Advancing a Baradian perspective on the field of identity work

Abstract

Conceptualizing identity in processual terms as identity work has long been acknowledged within the broad field of critical management and organization studies. However, recent studies show that the process by which identities evolve is still under-explored. Although extant research has considered how discourse and other symbolic means play a part in this process, this article expands such perspectives by foregrounding the relationality of discourse-materiality in identity construction processes. Using the example of an empirical analysis taken from a case study within education in Denmark, the author examines the process of identity construction by considering the ways in which discourse-materiality works to perform identities. The author combines insights from new materialist thinking with organizational discourse studies in the development of an analytics to approach the process of identity construction – coined as identity intra-activity. In doing so, the article demonstrates how an informal middle-management positioning of selected teachers is performed within its organization. By advancing the notion of identity intra-activity, the findings enable an understanding of identity work as materialized by multiple discursive-material and embodied resources – all enacted in/through the teachers’ practices – creating a petri dish for examining the co-constitutive role of discourse-materiality and enabling new ways of thinking about identity work.

Becoming in the middle: Towards a new materialist perspective on middle management positions in education

“…Chapter 6 presents the dissertation's empirical analyses in the form of two articles. The first of these, corresponding to the second article in this dissertation, is entitled: Advancing a Baradian perspective on the field of identity work: An empirical analysis of the complex discourse-materiality identity construction (Dille, 2020). The third article is entitled: Unpacking the ambiguous work of middle managers: On the ongoing becoming in liminality.…”

“…A body of literature that is particularly well developed within this strand concerns the identity work of middle managers Dille, 2020;Down & Reveley, 2009;Gjerde & Alvesson, 2020;Harding et al, 2014;Musson & Duberley, 2007;Pullen, 2006;Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2016;. These studies stress multiple ambiguous aspects related to a position 'sandwiched' in the middle (e.g., Gjerde & Alvesson, 2020;Sims, 2003), or in-between the levels within an organizational hierarchy (Ybema et al, 2011), and they show how this work involves, for example, having to navigate contrasting expectations, discourses and logics stemming from both above and below.…”