytical distinction to make sense of a rather complex and multi-faceted phenomenon. Nevertheless, in the following I provide examples for each of them, hence, allocating what I found in previous research on identity work. This allocation, however, should be considered to be preliminary because it was not always easy to identify for example as to what emotions exist prior to identity work or emotions being part of identity work. Thus, organizing what I learned along the three different themes is a proposal for ordering previous research in terms of how this research addresses the role of emotions. Emotions as cues of identity work Referring to the widely accepted definition of identity work, i.e. “forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions that are productive of a precarious sense of coherence and distinctiveness.” (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002, p. 626), conscious identity work especially takes place during situations, in which people feel uncertain and ambiguous. Hence, emotional experiences due to changes at the workplace, the disruption of social relationships, or any other work life alterations may cause (or ‘trigger’ as Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003, p. 1178, term it) a heightened awareness to work on the understanding of who one is in relation to a given social context. In this sense, Alvesson and Willmott (2002) argue that “(c)onscious identity work is … grounded in at least a minimal amount of self- and self-openness, typically contingent upon a mix of psychological-existential and the scepticism or inconsistencies faced in encounters with others or with our images of them” (p. 626). Consequently, situations where people encounter such self-doubt and self- openness and other related emotions provoke people to deal with the question of who they are. The following examples illuminate how emotions can stimulate identity work. Studying multiple identity narratives of a manager of a cultural institution, Beech (2008) referred to emotional reactions of Ronnie in several situations. For example, Ronnie felt shocked when being informed that he will not organize the next year’s concert. “Ronnie’s shock was huge when he was told ‘you will not be programming the festival next year’. Ronnie felt as though he had been fired and part of himself had been taken away” (Beech, 2008, p. 63). This emotional experience caused Ronnie to reflect on his role in the organisation and, hence, his identity. He always regarded himself as the father of the festival, as someone who is close to the artists and as a good leader, in terms of successfully organising the event (Beech, 2008). Being informed that he will not continue as head organiser, Ronnie felt unsettled as well as uncertain as to what was going to happen to him and the festival. This emotional experience caused him to work on a revised version of the answer of who he is because the current version did no longer hold true. Writing about the different selves, that people might develop as a response to various workplace situations, Collinson (2003) argued that one response is the so-called dramaturgical self. The dramaturgical self rests on impression management, thus, to “become skilled manipulator of self, reputation and image in the eyes of significant others” (p. 536). Such selves, however, are more likely to develop in situations where organizational members feel “highly visible, threatened, defensive, subordinated and/or insecure” (p. 538). Consequently, to feel for example insecure, closely monitored and in a threatened situation causes people to work on their identity in terms of developing a more dramaturgical self, while particularly engaging in impression management. D’Cruz and Noronha (2012) investigated identity disruptions due to the experience of bullying. They identified five themes of identity disruption addressing various related emotions. These feelings, for example uncertainty, discomfort and insecurity, serve as cues for the victims’ identity work in order to cope with the experienced identity disruptions (see the overview on p. 12). Therefore, participants engaged for instance in ‘building personal security and insulation’, ‘recreating equilibrium’ or ‘maintaining dignity and poise’ as particular identify work strategies (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2012) due to emotional experiences. In a similar vein, Lutgen-Sandvik (2008) identified feelings such as discomfort, ambiguity and uncertainness in what she calls the pre-bullying stage. In her study, she investigated what Alvesson and Willmott (2002) labelled ‘intensive remedial identity work’. During the pre- bullying stage, the participants felt unsure as to what the tactics of the person, who later turned out to be the bully, represented abusive behaviour or whether they just misinterpreted the signals. During this stage the participants experienced an increased level of unease but also uncertainty because they where not really able to understand what is going on. The feelings the participants had during the pre-bullying stage caused them to engage in identity work, hence, to consciously find out their position within the social relationships at work. At this stage their identity work aimed at rebuilding comfort and by implication reducing discomfort. Later on, during the bullying phase, the victims experienced fear-dread emotions. “Participants were deeply uncomfortable discovering that others could arouse such fear-even terror…” (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008, p. 107). Such emotions again led the participants to engage in identity work in order to reconcile, repair and stabilize their sense of self. Studying middle managers’ often-precarious situation, Thomas and Linstead (2002) referred to the numerous feelings their participants expressed while making sense of their middle management position. The feeling of ‘loosing the plot’ (i.e. uncertainty, ambiguity and ) turned out as a common theme across the interviews. For example, Richard Brown felt like he had lost his job when his manager status had been changed to team leader. Due to this change he felt insecure and vulnerable. Jane Buxton experienced ambiguity over her role and future direction within the organisation she works at. She felt insecure and thought she had to prove something. Phil Wright expressed strong feelings of distress about the job interviews he had gone through