Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Identity In and Around Organizations: Usual Suspects and Beyond 1802207961, 9781802207965

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HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH METHODS FOR STUDYING IDENTITY IN AND AROUND ORGANIZATIONS

Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Identity In and Around Organizations Usual Suspects and Beyond

Edited by

Ingo Winkler Associate Professor of Organization Studies and Leadership, Department of Business and Management, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Stefanie Reissner Professor of Work and Organization Studies, Essex Business School, University of Essex, UK

Rosalía Cascón-Pereira Associate Professor in HRM, Department of Business Management, University Rovira i Virgili, Spain

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Ingo Winkler, Stefanie Reissner and Rosalía Cascón-Pereira 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023937395 This book is available electronically in the Business subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781802207972

ISBN 978 1 80220 796 5 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80220 797 2 (eBook)

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Contents

List of figuresvii List of tablesviii List of boxesix List of contributorsx Acknowledgements by the editorsxiii Prologue: studying identities and identity workxiv 1

Introduction to the Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Identity In and Around Organizations1 Ingo Winkler, Rosalía Cascón-Pereira and Stefanie Reissner NARRATIVE METHODS

PART I 2

Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives Stefanie Reissner

13

3

Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis Isidora Kourti

26

4

Organizational small storymaking and change: identity work as coming into being in narrative story dynamics Ann Starbæk Bager

5

The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity Anne Crafford and Johann Mouton

PART II

40 56

VISUAL METHODS

6

Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work Antoni Barnard

7

A picture is worth a thousand words: social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections Sarah V. Bentley, S. Alexander Haslam, Katherine H. Greenaway, Tegan Cruwys and Nik Steffens

71

87

PART III ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 8

Netnography: a route to explore identity evolution as online videogames develop104 Alexandra Samper-Martínez and Ercilia García-Álvarez

v

vi  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations 9

Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research Elham Moonesirust

117

10

The other: posing questions I am supposed to love – autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work Henning Grosse

130

11

Who am I when I am in flow? An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity Ulrike Eva Posselt

143

PART IV EMBODIED METHODS 12

Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance: body-centred narrative inquiry Cheryl K. Baldwin and Alyssa E. Motter

13

Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making Mark Stephens and Ryan Higgins

PART V

158 173

METHODS FOR ELICITING PERSONAL MEANINGS

14

Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme Rosalía Cascón-Pereira, Miquel Alabernia-Segura and Guillem Feixas

189

15

A portrait in words: using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities Angela McGrane, Viv Burr and Nigel King

205

16

A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work Christina Gossayn, Anne Crafford and Arien Strasheim

218

PART VI METHODS FOR ANALYSING NATURALLY OCCURRING DATA 17

Using membership categorization analysis to study identities in talk and text Andrea Whittle

18

Autobiographies and identity: using autobiographies to study identity in organizational research Nick Mmbaga, Blake Mathias and Anne Smith

19

Assessing collective identity (non-)verification with social media data through web scraping, sentiment analysis, and qualitative coding Tony P. Love, Jenny L. Davis, Rachel E. Davis, William G. Fisher and Rachel M. Barczak

Epilogue: towards a methodological roadmap and beyond Ingo Winkler, Rosalía Cascón-Pereira and Stefanie Reissner

232

247

261

275

Index287

Figures

4.1

Illustration of the workshop agenda

45

4.2

Illustration of the workshop situation seen from a bird’s-eye view showing how the three participant types were placed in the room

46

4.3

Transcript excerpt from the dialogue exercise

47

6.1

Comparing notes with a stranger

78

6.2

Flowers from my husband’s work

79

6.3

Going down the open spiral staircase

80

7.1

An example of a social identity map

92

7.2

Example of a person’s online social identity map, showing a mixture of friendship groups, family groups, work and activity groups (classified by shadings)

94

12.1

Body map of professional identity and the transition to retirement

165

12.2

Contrasting expression, tension, coherence and resolve

168

12.3

Narrative somatic identity resolution

169

13.1

Sample mask

177

13.2

Sample aspirational (outside) mask with accompanying narrative for constructing an ‘I poem’ as part of the listening guide

179

13.3

Sample actual (inside) mask with accompanying narrative for constructing an ‘I poem’ as part of the listening guide

180

14.1

The RG created with Mary

194

14.2

Implicative dilemmas identified in Mary’s RG

197

14.3

3D navigable representation of Mary’s construct system as applied to self and others

200

16.1

Repertory grid plot of Maria Young for three elements

225

18.1

Data analysis process

255

vii

Tables

8.1

Stages, data set, methods and research outcome

108

12.1

Solo performance analysis

167

13.1

Compositional interpretation

182

13.2

Sample codebook domains and subdomains

184

15.1

Kelly’s protocol for analysis of self-characterization sketches

208

15.2

Sample of analysis notes made, based on Kelly’s protocol, Sketch 1

211

16.1

Summary of the research methods

220

16.2

Example of an individual construct completed in the repertory grid technique by Maria Young

221

16.3

Integration of some findings for Maria Young

224

17.1

Steps involved in undertaking membership categorization analysis

242

19.1

Results of the study

268

viii

Boxes 3.1

Extract from Kourti (2013, p. 292) from the edited transcript of Maria’s interview indicating the textual structure for ‘The power of the organization is in working together’

32

3.2

Extract from Kourti (2013, pp. 162–164) from the findings presentation of Maria’s personal story demonstrating the textual and performative approach

35

12.1

Guided visualization script for somatic identity awareness

163

13.1

Narrative for the outside (aspirational) mask

179

13.2

Narrative for the inner side (actual) mask

180

14.1

Extract from transcript of Mary’s interview illustrating the performative of language to facilitate personal change

198

ix

Contributors

Miquel Alabernia-Segura, Part-time Lecturer, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Barcelona, Spain Ann Starbæk Bager, Associate Professor in Organizational and Leadership Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark Cheryl K. Baldwin, Associate Professor, Department of Administrative Leadership, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA Rachel M. Barczak, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Kentucky, USA Antoni Barnard, Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, University of South Africa, South Africa Sarah V. Bentley, Research Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia Viv Burr, Professor of Critical Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Huddersfield, UK Rosalía Cascón-Pereira, Associate Professor of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour, Department of Business Management, University Rovira i Virgili, Spain Anne Crafford, Senior Lecturer, Department of Human Resource Management, University of Pretoria, South Africa Tegan Cruwys, Associate Professor, School of Medicine and Psychology, Australian National University, Australia Jenny L. Davis, Associate Professor, School of Sociology, Australian National University, Australia Rachel E. Davis, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Middle Tennessee State University, USA Guillem Feixas, Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Barcelona, Spain William G. Fisher, Research Scientist, NORC at the University of Chicago, USA Ercilia García-Álvarez, Professor, Department of Business Management, University Rovira i Virgili, Spain Christina Gossayn, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Human Resource Management, University of Pretoria, South Africa

x

Contributors  xi Katherine H. Greenaway, Associate Professor, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Australia Henning Grosse, Doctoral Supervisor, Gloucestershire Business School, University of Gloucestershire, UK; Associate Lecturer, Department of Architecture and Building Technology, Berliner Hochschule für Technik, Germany; Owner/Director, Bauunternehmen Henning Große GmbH, Germany S. Alexander Haslam, Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology and Australian Laureate Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia Ryan Higgins, Medical Student, Penn State College of Medicine, Pennsylvania State University, USA Nigel King, Professor of Applied Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Huddersfield, UK Isidora Kourti, Lecturer in Management, The Open University Business School, The Open University, UK Tony P. Love, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Kentucky, USA Blake Mathias, Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, USA Angela McGrane, Assistant Professor, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, UK Nick Mmbaga, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Lacy School of Business, Butler University, USA Elham Moonesirust, Lecturer in Management Studies, University of Aberdeen Business School, UK Alyssa E. Motter, Visiting Assistant Professor of Instruction, Department of Theatre and Dance, Northwestern University, USA Johann Mouton, Professor, CREST and NRF-DSI Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and STI Policy, Stellenbosch University, South Africa Ulrike Eva Posselt, Communications Consultant, Jena, Germany Stefanie Reissner, Professor of Work and Organization Studies, Essex Business School, University of Essex, UK Alexandra Samper-Martínez, Researcher at CTL Research Group, Department of Cultural Industries, TecnoCampus, University Pompeu Fabra, Spain Anne Smith, King and Judy Rogers Professor in Business, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee Knoxville, USA Nik Steffens, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia

xii  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Mark Stephens, Professor and Associate Dean, College of Medicine, Pennsylvania State University, USA Arien Strasheim, Associate Professor, Department of Human Resource Management, University of Pretoria, South Africa Andrea Whittle, Professor of Management and Organization Studies, Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle University, UK Ingo Winkler, Associate Professor of Organization Studies and Leadership, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Acknowledgements by the editors

