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Week 9: Critical perspectives on management and organisations (How do orgs…
Week 9: Critical perspectives on management and organisations
IDEAL WORKER
expected to prioritise work over personal life, family & health
24/7/365
totally committed, always available
richly rewarded
PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY
goals, values, beliefs, norms, horizons of a role
organisations employing professionals (lawyers, surgeons, etc.) expect ideal workers
conflict arises if they do not meet ideal image
expectation leads to persisting gender inequality
Two forms of professional identities
:
EXPECTED: employer expectations and beliefs
EXPERIENCED: own expectations and beliefs
How do orgs. control employees' professional identity?
structure of work
:
contingent upon
prioritising work
demands over all other life demands and therefore always been
available
to the employer
Performance evaluations
reinforcement by rewards to those who fulfil
professional identity requirements
promotions
salary +
non-monetary rewards
Taken together, the structure of work and the performance evaluation system creates a self- fulfilling prophecy of professionals continuously adopting the ‘expected’ professional identity
How do employees cope with conflicting professional identities?
Congruence vs conflict
If an employee’s expected and experienced professional identities are in sync and congruent they are unlikely to experience conflict
However, a large percentage of professionals experience conflict between the two identities
Historically, researchers and practitioners focused on women (based on popular gender norms), especially those with young children as being the main cohort of professionals who would experience conflict, recent research indicates that conflict is not only restricted to them
How do professionals cope?
Professionals cope with conflicting identities by ‘
straying
’ from the expected identity (i.e. ideal worker image)
passing:
intentional or accidental misrepresentation of membership in the favoured group (i.e. expected professional identity)
Revealing:
intentional or accidental disclosure of non-membership in the favoured group (i.e. expected professional identity)
Tools for straying
Personally altering the structure of work (i.e. passing)
focusing on cultivating a local client base
working on internal projects to reduce travel time
working from home
Seeking assistance in restructuring work (i.e. revealing)
applying for reduced workloads.
seeking parental and/or carer's leave
Hiding or sharing personal information (i.e. passing and revealing)
how professionals controlled their personal information dictate whether they use passing or realign to after work structure to cope
Integrated identity management strategies for multiple audiences
Combining passing & revealing
audience status
pass to high status when revealing to same-status audiences
closeness of relationship
perceived access to formal accomodations - reveal if having access to formal accomodations (eg. parental leave)
extremity of conflict experience
when faced with extreme circumstances in work or personal life, reveal while passing all other circumstances
spillover of perceptions across audiences
Efforts to pass or reveal to one audience (e.g. high-status) can spillover and influence the perceptions held of the professional by other audiences (e.g. same- or low-level)
– Passing to high-status audiences tends to facilitate passing to equal- or low-status audiences
– Revealing to close colleagues often results in informal re-structuring of work which enables one to pass to wider high-status audiences
Revealing to high-status audiences often results in revealing to broader audiences across the organisatio
CONSEQUENCES of using integrated identity management strategies for professionals
Gender differences
On average:
– Women less likely to engage to identity management strategies that allows passing to high-status audiences and more likely to reveal
– Men are equally likely to use passing as well as revealing identity management strategies
The reasons for the above patterns are complex – often attributed to women being more likely to utilise formal accommodations (e.g. parental leave) provided by employer than men
Senior audience perceptions of professionals dictate the performance evaluation system
External perceptions & performance evaluation
High performance ratings given to:
– Those who embrace the expected professional identity (i.e. congruent with their experienced professional identity)
– Those who use passing (especially to senior-status audiences) identity management strategies to cope with conflict
Low performance rating given to those who use revealing (especially to senior-status audiences) identity management strategies to cope with conflict
High performance rating results in stable and straightforward career paths and at times accelerated advancement while low performance ratings results in missing out on promotions and/or unstable career trajectories