during the past years due to constant restructuring in the company. He felt uncertain and insecure with regard to permanent restructuring. He also felt vulnerable because middle managers are an easy target during phases of restructuring. Taken together, the emotions the middle managers had about their position suggest that these feelings caused the managers to constantly be aware of who they are (or should be). Thus, emotions in Thomas and Linstead’s study provoked the managers’ conscious identity work. Emotions as a means of identity work There are two ways of how emotions can be considered to be an integral part of the process of identity work. First, identity work is performed using a variety of emotional expressions. For instance, feeling ashamed, being targeted and unable to stop abuse while experiencing bullying (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008) become part and parcel of the process of reforming or re- establishing a coherent notion of who one is during such situations. In this sense, emotions are a particular way to maintain or change a particular self-notion. Secondly, people perform identity work by using emotional experiences as a resource (e.g. Davis & Thomas, 2008; Coupland et al., 2008). This refers to particular modes of how people in organisations use their experience with felt, displayed, prescribed, learned etc. emotions while working on their identity. Such modes are a) referring to emotional experiences while making sense of who one is and should be, and b) talking about emotions as linguistic resource while narratively constructing identity. Coupland et al. (2008) investigated college teachers’, managers’ and administrators’ accounts of emotional experience. While talking about emotions, the participants (re-)produced their identities, hence, positioned themselves within social space. Managers and administrators tend to deny being emotional at work. They actively downgrade the role of emotion for their work identity as they claim that being emotional interferes with their understanding of being professional at work. In contrast, teachers actively talk about their emotions accepting that being emotional at work forms an important element of their work identity. Therefore, “(i)n terms of claimed identity, being a ‘type’ of person legitimized both unemotional and emotional claims.” (Coupland et al., 2008, p. 343). In turn, this study suggests that certain emotional and unemotional claims are part of the process of forming, maintaining and revising who one is. Similar to Coupland et al. (2008), Clarke et al. (2009) identified discourses of versus emotional engagement. Analysing such antagonistic discourses at a large engineering company in the UK, some of the managers devalued emotions at work. Being “pink and fluffy” does not belong to their understanding of what it means to identify as a manager. Especially during redundancies to display emotions is inappropriate. To consciously exclude any emotional display or emotional involvement seems to be a particular element of performing identity work. Studying academics at business schools, Clarke et al. (2012) proposed that the circumstance that academics their job forms a relevant resource for their identity. They suggested three notions of ‘love for the job’ (romantic, unconditional and pragmatic love), which seem to be one of the main sources informing the academics’ self-notion within the changing work environment at business schools. Experiencing various changes with regard to further implementing new public management principles into business schools’ management practices, to love one’s job served as resource to establish a meaningful self-notion for the academics in the study. Hence, the emotional experience of having a vocation and not simply a job helped the academics to respond to changes in the workplace and, thus, to maintain an idealistic self-notion or to establish an altered sense of identity. In Ezzell’s (2009) study of female rugby players, the participants constantly had to make sense of who they are as engaging in rugby (a “collegiate, male-defined sport”, p. 111) did not easily go along with the notion of being a female and the associated “conventional notions of passive femininity” (p. 111). The players referred to themselves as being tough, aggressive and angry. While working on their identity they tended to naturalize emotions associated with aggression and competition (Ezzell, 2009). To this extent, they ‘used’ certain types of emotions in order to solve the identity dilemma and to maintain a coherent sense of self. Emotions as outcomes of identity work I admit that this theme is somewhat problematic. Since identity work is usually defined to be an ongoing activity there cannot be an end in the sense of, for example, a final self-notion. Consequently, talking about output, I refer to the circumstance where people ‘fall back’ into a rather unconscious state where a person is ‘again’ (i.e. after active and conscious identity work) able to smoothly operate a coherent sense of self. Additionally, after a phase of intensive identity work, to realize that one was (not) able to reconcile identity tensions and contradictions evokes certain feelings. For instance, one might feel relieved to be able to establish a ‘new’ or shifted self-understanding, which holds for some time. Costas and Fleming (2009) referred to situations, in which people fail to establish and maintain a boundary between their authentic identity and the identity defined by the corporation. Not being able to dis-identify, the participants in this study experienced a state of self-alienation. Their understanding of who they are “is an alien corporate self” (Costas & Fleming, 2009, p. 360). Some of the participants developed the depressing awareness that their life is entirely defined by the corporate lived self (feelings of loss). “Paul feels that his job is ‘draining’ him of his personhood…” (p. 368) and the “imagery of ‘strangulation’ and ‘brain- rotting’ captures Paul’s feeling that his life is being drained, as he becomes the foreign corporate self (i.e. ‘stupid’).” (p. 368). Here, failed identity work, in the sense of a failed attempt to cope with the clash between self-identity and the social-identity that is demanded by the organization, led to , frustration, alienation and a feeling of loosing one’s self. There were other cases, however, where people successfully managed the difference