This Handbook is the collaborative product of many individuals and groups, whom we would like to thank here in chronological order. First, the Special Interest Group (SIG) ‘Identity’ of the British Academy of Management has not only inspired us to compile this Handbook following a webinar titled ‘Identity inquiry: beyond the usual suspects’, which was organized by Identity SIG, but also nurtured our interest in the study of identity in and around organizations for many years. Special thanks go to Professor Kate Black and Dr Sandra Corlett for their voluntary commitment to advancing this important and exciting field of study. Second, a big thank you goes to Edward Elgar Publishing. Francine O’Sullivan’s openness towards our book proposal and her exemplary support throughout the project escorted us from conception to publication. Francine was always at hand when we had any questions. We also thank all those working behind the scenes and helping make the Handbook reality. Third, the Handbook would not have been possible without the contribution and dedication of all authors from around the globe who not only submitted a chapter but also were an integral part of the peer review process. Your support is particularly appreciated because in many institutions book chapters are of very little value for career development and advancement. Your contributions are a clear example of scholarly vocation and intrinsic motivation. Finally, we thank Professor Andrew Brown, one of the best-known identity scholars of this generation, who generously wrote a prologue for our Handbook.

xiii

Prologue: studying identities and identity work

It is increasingly recognized that identities and the work by which they are created, sustained, adapted and discarded are not just interesting per se but key to understanding a multiplicity of issues across the arts, humanities and social sciences (Brown, 2020). With this recognition has come a recent surge of activity centred on identities such that their study is now a mainstream concern of a broad range of scholars, especially those whose interests are cross-disciplinary and/or multi-level. Self-identity is a topic that has concerned humanity for thousands of years, and yet the allure of identity as a master concept is one that, despite a few siren voices, is still sufficiently powerful to attract new generations of devotees. This said, it is noticeable that there has been far more interest in identities and the processes by which they are constructed than there has been in different methods for researching them. Scholarship that draws on social identity theory and social categorization theory (SIT/SCT) relies almost exclusively on a narrow range of experimental and survey research approaches. Most other kinds of identity scholarship, whether informed by discursive, dramaturgical, symbolic or psychodynamic assumptions, tend to favour one-off interview-based methods, often embedded in research designs such as in-depth case studies and ethnographies. More rarely, researchers have engaged in diary, photo-elicitation, micro-textual and video analyses. Longitudinal studies of identities that provide insight on the temporal dynamics of identity formation and change are rare indeed. There is, in short, an arguable conservatism evident in how identities are most often researched. It is in this context that an edited collection on methods issues as they relate to identities research is most welcome. In this Handbook, authors outline an exciting range of interpretive approaches to interrelated practices of data collection and analysis that will animate both seasoned scholars and those at the early stages of their careers as identities researchers. That the focus of these chapters is on qualitative methods is wholly appropriate and not just because there is already a surfeit of advice and guidance on how to conduct experimental and survey work. Identities are almost always complicated phenomena and are most often best studied using methods and approaches that are flexible, adaptable to local contingencies, and allow the development of both ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973) and sophisticated theory. There is a continuing need for identities researchers both to honour existing traditions and established methods and to engage in novel and creative ways of exploring identities in, of and around organizations. Not only are identities dynamic and multi-layered but the scholarly community interested in their study is somewhat fragmented and heterogeneous, and while some detect an emerging identity work perspective, others discern a field riven with distinctive ideological assumptions. The methods employed to research identities need to be sufficiently diverse to offer identity scholars of different hues the tool kits they require to pursue their interests. It is thus satisfying to see chapters in this Handbook that deal not just with well-known methodologies (e.g., relating to texts and narratives) but also those concerned with, for example, mask-making, dream-drawing and dance. This Handbook is more significant for its attempt to look beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries and to draw ideas from distinctive disciplines including management studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology and the arts. While this is not without risk, the chapters xiv

Prologue: studying identities and identity work  xv in this Handbook are usefully grounded by explicit definitions, a focus on organizing, and practical illustrations that demonstrate how to use the method described. If identities research is to have an illustrious future, then intellectually grounded practical advice on how to conduct it is a sine qua non and this Handbook is a valuable addition to the canon. Andrew D. Brown School of Management University of Bath, UK

REFERENCES Brown, A. D. (Ed.). (2020). The Oxford handbook of identities in organizations. Oxford University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. Basic Books.

1. Introduction to the Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Identity In and Around Organizations Ingo Winkler, Rosalía Cascón-Pereira and Stefanie Reissner

HOW THE HANDBOOK CAME ABOUT Handbooks, like other scientific publications, have their own history. Narrating the history of this Handbook, we want to share with you – the readers – the story behind its development. This includes information on how the idea for this Handbook came about and an illustration of the various decisions we had to make in the process of creating it. Handbooks, as we will explain later, are social creations and hence products of social interaction. Therefore, we believe it will be of value for you to gain some insight into why and how the Handbook came into being, how we came to identify as editors, and how we composed it together with the authors, the reviewers and the publisher. In this sense, the introduction provides information on the background, rationales, decisions we made, and also the obstacles we had to overcome. The motivation for the Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Identity In and Around Organizations emerged from a webinar entitled ‘Identity inquiry: beyond the usual suspects’, which was organized by the Special Interest Group (SIG) ‘Identity’ of the British Academy of Management (BAM). The event in June 2020 aimed to broaden the methodological focus of identity research in organizational contexts in accordance with the group’s interdisciplinary focus. The webinar featured three speakers who introduced the repertory grid technique, characterization sketches and identity drawings, respectively, as innovative research methods for studying identity in and around organizations. After the webinar, the idea to deepen and broaden the discussion of research methods in identity studies gained momentum. In November 2020, the members of the SIG decided to develop an edited collection that would bring together some established and more innovative research methods that have been used to fruitfully study different levels and aspects of identity in and around organizations. Taking charge, Ingo Winkler formulated a call for papers that was distributed amongst the SIG members and the wider BAM community. The initial feedback was very positive, and various scholars indicated their interest in contributing to the collection. At that point, Rosalía Cascón-Pereira and Stefanie Reissner joined what would become the editorial team, enabling us to pool both our respective editorial experiences and methodological interests. We were very pleased to excite Francine O’Sullivan at Edward Elgar Publishing about our idea and contribute to their growing range of research methods handbooks. These were the initial steps of socially constructing this Handbook, and soon afterwards, authors, reviewers and editors contributed to co-creating it through their engagement with a wide range of research methods and approaches. Although you, the reader, now have the finished product in your hands or on screen, we hope the matter does not end here. Indeed, we hope that the Handbook contributes to the social construction of the field of identity research 1

2  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations by current and future generations of identity scholars who apply and innovate with the research methods reported in it. In other words, it is our sincere hope that the Handbook will become a springboard for new thought and methodological innovation in the study of identity in and around organizations.

