Critical Perspectives on Management and Organisations: Week 9

LO1: An ideal worker & the professional identity

LO2: How do organisations control employees’ professional
identity?

  • Taken together, the structure of work and the performance evaluation system creates a self- fulfilling prophecy of professionals continuously adopting the ‘expected’ professional identity

LO3: How do employees cope with conflicting
professional identities?

LO4: Integrated identity management strategies for multiple audiences

LO5: Consequences of using integrated identity
management strategies for professionals

Who is an 'Ideal Worker

  • An ‘ideal worker’ is one who is totally committed to and always available to fulfil his or her work duties
  • Employees who embrace this expectation are richly rewarded, especially those performing professional or managerial jobs

Professional identity

  • Organisations employing professionals expect their workers to conform to the ideal worker image
  • When a worker's experienced professional identity does not meet the expected professional identity, conflict arises
  • This expectation has led to persisting gender inequality in the workplace

Expected professional identity: employer expectations and beliefs

Experienced professional identity: own expectations and beliefs

Structure of work

  • The successful performance of the professional role has been contingent upon always prioritising work demands over all other life demands and therefore always being available to the employer

Performance evaluations

  • Reinforcing the above structure of work by rewarding (e.g. promotions, salary increments, non- monetary rewards - stars) those who fulfil such ‘expected’ professional identity requirements

Congruence vs conflict

  • If expected and experienced professional identities in sync and congruent, will be unlikely to have conflict
  • Women however experience more conflict after having children

How to professionals cope?

  • By straying from expected identity
  • By Passing or revealing

Passing

  • Intentional or accidental misrepresentations of membership in favoured groups

Revealing

  • intentional or accidental disclosure of non-membership in the favoured group (i.e. expected professional identity)

Tools for straying

Seeking assistance in restructuring work (revealing)

  • Applying for reduced workloads
  • Seeking parental or carer's leave

Hiding or sharing personal information (passing and revealing)

  • How professionals control their personal info dictate if they use passing or revealing to alter work structure to cope

Personally altering the structure of work (passing)

  • Focusing on cultivating a local client base
  • Working on internal projects to reduce travel time
  • Working from home

Factors influencing the use of passing and/or revealing when interacting with audiences

Closeness of relationship

  • Pass to those distant while revealing to close friends and mentors

Perceived access to formal accomodations

  • Reveal if having access to formal accommodations and pass if not

Audience status

  • Pass to high-status while revealing to same status audiences

Extremity of the conflict experienced

  • When faced with extreme circumstances in work or personal life, reveal while passing on all other circumstances

Spillover of perceptions across audiences

  • Efforts to pass or reveal to one audience can spillover and influence the perceptions held of the professional by other 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 organisation
  • Passing to high-status audiences tends to facilitate passing to equal- or low-status audiences

Gender differences

  • Women less likely to engage in identity management strategies that allow passing to high status audiences and more likely to reveal
  • Men are equally likely to use passing as well as revealing
  • due to women being more likely to use formal accomodations (parental leave) provided by employer

External perceptions and performance evaluation
High performance ratings given to:

  • Those who embrace the expected professional identity
  • Those who use passing to cope with conflict

Low performance rating given to those who use revealing especially to senior status audiences 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