between the corporate self and the real self (Costas & Fleming, 2009). In such cases participants felt satisfied because they were effectively able to dis-identify from unwanted corporate demands. In their study, Down and Reveley (2009) examined how frontline managers establish managerial identities through both narration and performance. When writing about their participant’s work on his managerial identity, they referred to some emotional outcomes of this identity work. At some point, Wilson felt self-confident and certain when giving orders to others. This indicates that he was able to establish a managerial identity (before that he tended to feel nervous and baulk). Recognising that he successfully identifies as a manager created , , certainty and unambiguousness. In Ezzell’s (2009) research of female rugby players the participants tend to naturalise to be aggressive and competitive as part of their female rugby player identity. At the same time they said that ’an aggressive personality,’ ‘an anger management problem to work out,’ ‘someone really intense,’ ‘a competitive personality,’ are appropriate terms to define what makes a good rugby player. Successfully establishing an identity of the female rugger helped the women to feel better and superior. “Female rugby players, in this account, are not just different from other female athletes; they are better.” (Ezzell, 2009, p. 117). They also feel superior compared to the fat (hence, not fit) women of other rugby teams. In contrast, however, to identify as female rugby player the participants also felt vulnerable of being labelled as non-female, she-male or big rough lesbian. Thus, successfully maintaining a distinct female rugger identity entails the feeling of being prone to verbal attacks from others who subscribe to the dominant stereotyped view of female rugby players. Investigating one meeting in a Swedish evening newspaper company, Kärreman and Alvesson (2001) traced the process of how identities are established and maintained through conversation. Constructing the identity of the newsmaker provided the participants of the meeting with certainty. The newsmaker identity reduced “feelings of and personal responsibility. They also reduce vulnerability in relationship to the expectations and norms of other people and groups in the organization.” (Kärreman & Alvesson, 2001, p. 83). Maintaining a coherent sense of the newsmaker had various emotional outcomes. Feeling as part of the group, certain about who one is, less vulnerable about what one should do were particular results of identity work in this case.

Take Break and Discuss My Mental Outpour Submitting the idea of this research to the Identity SIG for BAM2013, I indicated that at the time of the conference I might not be able to deliver a full-fletched analysis. I promised, however, to deliver a text that would enable the audience to engage in a discussion about the emotional element within identity work. And here I am, having told the story of the research process and provided preliminary results. I would very much invite you to participate in a discussion centring on the three themes that I propose as well as a set of other (not really resolved) issues concerning my research. In the beginning, i.e. when I was able to ‘see’ the three themes, the trichotomy seemed to be very clear to me. I was convinced that organising the review along the three themes of a) emotions as cues for identity work, b) emotions as element of identity work and c) emotions as result of identity work, would result in a meaningful and straightforward overview. Continuing the review and writing this paper I became more and more uncertain, though. Is this concept perhaps simplifying the topic too much, particularly with reference to the rather complex and multifaceted concept of identity work? Reflecting on the three themes and experiencing difficulties to organize previous research around them, I continue asking myself whether my conceptualisation might be too coarse. Therefore, I would like to ask whether it does make sense to you. With regard to the focus of the review, I continue to have trouble to decide upon what papers to include or exclude. This difficulties relates to a) Organisation Studies as being the primary area of analysis and b) the understanding of identity work. With regard to Organisation Studies, I explained that I intend to focus on identity work research done within this area. However, this is a broad and loosely defined field as it could include work organisations as well as any other form of organising activity. At the moment, I tend to include everything (incl. for instance studies of female rugby players, managers of cultural institutions, paratroopers, academics) even if I increasingly sense that my review may be seen as becoming too broad. In terms of defining identity work, many of the articles included so far do not explicitly refer to for example Alvesson and Willmott’s (2002) definition. Rather, these texts use an understanding of identity as an ongoing process of identification, which has many facets and is precarious as it means to continually balance/negotiate between self-identity and social- identity. Such an understanding matches accepted definitions of identity work as it does not necessarily has to be performed consciously. Yet, I do also see the potential problem that some might argue that focussing on the occasions where people actively work on their self- notion is actually the focus of most research done within identity work. Thus, accepting other notions might lead to dilute the concept and hence blur the focus of the review. Defining emotions and feelings, therefore, differentiating between the two concepts, proved to become a rather difficult task in my research. Finding a precise definition is not a problem, however, the loose use of the terms within the studies I reviewed makes it extremely difficult to maintain a coherent meaning. Currently, I just take what the articles offer without attempting to clarify or re-define their concepts of emotion and feeling (usually they do not provide any definition or explanation at all). I guess, however, that the various and mixed notions that my text employs might confuse readers. These are some of the issues I am contemplating at the moment. I would love to hear your opinion on them as well as any other comments you may have.

References

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