WHY IS THE HANDBOOK NEEDED? Identity research in management and organization studies has seen major developments over recent years. Scholars from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, sociology, psychology, political sciences, and education have used the concept of identity to understand both the social world of organizations and the individuals who constitute and make sense of it. Hence, identity has become a key concept in the social sciences and humanities. Given this burgeoning interest, a broad range of theoretical perspectives (e.g., social identity theory, identity work, discursive identity) and new foci (e.g., identity intersection, liminal identity) have emerged. Brown’s (2020) recent edited collection is a powerful testament to the diversity of identity research in our field in terms of the conceptualizations and levels of identity studied, the research approaches and methods applied, and the tensions and paradoxes encountered in the study of identity. It thus represents a topical theoretical roadmap for social scientists who want to study identities and identity issues in organizations. Simultaneously, the research methods by which identities in organizations are commonly studied have become more diverse (Brown, 2015). There are, for example, guides for social scientists to study identity quantitatively as a variable (Abdelal et al., 2009). Identity scholars have also acknowledged the value of qualitative methods in the study of identity (e.g., Caza et al., 2018; Kroger, 2007). Although Brown (2020) includes a good array of qualitative research methods and methodologies to study identities (such as video diaries, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, membership categorization analysis, historical methods), the focus of that edited collection remains firmly on theoretical rather than on methodological pluralism. Given suggestions that relatively little is known about the various methods available to study identity in organizational contexts (e.g., Foreman & Whetten, 2016; Whittle & Mueller, 2020), we felt that there was a real need to compile a seminal resource focusing specifically on the research methods used to study identity in and around organizations. Our desire to combine both established and more emerging research methods in this Handbook speaks to the broader interest in innovative research methods, defined as methods that ‘demonstrate substantial novelty in every part of the research process’ (Lê & Schmid, 2022, p. 308) thanks to their potential to generate new theoretical insights. Of course, it can be challenging to distinguish between established and innovative research methods. For example, some scholars may find narrative analysis and autoethnography novel and innovative, while for others, these methods constitute established ways of studying identity. Therefore, we adopted a pragmatic approach in selecting the research methods to be included in the Handbook and let our readers decide which methods they regard as established or innovative. Our conception of innovation differs from that of Lê and Schmid (2022), however, in that novelty must neither lead to fundamental breakthroughs nor be part of all stages in the research process (data generation, interpretation, presentation). Rather, we believe that an innovation in research methods can be through relatively small changes in the collection, analysis or interpretation of data that enable researchers to conceive of identity differently, study aspects

Introduction  3 of identity that are hard to examine through more traditional means (e.g., surveys, interviews), and thereby generate novel theoretical and conceptual insights. In this sense, the Handbook contains a good array of examples of innovation: from using non-traditional data sources (e.g., drawings, masks, dance, online data) to applying a traditional method not previously employed in identity research (e.g., repertory grid, self-characterization sketches, implicit association test, and vignettes) and the development of new research methods to explore identity (e.g., mobile interviewing, social identity mapping). As such, the Handbook aspires to provide a cutting-edge overview of how research methods from various disciplines and traditions can be applied to the study of identity in management, organization, work and employment. However, as Gill (2020) notes, it can be a challenge for researchers to select a suitable research method without appropriate ‘methodological guidance’ (p. 307). It is here that this Handbook is unique. It speaks to researchers who seek guidance for navigating the range of available research methods for studying identities as well as those advocating a broader methodological basis for researching identity within the study of organizations and organizing (Coupland & Brown, 2012). Therefore, each chapter will not only provide pertinent information about the philosophical underpinnings of the research method that is introduced, but the authors also explain how they have used the method in their own research and provide a critical evaluation of the method in the sense of what they would have liked to know before using it or in the sense of providing advice to researchers who are new to it. In this way, the Handbook aspires to be a practical resource for you, regardless of whether you are a doctoral student, early career researcher, or established scholar who seeks to expand your repertoire of research methods. As such, this Handbook provides a compilation of research methods used in the study of identity in and around organizations that enable innovation in the construction of new knowledge. However, it differs from other edited collections in the following three ways: 1. The Handbook is different because it does not provide a distillation of knowledge of the identity field but illustrates how knowledge of identity in and around organizations might be fruitfully constructed. 2. The Handbook is not conceived as an exhaustive collection of research methods with which to study identity but includes a careful selection of both established and more emerging and novel methods that are largely grounded in a qualitative research tradition. 3. Although we consider the Handbook to be authoritative, it is our hope that it supports further reflexive, dialogical social construction of research methods to study identity in organizational contexts as scholars are open to be inspired to advancing knowledge about identity in different ways. The potential of innovation in research methods to achieve the ‘generative capacity’ (Gergen, 1978), ‘disciplined imagination’ (Weick, 1989), or ‘discovery’ (Locke et al., 2016) needed to make significant theoretical contributions and generating new theoretical insights (Lê & Schmid, 2022; Locke et al., 2016) is an important aspect of this Handbook. The application of novel and emerging methods in the study of identity in organizational contexts speaks to the generation of new insights, which in turn will have the capacity to broaden and deepen the current theoretical understanding of identity and identity processes in organizations. We hope that this Handbook inspires readers to approach identity research more innovatively to produce novel findings (Bansal et al., 2018) to add to the corpus knowledge of identity in organizations, and in so doing, help shape the future of studies in identity in organizations.

4  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations

AIMS AND FOCUS OF THIS HANDBOOK The above explanation of how this Handbook came about and why it is needed has already hinted some of its aims and focus. In the following, we elaborate on our approach to collating this Handbook and the commonalities between chapters. First, all chapters share a common, largely interpretivist, understanding of identity as ‘the meanings that individuals attach reflexively to themselves’ (Brown, 2015, p. 22) when searching to address the questions ‘Who am I?’/‘Who are we?’ or ‘Who do I/we want to become?’. This conception implies that identity is (1) processual, fluid, and in constant agentic construction through identity work; (2) situational and contingent on different interactional stimuli in context that elicit the salience of certain identities; and (3) multiple, fragmented and possibly contradictory. Identity so defined is therefore difficult to capture using quantitative and hypothesis-driven research (Brown, 2020; Caza et al., 2018) or pre-defined constructs (Kroger, 2007). Moreover, the plurality inherent in identity studies (Brown, 2015, 2022; Gill, 2020) lends itself to the use of qualitative methods (see Watzlawik et al., 2021). Not only are qualitative approaches able to attend to a variety of conceptualizations of identity and the diverse intellectual heritage underpinning it, but methods such as ethnographies and in-depth case studies also allow researchers to elucidate the nuanced, complex and plural nature of identities and the processes by which they are constructed (Brown, 2020). Second, we have decided to broadly refer to identity in and around organizations to attract authors with an interdisciplinary background in the social sciences, arts and humanities. Given the transdisciplinary nature of identity studies, we wanted to give voice to authors from various scientific fields. We believe that an interdisciplinary perspective can help identity scholars not only to enlarge their methodological toolkit but also to enhance the current understanding of how processes of identification and organizing intersect. Moreover, with interdisciplinary research increasingly encouraged, we hope that an introduction to research from other disciplines may encourage readers to consider the possibility of working across fields. Third, when exploring current publications on the study of identity in and around organizations, we noticed that few (if any) provided clear guidance on how a particular research method has been and could be applied. Given our commitment to capacity-building in research, we were keen to ensure that readers new to a particular method would be given guidance on how the method has been – and might be – applied to study identity and identity issues. Where appropriate, the chapters include reflections on common pitfalls and how they might be avoided to help readers learn from the contributors’ experience. We therefore asked the contributors to structure their respective chapter as follows: 1. Introduction. 2. Description of the method. 3. Application of the method. 4. Critical evaluation of the method. While some variation to this structure was introduced during the review process, we sought to establish some degree of consistency across the chapters in terms of structure and content. The chapter introduction provides background information on the method and how it is anchored in the field of identity studies. Furthermore, the introduction also typically indicates what we refer to as the level of identity (e.g., individual, professional, organizational, social) that the method has been applied to/might be most suitable for.

