Advancing careers through ‘merit’: a rationalized-sensemaking narrative in hierarchical organizations

Abstract

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How to be a hero: How managers determine what makes a good manager through narrative identity work

“…The paper thus adds theoretical grounding to studies that have highlighted the role of landscapes in providing moral context for narratives (e.g. Clifton, 2018;Whittle and Mueller, 2011), or the capacity of individuals to personally interpret organisational discourses (Gustafsson and Swart, 2020;Pérez and Sabelis, 2019), and complements studies which have focused on the role of individuals in co-constructing shared versions of the organisation through collective stories and narrative identities (Foroughi, 2020;Savage et al, 2018;Sörgärde, 2020).…”

“…Recent studies have examined the role of individuals as co-constructors of group and organisational identities through stories (Foroughi, 2020; Savage et al, 2018; Sörgärde, 2020) but these important contributions still focus on macro- and meso-level processes of constructing collective stories and versions of the organisation, rather than how individuals construct personal versions. Some recent studies hint at the capacity of individuals to construct their own working versions of organisational discourses and thus the nature of the organisation (Gustafsson and Swart, 2020; Pérez and Sabelis, 2019) but such processes are not their focus, and they fail to explicitly draw out and theorise them.…”

Emirati women’s professional legitimacy

“…The value of being a role model for younger female relatives that emerged in several narratives is of particular note in the UAE context given the government drives to localize the workforce and the fact that many Emiratis consider their work as a contribution to the development of their young nation beyond normal career objectives. Given this national objective, women may consider their participation in the workforce as embodying additional merit in the sense used by Pérez and Sabelis (2019), in which it connotes a capacity for greater self-efficacy and overcoming uncertainty. In other words, the macro-level force of the national objective of workforce localization feeds into positive micro-level judgments regarding legitimacy.…”