https://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/dahe7472/Journal%20of%20Management-2008-Ashforth-325-74.pdf

Identification in Organizations: An Examination of Four Fundamental Questions

The Theory of Incentives I: The Principal-Agent Model

Identification is a person's sense of belonging with a social category. Identification in virtual organizational teams is thought to be especially desirable because it provides the glue that can promote group cohesion despite the relative lack of face-to-face interaction. Though research on virtual teams is exploding, it has not systematically identified the antecedents or moderators of the process by which identification develops, leaving a number of gaps and apparent contradictions. The purpose of this paper is to begin to untangle the contradictions and address some of the gaps by tracing the mechanisms and moderating processes through which identification develops in hybrid and pure virtual settings, and the ways that these processes differ from face-to-face settings.

Identification in Face-to-Face, Hybrid, and Pure Virtual Teams: Untangling the Contradictions

This article begins with the following question: Why, even with the proliferation of poststructuralist theoretical understandings of identity, do people routinely talk in terms of “real” and “fake” selves? Through an analysis of critical empirical studies of identity-construction processes at work, this article makes the case that the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy is created and maintained through organizational talk and practices and, in turn, serves as a constitutive discourse that produces four subject positions with both symbolic and material consequences: strategized self-subordination, perpetually deferred identities, “auto-dressage,” and the production of “good little copers.” The article challenges scholars to reflexively consider the ways they may perpetuate the dichotomy in their own academic practices. Furthermore, the authors present the metaphor of the “crystallized self” as an alternative to the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy and suggest that communication scholars are well-poised to develop alternative vocabularies, theories, and understandings of identity within the popular imagination.

Fracturing the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy: Moving toward "crystallized" organizational discourses and identities

Within the personal branding movement, people and their careers are marketed as brands complete with promises of performance, specialized designs, and tag lines for success. Because personal brandi...

Marketization and the Recasting of the Professional Self: The Rhetoric and Ethics of Personal Branding

Counterinstitutional Web sites are often portrayed as publicizing the outbursts of disgruntled employees and customers. However, they also enable participants to take part in discussions normally discouraged within traditional work environments. These sites permit individuals to publicly and anonymously voice their concerns and frustrations with particular institutions with reduced fear of retribution or termination. A close examination of one of these counterinstitutional Web sites (RadioShackSucks.com) illustrates the dissent and resistance functions that such sites provide to a wide variety of stakeholders. The authors' analysis of 1,095 site postings during a 1-month period finds that participants use these sites to engage in voice and resistance efforts outside formal organizational boundaries. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

My Job Sucks: Examining Counterinstitutional Web Sites as Locations for Organizational Member Voice, Dissent, and Resistance

Current managerial practices such as downsizing and the use of temporary labor require scholars to reconsider the organizational desirability of member identification. Maintaining an identified workforce takes time, energy, and resources that organizations may not always be willing to provide. This study examines the temporary help industry in order to analyze the ways in which contemporary labor strategies might complicate our existing theories of organizational identification. Drawing upon interview data from 39 temps and their supervisors, this study highlights communicative strategies that prevent rather than promote member identification with organizations.

Kept at arm's length: questioning the organizational desirability of member identification

Temporary workers are part of the quickly expanding and maturing contingent labor industry. Through observations of industry practice and worker self-reports, this study illustrates some of the con...

Falling between the Cracks Control and Communication Challenges of a Temporary Workforce

The Long-Term Impact of Short-Term Workers: The Work Life Concerns Posed by the Growth of the Contingent Workforce

Alternative notions of temporality are the defining quality of nonstandard work relationships such as temporary jobs, contract labor, part-time employment, and various forms of telework. These arrangements challenge traditional boundaries of personal versus work time, call into question unlimited versus conditional time limits for membership, and highlight seasonal versus steady-state orientations toward production. This chapter focuses on the unique temporal perceptions, processes, and practices associated with nonstandard work arrangements that shape and are shaped by communication in local and global circumstances, spanning multiple levels of organizational analysis and, indeed, diverse areas of our discipline. Given the position of time as a constitutive communication construct, examining the intersection of time and nonstandard work relationships lends value to investigations on a wide variety of important “life” issues. For instance, contemporary stakeholder conversations surrounding issues of work-...

Loril M. Gossett

Papers

My Job Sucks: Examining Counterinstitutional Web Sites as Locations for Organizational Member Voice, Dissent, and Resistance

Kept at arm's length: questioning the organizational desirability of member identification

Falling between the Cracks Control and Communication Challenges of a Temporary Workforce

The Long-Term Impact of Short-Term Workers: The Work Life Concerns Posed by the Growth of the Contingent Workforce

Alternative Times: Temporal Perceptions, Processes, and Practices Defining the Nonstandard Work Relationship