Introduction  5 The ‘description of the method’ explains the relevant elements, aspects and steps of the method or, in some cases, the combination of methods that the chapter addresses. Readers will also receive information about the theoretical and epistemological underpinnings of the method. However, given the limited word count of each chapter, references to more specialist resources have been provided that can be used to learn more about the method. The ‘application of the method’ provides a description and illustration of how the method has been or could be used. Authors typically refer to their own research to demonstrate their methodological competence in employing the method. You may want to refer back to already published work to learn more about the wider context and process of the research underpinning the respective chapters. The ‘critical evaluation of the method’ provides a focused discussion of how the method is suitable to study identity and where its possible limitations lie. Beyond writing an evaluation of more general advantages and challenges of the method – information that can be obtained by reading more generic research methods texts – we wanted an evaluation that ‘zooms in’ on the aspects that are especially relevant when applying the method to the study of identity in and around organizations. Some chapters also provide recommendations for readers new to the method grounded in the authors’ own experiences and, to some extent, describe what they wished to have known before using the method in their own work. Finally, we would like to stress that this Handbook neither seeks nor is able to provide an exhaustive overview of research methods that have been or could be used to study identity in organizational contexts. This is due partly to ongoing developments and innovations in research methods, partly to the limits of knowing all research methods, and partly to scholars’ ability to contribute to the Handbook at a given time. Nevertheless, we believe the Handbook will give you pertinent insights into different research methods to study identity in and around organizations, guide you through their application, and inspire you to approach your research more creatively and innovatively.

STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF THE HANDBOOK In addition to this Introduction and the concluding remarks in the Epilogue, the Handbook contains 18 chapters that we have organized into six parts. Part I: Narrative Methods Narrative methods draw on individual and collective stories to understand how people construe their sense of self while speaking or writing about particular events, experiences, relationships and so forth, giving different social actors a voice. This part of the Handbook comprises four chapters that analyse personal and/or organizational stories with different emphases and foci. Chapter 2: Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives Stefanie Reissner shows how plot and storyline analysis can be used to study personal identity narratives under conditions of change. The chapter explains how nuanced insights into research participants’ identity work can be explored by examining plot and storyline, context and audience, and the use of language and metaphor. Stefanie refers to two illustrative examples of personal identity narratives deriving from qualitative interviews that were part of

6  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations a broader, cross-national study of organizational change. She explains the analysis of a more coherent and a more fragmented identity narrative provided by two participants of a South African steel plant. Chapter 3: Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis Isidora Kourti proposes a novel combination of textual and performative analysis to examine how social actors move between identities in response to changing organizational circumstances. The analysis focuses both on what is told (events) and the telling itself (the positions of characters, listeners and self). Rather than seeking to identify a plot, the method leaves space for ambiguity, identity multiplicity and identity interplay. Isidora illustrates performative textual analysis through the personal story of a psychologist who reflects on different aspects of her working life in a Greek centre supporting disabled children. Chapter 4: Organizational small storymaking and change: identity work as coming into being in narrative story dynamics Ann Starbæk Bager proposes small story analysis to zoom in on concrete organizational interactions and capture the subtle positioning work that takes place in multimodal interactions. This chapter provides a research method for studying identity work in organizations as coming into being through power-infused dynamics between organizational narrative structures and situated small stories. In her example, Ann details the use of the method by showing how leaders, while discussing a particular change process, co-create small stories and identities in situ. Chapter 5: The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity Anne Crafford and Johann Mouton propose an online qualitative survey as a method for studying the pluri-voiced nature of organizational identity. The authors exemplify how a qualitative survey enabled them to provide a narrative description of two heritage organizations’ identities representing the broad consensual constructions regarding the organization. This method proves particularly useful when the researcher aims to capture different and sometimes conflicting voices on the same phenomenon. Part II: Visual Methods Visual methods draw on both visual artefacts and visualization to elicit aspects of individual and collective identity. This part of the Handbook comprises two chapters that illustrate how identity work and social identities can be explored through dream-inspired drawings and visual maps, respectively. Chapter 6: Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work Antoni Barnard follows the idea that dreams not only belong to the individual but also constitute expressions of the collective unconscious from which relevant meanings for identity in organizational context can be inferred. Hence, drawing of dreams is introduced as a method for uncovering the unconscious embeddedness of an individual’s identity in the social environment. The expression of these dreams creates a space for reflecting on personal and role identities, and it facilitates the identity work to solve work–life challenges in a group of four

Introduction  7 white Afrikaans-speaking South African women. This action research method constitutes a facilitated identity work intervention, which is especially suitable when unconscious identity tensions might be solved through developing self-awareness, self-authorization, self-regard and authentic self-expression. Also, it is particularly useful for exploring the collective dimension of identity work. Chapter 7: A picture is worth a thousand words: social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections Sarah V. Bentley, S. Alexander Haslam, Katherine H. Greenaway, Tegan Cruwys and Nik Steffens introduce social identity mapping as a new tool designed to provide a pictorial representation of a person’s social identities with a view to providing a richer data source for social psychological research. The tool provides a visual platform through which a person can name, depict and quantify their feelings towards their social group memberships. Their exploration of the method is illustrated with data from a work group as part of a leadership development programme. Part III: Ethnographic Methods This part of the Handbook gathers research methods that lend themselves in various ways to adopt an ethnographic approach to the study of identity. It consists of four chapters, each proposing a creative way of using ethnographic methods. Chapter 8: Netnography: a route to explore identity evolution as online videogames develop Alexandra Samper-Martínez and Ercilia García-Álvarez portray netnography as a method with which to study identity. Informed by its ethnographic heritage, netnography requires prolonged immersion in an online community to reveal the reality known to the participants. Although netnography comes in different shapes depending on the research object and the data collection strategies, Alexandra and Ercilia identify common steps for netnographic research to follow. In their application, the authors introduce the readers to their analysis of a community of videogame players regarding the in-game and off-game emergence and configuration of the players’ identities. Chapter 9: Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research Elham Moonesirust describes mobile interviewing as a novel method emerging from underlining the vital role that platial contexts play in the knowledge that is generated in the interview. This method is especially well suited to capturing how individuals comprehend and engage their social and material environments in everyday life and how this influences individuals’ identity formation. Therefore, it is helpful to underline the relations of power rooted in the place within which bodies perform and identities take shape. Elham exemplifies the method by sharing her field notes from a mobile interview that she conducted with an employee while walking from the exit gate of the factory to a café.

8  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Chapter 10: The other: posing questions I am supposed to love – autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work Henning Grosse explores autoethnography as a method with which to understand which role the relations with others play and how others, directly and indirectly, impact an individual’s identity. His reflective exploration shows how seemingly minor conversations can trigger identity work and, if used autoethnographically, unveil otherwise neglected or overseen thought processes regarding one’s identity. Referring to himself as the research subject, and particularly his identity as an entrepreneur, Henning shows how autoethnography can help researchers and practitioners to reshape their own sense of self more actively. Chapter 11: Who am I when I am in flow? An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity Ulrike Eva Posselt introduces the method of autoethnography for studying identity related to flow experiences – human experiences where a person is immersed in an activity. Ulrike shows how autoethnography can be used to investigate the interplay and tensions between the self-as-subject and the self-as-object. She explains how doing calligraphy helps her to get into the flow and to use this kinetic form of energy to unearth tacit knowledge about herself as a person and as a researcher. Part IV: Embodied Methods Embodied methods examine the bodily experiences of being; thereby, they are attentive to the corporal aspects of identity and identification. This part of the Handbook responds to concerns that ‘the body/identity nexus is a relatively underexplored topic’ (Courpasson & Monties, 2016, p. 35) and Brown’s (2020) call for future research on embodied identities and symbolic resources for identity work other than language. It consists of two chapters that explore the use of dance and mask-making, respectively. Chapter 12: Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance: body-centred narrative inquiry Cheryl K. Baldwin and Alyssa E. Motter explore how embedded and embodied aspects of identity can be studied using dance movement analysis, a method developed in interdisciplinary collaboration between an educational researcher and a dance artist educator. Conceptualizing identity as somatic knowing recognizes it as tacit and inscribed in the body, and this knowledge can be made explicit with reflection and intentional practice. Their analysis consists of guided visualization, body mapping, and movement-based performance through which research participants can explore different embodied aspects of identity. Cheryl and Alyssa provide examples from an open-level creative dance course at an urban community college where identity development was an intentional goal to describe how the method could be used. Chapter 13: Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making Mark Stephens and Ryan Higgins illustrate the use of mask-making as both a process (creating the mask and reflecting on it) and a product (the mask itself) to explore professional identity formation in medical students. By comparing thematic elements of identity expressed on the inside and outside of the masks, areas of conflict and dissonance between the aspirational self

