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Week 9: Critical Perspectives on Management and Oragnisations Organisations
Week 9: Critical Perspectives on Management and Oragnisations
Organisations
Explore coping strategies used by employees when faced with conflicting professional identities.
but they often divergent, especially women with young children
The mechanisms used, mainly by 'straying' from the expected identity(i.e. ideal worker image)
passing: intentional or accidental misrepresentation of membership in 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 (passing)
seeking assistance in restructuring work (revealing)
hiding or sharing personal information (passing and revealing)
Congruence vs. Conflict: experienced professional identity is the same as the expected professional identity put forward by employer.
What is PROFESSIONAL IDENTIFICATION
Integrated identity management strategies for multiple audiences
Combining passing and revealing factors
Audience status
Closeness of relationship
Perceived access to formal accommodations
Extremity of the conflict experienced
Spillover of perceptions across audiences
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 organisation
An ideal worker & professional identity
Who is an 'ideal worker'?
Due to a move towards a 24/7/365 work cycle, employees today are expected to prioritise work ahead of family, personal needs, and even health.
Therefore, 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 is richly rewarded, especially those performing professional or managerial jobs
What is a professional identity?
Role identities comprises of goals, values, beliefs, norms, interaction styles, and time horizons associated with a given role
Two main forms if professional identities
Expected: employer expectations and beliefs
Experienced: own expectations and beliefs
Organisations employing professionals (e.g. surgeons, consultants, lawyers, academics) expect their workers to conform to the ideal worker image
When a worker's experienced professional identity does not meet the ideal worker image (i.e. expected professional identity) conflict arises
This expectation has lead to persisting gender inequality in the workplace
How do organisations control employee's professional identity?
Performance evaluations:
Reinforcing the above structure of work by rewarding with promotions, salary increments and/or non-monetary rewards. Only those who fulfil such 'expected' professional identity requiremets are rewarded.
Taken together, the structure of work and the performance evaluation system creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of prefessionals continuously adopting the 'expected' professional identity
Structure of Work:
The successful performance of the professional role been contingent upon always prioritising work demands over all other life demands and therefore always being available to the employer.
Consequences of using integrated identity management strategies for professionals
Gender Difference
On average, women are less likely to engage to identity management strategies that alllow passing to high-status audiences and more likely to reveal
On average, men are equally as likely to use passing as well as revealing identity management strategies
The reason 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 audiences perceptions of professionals dictate the performance evaluation system
External perceptions and performance evaluation
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 time accelerated advancement while low performance rating results in missing out on promotions and/or unstable career trajectories
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) indentity management strategies to cope with conflict.