Getting that Certain Feeling: The Role of Emotions in the Meaning, Construction and Enactment of Doctor Managers' Identities

Abstract

Although identity research in organizations has increased in recent years, none of the current perspectives has examined the role of emotion for understanding how individuals construct and enact professional identity. In this paper we examine how emotions affect the development, conduct and meanings of professional identity among a sample of 20 doctor managers from two Spanish hospitals. While not excluding other approaches, we found that a social identity approach was especially useful. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, our results provide new insights about how, in a work setting, emotions prioritize awareness of identity issues that need attention. Second, we discuss the role of emotions for understanding complex role identities by reference to the enactment of different sides of doctor managers' identities. Third, we show how our analysis of the findings may be used to embellish the social identity approach.

Role-meanings as a critical factor in understanding doctor managers' identity work and different role identities

“…Here, comparisons of northern and southern Europe (Kirkpatrick et al, 2009;Dent, 2006); and between Australia, England, New Zealand and China (Degeling et al, 2006) indicate that doctors' willingness to accept management roles is more nation-specific than originally supposed. Despite these advances, few attempts to explain differences in identification have been made at an individual level of analysis (Hallier and Forbes, 2005;Cascón-Pereira and Hallier, 2012;McGivern et al, 2015). McGivern et al (2015) for instance, attribute DMs' varied stances to the initial role claiming that leads doctors to take up a manager role with their subsequent role being influenced by institutional logics.…”

“…This recognizes meanings, in particular role-meanings, as the core ingredients with which sensemaking, and identification as a critical element of the sensemaking process, occur (Weick, 1995). Drawing on McInnes and Corlett's framework (2012) which classifies identity work through two dimensions, organizational discourses and interactions, Figure 1 proposes that role-meanings incorporate the influence of established antecedents for DMs' different responses such as social discourses, role models and institutional logics (McGivern et al, 2015), and interpersonal relations (Cascón-Pereira and Hallier, 2012;Hallier and Forbes, 2005), constituting the basis for constructing role-meanings. Figure 1 also shows that attitudes to the hybrid role are mediated by role-meanings and therefore become a source of DMs' identity work.…”

“…Hallier and Forbes, 2005;Cascón-Pereira and Hallier, 2012;Lewellyn, 2001;Spehar et al, 2012;McGivern et al, 2015). The research has drawn attention to the individual experiences and antecedents of identification with the managerial role.…”

Enabling Social Identity Interaction: Bulgarian Migrant Entrepreneurs Building Embeddedness into a Transnational Network

“…To explore MEs’ embedding processes, the paper draws on the social identity perspective – regarded ‘useful in examining the processes by which collectives and individuals perceive and act towards their own and other significant groups’ (Cascón‐Pereira and Hallier, , p. 131). Social identity is defined as a system of shared cognition, language and behaviour, thus it can serve as an interpretative system (Cornelissen, Haslam and Balmer, ).…”

Los significados atribuidos a la gestión como fuente de las actitudes e identidad profesional de los/las médicos/as gestores/as

“…Algunos estudios han tratado de dar respuesta a este vacío, profundizando en la comprensión de las diferentes actitudes de los/las médicos/as gestores/as en sus roles híbridos [13][14][15][16][17] . Los hallazgos de estos estudios coinciden en identificar dos posturas entre los/las médicos/as que asumen responsabilidades de gestión: los/las médi-cos/as que entran en la gestión con el entusiasmo de mejorar la provisión de los servicios de salud y de influir en el funcionamiento de sus unidades, y los/las médicos/as con poco o nulo interés en la gestión y cierta hostilidad hacia las reformas del sistema de salud, pero que se sienten obligados/as a asumir un puesto de gestión para defender sus intereses o porque no hay nadie más dispuesto o capaz para asumirlo.…”