Introduction  9 and the actual self are explored and reflected upon. This method proves particularly useful for identifying professional identity dissonances and facilitating reflection and personal growth. Part V: Methods for Eliciting Personal Meanings These methods focus specifically on eliciting or discovering through guided conversations people’s personal meanings that constitute a person’s multiple identities at different levels (e.g., social, professional, personal). The three chapters explore the personal meanings and unconscious cognitive conflicts implied in the identity construction and categorization processes of a physician as a ‘good manager’, an undergraduate student developing his work identity alongside his personal identity, and the gender bias in the identity work of a woman leader, which, in their different ways, seek to understand the content of identities and identity work. Chapter 14: Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme Rosalía Cascón-Pereira, Miquel Alabernia-Segura and Guillem Feixas show how the repertory grid (RG) can be used to (1) explore conscious desires of change in personal identity and unconscious hindrances to attain the desired identity; (2) explore how close to or far from being ‘a good manager’ interviewees perceive themselves to be; and (3) facilitate self-awareness through dialogic feedback and the development of managers’ personal and professional identities in a case of coaching. These are but a few examples of the multiple uses that the RG can provide in studying identity and identity work in and around organizations. Chapter 15: A portrait in words: using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities Angela McCrane, Viv Burr and Nigel King describe how self-characterization sketches, a method developed by Kelly (1955/1991) in his personal construct theory, can be used to explore work identities in a group of undergraduate students as they progress through their degrees. Self-characterization sketches are particularly suited to exploring the core meanings associated with participants’ constructions of themselves and their world and to facilitate the reflective development of their identities. Angela, Viv and Nigel illustrate the use of the method by referring to their study of students, particularly describing how the authors explored the work-related identity of one student. Chapter 16: A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work Christina Gossayn, Anne Crafford and Arien Strasheim introduce a combination of qualitative research methods to study conscious and unconscious identity work in organizational contexts. Their unique approach combines semi-structured interviews, the repertory grid technique (RGT), vignettes, and the implicit association test (IAT) within an interpretive case study design. Christina, Anne and Arien argue that their multi-method approach is of value for studying leader identity constructions on individual, relational and collective levels. Attending to gender bias, they describe how this combination of methods contributes to the study of unconscious gender bias in the identity work of women leaders.

10  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Part VI: Methods for Analysing Naturally Occurring Data While the methods introduced in the other chapters are related to material gathered in or produced for the research, the methods in this part of the Handbook work with material created in real life and for purposes other than research. The three chapters draw on various naturally occurring data, such as organizational meetings, autobiographies and social media data, respectively. Chapter 17: Using membership categorization analysis to study identities in talk and text Andrea Whittle describes how membership categorization analysis can contribute to the study of social identity in (and of) organizations, particularly related to practices of talking and writing in naturally occurring situations. This research method helps explain how people in real-life interactional settings in organizations use categories of belonging to identify themselves and others. At the core of this research method lies the situational use of membership categories within the practical accomplishment of an activity. Exemplifying the method, Andrea introduces readers to the analysis of a management meeting between a consultant and a managing director. Her example and the whole chapter show that categorization is neither a simple nor deterministic process. Instead, categories used to describe and thereby identify a person are subject to negotiation, where a categorization can be accepted, questioned, rejected or ignored. Chapter 18: Autobiographies and identity: using autobiographies to study identity in organizational research Nick Mmbaga, Blake Mathias and Anne Smith explore how researchers can use existing autobiographies to study identity. They provide clear guidance on using this data source and research methodology to build, elaborate or test theory on identity in organizations. In autobiographies, individuals make sense of who they are by reflecting on their lives and constructing their self-narratives. Autobiographic texts involve a point of view internal to the subject of investigation and are a sensemaking tool to express identity through storytelling. Hence, they are particularly well suited to exploring a subjective and intentional projection of identity and identity formation at the individual level but also to examining how identity shapes organizational processes. Nick, Blake and Anne refer to various examples from the literature and research where one of the authors used autobiographies to identify how entrepreneurial identities shift over time. Chapter 19: Assessing collective identity (non-)verification with social media data through web scraping, sentiment analysis and qualitative coding Tony P. Love, Jenny L. Davies, Rachel E. Davis, William G. Fisher and Rachel M. Barczak propose web scraping as a form of social media data capture combined with sentiment analysis and ‘small story’ analysis. The chapter demonstrates that social media data provide unprecedented access to identity processes and allow for network analyses across time, geography and communities. Using the example of video clips on veganism, Tony, Jenny, Rachel, William and Rachel also discuss challenges associated with this method concerning generalizability, validity and ethics that identity scholars need to heed.

Introduction  11

REFERENCES Abdelal, R., Herrera, Y. M., & Johnston, A. I. (2009). Measuring identity: A guide for social scientists. Cambridge University Press. Bansal, P., Smith, W. K., & Vaara, E. (2018). From the editors: New ways of seeing through qualitative research. Academy of Management Journal, 61(4), 1189–1195. Brown, A. D. (2015). Identities and identity work in organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(1), 20–40. Brown, A. D. (2020). Identities in organizations. In A. D. Brown (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of identities in organizations (pp. 1–31). Oxford University Press. Brown, A. D. (2022). Identities in and around organizations: Towards an identity work perspective. Human Relations, 75(7), 1205–1237. Caza, B. B., Vough, H., & Puranik, H. (2018). Identity work in organizations and occupations: Definitions, theories, and pathways forward. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(7), 889–910. Coupland, C., & Brown, A. D. (2012). Identities in action: Processes and outcomes. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 28(1), 1–4. Courpasson, D., & Monties, V. (2016). ‘I am my body’: Physical selves of police officers in a changing institution. Journal of Management Studies, 54(1), 32–57. Foreman, P. O., & Whetten, D. A. (2016). Measuring organizational identity: Taking stock and looking forward. In M. G. Pratt, M. Schultz, B. E. Ashforth & D. Ravasi (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organizational identity (pp. 39–64). Oxford University Press. Gergen, K. J. (1978). Toward generative theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(11), 1344–60. Gill, J. M. (2020). How can I study who you are? Comparing grounded theory and phenomenology as methodological approaches to identity work research. In A. D. Brown (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of identities in organizations (pp. 295–310). Oxford University Press. Kelly, G. (1991). The psychology of personal constructs (2 Vols.). Routledge (Original work published 1955). Kroger, J. (2007). Identity formation: Qualitative and quantitative methods of inquiry. In A. Born (Ed.), Capturing identity: Qualitative and quantitative methods (pp. 179–196). University Press of America. Lê, J. K., & Schmid, T. (2022). The practice of innovating research methods. Organizational Research Methods, 25(2), 308–336. Locke, K., Feldman, M., & Golden-Biddle, K. (2016). Discovery, validation and live coding. In K. D. Elsbach & R. M. Kramer (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative organizational research: Innovative pathways and methods (pp. 371–380). Routledge. Watzlawik, M., Demuth, C., & Bamberg, M. (2021). Identity: With or without you? In M. Bamberg, C. Demuth & M. Watzlawik (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of identity (pp. 1–22). Cambridge University Press. Weick, K. E. (1989). Theory construction as disciplined imagination. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 516–531. Whittle, A., & Mueller, F. (2020). Membership categorization analysis: Studying identities in talk and text ‘in situ, in vivo’. In A. D. Brown (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of identities in organizations (pp. 326–339). Oxford University Press.

PART I NARRATIVE METHODS

2. Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives Stefanie Reissner

INTRODUCTION Much identity research in management and organization studies is based on the premise that identities are socially constructed through narratives (Czarniawska, 1998), addressing questions such as ‘Who am I?’, ‘Who are we?’, and ‘Who are you?’ (Kenny et al., 2011). According to McAdams (1993, p. 11), ‘if you want to know me, then you must know my story, for my story defines who I am. And if I want to know myself, to gain insights into the meaning of my own life, then I, too, must come to know my own story’ (original emphasis). Narratives thus shape the way in which people conceive of themselves as individuals, professionals and members of particular social groups or organizations in and through social interaction (Brown, 2015). Narratives enable people to construct themselves as a particular human being throughout time – past, present and future – with the plot (the connection between events) providing a sense of coherence throughout one’s life (Elliott, 2006). The way in which the plot progresses (the storyline; Browning, 1991) signals how identities change over time. Hence, researchers interested in studying identities do well to get to know their research participants’ stories to understand who they are in a particular context through the narratives they tell (McAdams, 1993). Attempting to collect and analyse people’s stories (or narratives), then, is a logical step for scholars interested in studying identities in and around organizations. In this chapter, I will introduce a narrative approach to identity analysis, focusing on plot and storyline, that I took in my study of organizational change and learning (Reissner, 2008). Analysis of plot and storyline provides a framework within which people’s personal identity narratives can be meaningfully examined, as I will illustrate below. Specifically, I will show how I have used concepts such as plot and storyline, together with considerations of context, audience, language and metaphor to inform the conclusions drawn in Reissner (2010). By ‘walking the reader through’ the practical steps taken in the original analysis, I seek to elucidate the benefits of narrative analysis for the study of personal identities in and around organizations. This chapter is structured as follows. Next, I will outline the theoretical foundations and underpinning assumptions of a narrative construction of identity, which is followed by an introduction to narrative analysis as a research method. Then, I will briefly introduce the research from which the chapter derives before demonstrating how I analysed the plot and storyline of two illustrative identity narratives, how I interpreted my findings, and what questions remained. Finally, I will critically evaluate the use of plot and storyline analysis to examine personal identity narratives and provide recommendations for readers who are new to this method.

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14  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations

NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY The assumption that people construct their identity, or sense of self, through narrative is well established in the field of psychology. Bruner (1990), for example, argues that the main feature of narrative is sequentiality – that is, the ‘unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings’ (p. 43). This unique sequence of events is also known as plot – ‘how and in what order the reader [or listener] becomes aware of what happened’ (Bruner, 1986, p. 19) and how, throughout their lives, people interpret how such events affect who they are (Fisher, 1989). The plot not only gives events a temporal order in terms of what happened first, second, third, and so on, but also establishes implicit causal connections between these events (Bruner, 1986). Forster (1962, p. 62) famously distinguishes between the following two sentences: (1) ‘The king died, then the queen died’; and (2) ‘The king died, then the queen died of grief’. He argues that (1) is not a narrative because there is no causal connection – explicit or implicit – between the king’s and the queen’s deaths. In contrast, (2) is a narrative because the words ‘of grief’ establish a causal connection between both their deaths. Sequentiality in narratives is also assumed to connect one’s beginning (birth) with one’s end (death) through an ongoing, yet not necessarily continuous, account of who someone is and what one does. In other words, narratives help people to make sense of their ‘scattered and often confusing experiences’ (McAdams, 1993, p. 11) and to manage the tension between stability (‘who I am’) and change (‘who I could/want/ought to be’) (Elliott, 2006). This, in turn, allows them simultaneously to be anchored in the past and to change and develop in the present and for the future. Identity narratives are thus multiple and fluid (Weick, 1995), incorporating different facets of who a person portrays themselves to be at different times, in different situations, and to different audiences. In this respect, in and through identity narratives, people can connect current actions and future expectations, comment on their ability to control their actions to achieve a desired outcome, reflect on feeling valued, and generate self-worth (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998). Narratives further help people to explore different scenarios (Polkinghorne, 1988), including scenarios of who they could or should be as a person, professional or member of an organization. This ability to (re)construct one’s identity has also been framed in terms of the interpretive process of identity work, defined as ‘people being engaged in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions that are productive of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness’ (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003, p. 1165). Polkinghorne (1988) argues that this process involves incorporating new experiences into one’s identity narrative to enable people to understand the event and continue to construct the ongoing narrative of their lives. I posit that such agency to reconsider one’s identity is particularly pertinent in situations in which people are expected to change (e.g., career progression), or in which they are required to respond to new circumstances such as organizational change. In summary, narratives have been considered to play a fundamental part in the construction of identities. By being able to integrate new events into existing meaning systems (Polkinghorne, 1988), narratives enable people to combine both stability and change, uniqueness and sameness, and structure and agency (Brown, 2019) in a single account. Listening to and recording people’s narratives will thus allow researchers interested in identity to understand which of a person’s multiple and fluid identities is reported or enacted in a particular situation. Key concepts of narrative analysis, such as plot and storyline, will help such interpretations, as discussed next.

Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives  15

NARRATIVE ANALYSIS Before discussing some of the key concepts of narrative analysis, I will explore briefly what I am concerned with in this chapter. One of my frustrations is that the terms ‘narrative’, ‘story’, and ‘storytelling’ are overused in scholarly discourses. While a text, picture or object can tell a story, these artefacts are not stories themselves. Let us start with the term ‘narrative’, which can be defined as a story or account of events or experiences, with storytelling referring to the act of recounting such an account. In this chapter, I will use the terms ‘narrative’ and ‘story’ interchangeably, although other authors distinguish between them. Narratives can be fully formed with a beginning, a middle and an end, as typically found in the literature and also in rehearsed anecdotes in spoken language; they have been called ‘big stories’ (Bamberg, 2006) or ‘linear-plot stories’ (Boje, 2006). However, narratives can also be more tentative, improvised and fluid as part of everyday communication called ‘small stories’ (Bamberg, 2006), ‘ante-narrative’ (Boje, 2001), or ‘conversational narrative’ (Norrick, 2010). Readers new to narrative research may wonder how to go about collecting appropriate data. Since humans are regarded as storytellers by nature (Fisher, 1989), narratives in both their ‘big’ and ‘small’ varieties abound in social interaction, texts and research interviews. Czarniawska (1998, p. 29), for instance, argues that so-called ‘narrative interviews…become a natural development in serial interviewing, which usually starts with a thematically focused interview’. As I will show below, a narrative (such as about a person’s identity) might be told as part of a longer answer to an – at first glance – unrelated question. Generally, I find asking relatively open questions, such as ‘Could you please tell me about…’, helpful to ‘elicit’ narratives. Also, follow-up questions, such as ‘Could you please give me an example of…’, can encourage research participants to ‘tell a story’. Important here is the recognition that ‘both the structure (the plot) and the main concepts (metaphors) are chosen by the interlocutor’ (ibid.) – that is, the research participant – providing rich material for analysis, interpretation and theorizing, as discussed below. Narrative analysis, then, is ‘the systematic examination of narratives and analyses of other verbal and nonverbal expressions according to narrative qualities, elements, and dynamics of narrative use’ (Daiute, 2014, p. 272). These qualities, elements and dynamics not only include plot, temporality and causality between events (Bruner, 1986), as well as identity work and meaning (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003) as discussed above, but also audiences and social contexts (Elliott, 2006). Narratives require an audience, which can include the self (for example, when trying to make sense of oneself, as implied in the opening quote by McAdams, 1993), important others (for instance, when presenting oneself as a leader to a promotions committee), or researchers interested in studying identity, its formation, or change. Similarly, narratives are situated in a particular social and/or organizational context as different identities are evoked or challenged in different situations. For example, a manager may emphasize an identity of ‘supportive people person’ in interaction with their staff, enact a ‘strong leadership’ identity when dealing with misbehaviour at work, and portray themselves as an eloquent ‘person of world’ when interacting with important external stakeholders. Hence, narrative analysis enables scholars through the narratives told in interviews or texts, and/or the stories overheard in observations, to examine the potential meanings that are communicated to a particular audience at a particular time in a particular context, and for a particular purpose. As Squire et al. (2008, p. 1) argue, ‘most often, perhaps, we frame our research in terms of narrative because we believe that by doing so we are able to see different and some-

16  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations times contradictory layers of meaning, to bring them into useful dialogue with each other, and to understand more about individual and social change’. In identity research, these meanings can relate to, first, how people talk about their experiences and the effects thereof on who they are/could be/ought to be as a person, professional or member of a social group or organization. Second, these meanings can relate to how people position themselves as a particular person in a particular context. This can be fruitfully observed in studies of organizational change as people may portray themselves as hero or victim, winner or loser (e.g., Reissner, 2010), two examples of which I will explore further below. Third, these meanings can also relate to how important others (e.g., employers, managers) seek to shape one’s identity (Gabriel, 2008) through perceptions and actions that enable or constrain who a person could be or wants to be. For example, employers may provide leadership training with a view to turning an ‘ordinary’ employee into a ‘leader’, thereby affecting the candidates’ identity. There are many approaches to narrative analysis, including dialogical, ethnographic, contextual and embodied approaches (Gubrium & Holstein, 2009), holistic and categorical analysis of both content and form (Lieblich et al., 1998), and even quantitative approaches (Elliott, 2006). In my research, I have found it useful to focus on the key features of narrative – plot and storyline. According to Bruner (1986), the plot and its inherent temporal and causal relationships is what characterizes a narrative in comparison to a non-narrative text, which has been powerfully expressed by Czarniawska (2004) as the ‘and, and, and’ connections. Identifying the plot can help researchers to understand what a narrative is about and how it progresses. The latter has been called ‘storyline’ (Browning, 1991) and encompasses positive developments (ascending storyline), negative developments (descending storyline), or not much change to the situation reported in the narrative (plateau storyline). The storyline can thus give insights into whether a person’s identity is reported to have been strengthened, challenged or maintained in the given situation (see Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). In addition, I have found Gubrium and Holstein’s (2009) notion of narrative reality helpful to understand the interplay between the content of a narrative (the ‘what’) and the way in which it is presented (the ‘how’) to enable more fine-grained analysis and interpretation. The ‘what’ of narrative reality can be examined further through the plot (Bruner, 1986) as well as the characters and their symbolic roles and values (Daiute, 2014). The ‘how’ of narrative reality can be examined further through storyline (Browning, 1991), genre (such as tragedy or comedy, see Gabriel, 2000), or metaphor (figure of speech with symbolic meanings; see Czarniawska, 1998). Gubrium and Holstein (2009) argue that several cycles of examining the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of narrative reality will enable deep and sophisticated understanding of narratives. While it is relatively straightforward to apply these concepts to ‘big stories’, it is more challenging to do so in relation to more fragmented ‘small stories’. To understand the content, form and moral of a narrative, researchers may need to fill gaps through their knowledge of the social context, while also accepting that their interpretations of such accounts may remain but tentative.

RESEARCH BACKGROUND The research from which Reissner (2010) and this chapter derive was a comparative study of organizational change and learning that involved three manufacturing firms that had gone through major change. I interviewed 30 managers and employees from each organization to

Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives  17 learn more about the change programme and its effects on the organization and its members, using what Czarniawska (1998) calls ‘narrative interviews’. The interview questions were largely open-ended to encourage research participants to tell their stories of organizational change and learning. While the interviews also included questions about the research participants’ age band, job title, educational background and length of service in the respective organization, I did not ask specifically about their personal situation (marital status, children etc.) but only included these details in my interpretation when mentioned in the interview account (see Silverman, 2017). Moreover, I was given access to internal documents and an opportunity to spend time in the three organizations to engage in informal conversations with staff and observe both spaces and people, which I captured in fieldnotes. This engagement with the organizations and their members helped me to understand the social and organizational contexts in which the interview accounts were situated, and enabled, I would argue, more meaningful interpretation of the more fragmented accounts in particular. While an analysis of organizational texts and my fieldnotes is beyond the scope of this chapter, I will refer to them when situating the narratives in their wider context as part of my analysis and interpretation provided below. The interview data were analysed with a focus on the macro (how wider socio-economic changes affected the organization), the meso (how people narrated these organizational changes), and the micro (how these changes impacted people personally) (Reissner, 2008). When considering the micro level of analysis, I noticed specific instances in which research participants spoke about how the change programme affected their identity as a person in terms of self-worth, as well as their identity as a professional in terms of their career prospects and value to the organization. These instances were typically constructed as narratives in which people compared their position and prospects before and after the change programme. In all three case organizations, some research participants portrayed themselves as winners, others as losers, depending on whether their hopes and expectations for the future had been met or disappointed (Reissner, 2010). In the practical examples below, I will use the narratives from Adam and William, both from the case of a South African steelmaker I call Steel Corp1, because of their contrasting narrative features. In preparation for the analysis, I familiarized myself with the data by repeatedly reading the interview transcripts against the background of my research questions, in this context a focus on accounts of personal identity. As part of this process, I identified the key issues that research participants spoke about before selecting data excerpts in narrative form (both in terms of ‘big’ and ‘small’ stories; see Bamberg, 2006) and subjecting them to more detailed analysis using plot and storyline, as discussed next.

ANALYSING NARRATIVES OF PERSONAL IDENTITIES: TWO PRACTICAL EXAMPLES In this section, I will discuss two illustrative examples of personal identity narratives to explain how I analysed them. The first narrative was given by Adam, who at the time of data collection was a plant manager at Steel Corp. It was part of a longer conversation in which he talked about his time at the organization. When asked about his first impression of working at Steel Corp, Adam gave the following answer:

18  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations I never thought I would survive at Steel Corp, personally. It’s coming from the South African background, not the company per se… Steel Corp is a purely Afrikaans-dominated company. So probably [the perception was that] a black guy is inferior and useless and not going to survive. Firstly, I never thought of being at any stage a senior operator because the policies of the past were of such a nature that there was job reservation. At certain colour lines, your prospects would end – that was it. That’s why I studied immediately. Firstly…because I had my own personal ambitions I know that I didn’t work at the furnaces till I die… With the little finance I get I have to start and look into what I want… And as the system changes and things are changing, I was almost the first black operator, the first black supervisor and the first black manager…which is a signal of a lot of change. When the change came through, your ideas also changed. I mean you influence the system and the system influences you in return. And I happened to find Steel Corp home. Here I am sitting thirteen and a half years!… I won’t leave Steel Corp for any other place… If you were looking at the whole organization structure, it used to have a couple of layers before. And when you were looking into the structure you thought ‘I’ll never become a general manager’. But I think my perception has changed now to ‘why not’? I know what’s required for becoming a general manager… As the de-layering takes place you see that ‘oh, from my position to the general manager it’s only three positions left’. So the longer I’m here, the more experience I acquire and the more I deliver results…the chances are there. So when you pace up with the changes you will definitely have an opportunity. (Reissner, 2010, p. 292)

While a certain disconnect between the focus of the question (his first impression of the company) and the content of this excerpt is apparent, the narrative can be summarized as being about a man who achieved career development against the odds. It begins at a time when his skin colour would limit his employment prospects, a situation that he did not want to accept and therefore invested in his education. He worked hard and eventually his contribution and achievements were recognized, and he was promoted repeatedly to a fairly senior position with prospects to become general manager of the organization. The social context in which this account was constructed is central to understanding the narrative. As analysts or readers, we need to know that the case study was situated in post-apartheid South Africa during a time of rapid socio-political change. The Employment Equity Act came into force in 1998 to ensure equality and fair treatment of all employees, regardless of their ethnicity. The effects on people’s employment prospects following a period of profound change at Steel Corp became apparent at the time of data collection in 2002. As argued in more detail in Reissner (2008), in Steel Corp this meant that promising employees from the previously disadvantaged black and coloured ethnic groups would be fast-tracked into higher positions, while most members of the previously advantaged white minority were facing demotion or redundancy. Over the course of the change programme, more than 50 per cent of Steel Corp employees (the vast majority being white males) were either made redundant or forced to retire at the age of 50, and in some cases in their forties, with little or no job prospects elsewhere as other organizations faced comparable pressures to rebalance the demographic profile of their staff. The plot of Adam’s narrative is structured chronologically and follows the typical story structure of beginning (‘I never thought I would survive at Steel Corp’), middle (‘I was almost the first black operator, the first black supervisor and the first black manager’), and end (‘I happened to find Steel Corp home’ and ‘from my position to the general manager it’s only three positions left’). The causality is two-fold: Adam attributes his career progression to his ‘personal ambitions’ and his part-time studies, while recognizing the removal of structural barriers in Steel Corp as an enabling factor. The storyline of Adam’s account is ascending (Browning, 1991) in that he reports initially facing a bleak future at the furnaces, but through his ambition, hard work and the abolition of structural barriers, achieved career progression.

Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives  19 Adam’s narrative is that of a success story, which is also implied by his language. As Browning (1991) argues, such narratives have energy and are driven by the central character, in this case Adam himself. Throughout the narrative, he emphasizes his role as a herald of new times by stating that ‘I was almost the first black operator, the first black supervisor and the first black manager’ repeating the word ‘first’ three times. Elsewhere in the interview he commented that he was regarded as a role model by other black staff members who were equally talented and ambitious, and keen to achieve equal career progression. Of course, analysts and readers need to be mindful of the audience for this account. Adam’s narrative was co-constructed with me as researcher during a research interview.2 This means that the interview account cannot tell us what really happened but how Adam wanted to be seen by the audience (the researcher and the readers of any subsequent research reports) in an attempt at impression management (see Alvesson, 2011). He positioned himself first and foremost as a successful manager by emphasizing his agency: ‘I studied immediately’, ‘I had my personal ambitions’, ‘I have to look at…what I want’. Adam also highlighted his career trajectory in comparison to his peers (‘I was almost the first black operator, the first black supervisor and the first black manager’) as well as his loyalty to the organization (‘I happened to find Steel Corp home. Here I am sitting thirteen and a half years!’), highlighting his value to the organization. So what does this tell us about Adam’s identity as reported in this narrative? Within the inherent constraints of research interviews, Adam explains how his identity changed from that of a lowly furnace worker to a valued plant manager with potential to become the organization’s general manager in the future. At the beginning, he stated that due to his skin colour, his value as a person and as a Steel Corp employee was limited in the socio-political context of apartheid South Africa (‘a black guy is inferior and useless and not going to survive’). This is then juxtaposed with what appears to be a quick succession of promotions that no longer fitted the way in which others saw him – as ‘inferior’, ‘useless’, and ‘not going to survive’. Rather, Adam now positions himself as an experienced and skilled manager who rose up the ranks with realistic potential to make it to the very top (‘I think my perception has changed now to “why not”?’). Yet, he also emphasized that his identity had not really changed – that he had always trusted in his skill and abilities and known his self-worth and value when highlighting his drive and ambition. This narrative thus shows how stability and change in relation to a person’s identity (what they report to be ‘really like’) can be skilfully interwoven. The second illustrative example by William provides a contrasting narrative in many ways. It follows an explanation that he was demoted from a managerial to an administrative position as a result of large-scale restructuring. When asked about whether as a training professional he was attached to one of the many of Steel Corp plants, William explained that he was based at the organization’s generic training department. As part of this explanation, he said: All that’s in my office [now] is a computer and a printer, and there’s email and a telephone and things like that. So when I’ve presented the training I also take pictures from the [participants]. When I come back to the office, then I start processing the [training] licences because the photo must be on there, the ID must be there. That is now what’s happening: you must do multitasking. There’s no typist any more and…you have all the details, you must do [the licence] yourself. You cannot ask the photography department to take a picture, to load it down onto your computer, to copy and paste it, to make it to the size you want and to put it on the licence. And that’s why I say, if you can’t keep up with the change, then you’re going to fall off the bus. (Reissner, 2010, p. 293)

20  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations You may have noticed that here, too, there is a certain disconnect between the question about where William’s job role was situated and his answer, which was part of a longer explanation of his work post-restructuring. The narrative told in this excerpt is about a man who lost privileges at work and had to get used to an enhanced portfolio of tasks. It recalls a time when the man had access to typists and photographers to produce training licences but emphasizes what the job involves ‘now’ – him having to do everything himself. It is a terse and fragmented account in which the reader requires some understanding of the context in which the narrative is situated. In addition to the socio-political context of post-apartheid South Africa, the Employment Equity Act, and the associated organizational changes in Steel Corp outlined above, analysts need to know that racial discrimination was firmly embedded in the organization. In particular, the white minority working in managerial and administrative positions had privileges, status and support, such as the typist and photographer that William mentioned, from which they derived value as a person and professional. In other words, not only was William affected by the Employment Equity Act (hence his demotion from manager to ‘ordinary’ training professional) but also his support system was removed as part of the restructuring, and consequently his job role grew and his personal value as a Steel Corp employee diminished. The plot of William’s narrative is more difficult to analyse as he sandwiches the past between the present rather than giving the account chronologically. He starts off with a description of the equipment in his office (‘All that’s in my office [now] is a computer and a printer, and there’s email and a telephone and things like that’) before explaining what his work entails (‘So when I’ve presented the training I also take pictures from the [participants]. When I come back to the office, then I start processing the [training] licences because the photo must be on there, the ID must be there. That is now what’s happening: you must do multitasking’). He then explains that he used to have a typist and photographer (‘There’s no typist any more and…you have all the details, you must do [the licence] yourself. You cannot ask the photography department to take a picture, to load it down onto your computer, to copy and paste it, to make it to the size you want and to put it on the licence’) who used to produce the training licences for him. William ends the narrative with a statement that suggests his concerns for the future (‘And that’s why I say, if you can’t keep up with the change, then you’re going to fall off the bus’). Causality is but implicit in this narrative: the way in which William constructs this account contrasts the ‘then’ and the ‘now’ with the connection between the two – the effects of large-scale socio-political and organizational change – not explicitly stated. William’s narrative has a descending storyline (Browning, 1991), referring to a time when work was easy for him as his role was supported by others but emphasizes that he was now required to do ‘multi-tasking’. He alludes to a time when he was a valued manager with privileges that stood for status. Through the demotion and the loss of privileges, his prospects at Steel Corp are now limited. According to Browning (1991), narratives with a descending storyline are tragic accounts, with decline being marked by a sudden loss that leads to further uncontrollable events in a downward spiral. The metaphor ‘falling off the bus’ used at the end of this interview excerpt suggests that William is feeling out of control. At the time of data collection, I was told in many informal conversations that, realistically, William’s days at Steel Corp were numbered and his prospects of finding work elsewhere minimal simply because of his ethnicity, gender and age – white, male, over 50. As with Adam’s account, William’s narrative was co-constructed with me as a researcher and therefore cannot tell what ‘really’ happened. It does suggest, however, that William is mourning the loss of the ‘good old days’

Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives  21 when he had status and felt valued, while now he is feeling under pressure to deliver what is expected from him. So what does this tell us about identity? In this narrative, William gives a glimpse into how his identity changed from a privileged and valued manager to an ordinary employee who not only has to take on more tasks to do his job, but who also feels under pressure to remain in employment. His account implies that he is the victim of external circumstances, unable to exercise agency, and feeling out of control. Understanding the socio-political and organizational context is paramount here because of what William does not mention explicitly. In this respect, ‘that which is not said is as important as that which is said’ (Giroux, 1988, cited in Mazzei, 2003, p. 361) as it can signify something that research participants feel unable to express – for example, because it is politically incorrect. Off the record, I had many conversations with white Steel Corp staff who suggested that so-called ‘employment equity candidates’ from the previously disadvantaged black and coloured ethnic groups were not as well qualified and diligent as themselves – a legacy of a racially divided past and no longer socially acceptable to be voiced on record. In terms of how he constructed this account, William could have told this narrative in chronological order (as Adam did), explaining what his job entailed prior to the changes and what it entails now. He could have highlighted the structural barriers that have led to his demotion and loss of status. However, William focuses on the present and only hints at the past. I can but speculate why William chose to present his ‘victim’ narrative in this way. Was this because I am also white and may therefore have been perceived as a bit of an ally, understanding between the lines what he meant? Was he wary about whether the data could get back to his employer and concerned about getting into trouble by spelling things out, therefore keeping his account ambiguous? Was it too painful for William to explicitly juxtapose past and present because it would have highlighted his reduced value to the organization? Or was he keen despite his situation to give me an impression of him as a capable professional?

CRITICAL EVALUATION The two illustrative examples discussed above have been chosen deliberately to include one fully formed and one more fragmented narrative and also to include differences in plot and storyline. However, no implied causal relationship between plot and structure is sought – that is, that accounts of success are typically told as fully formed narratives and accounts of decline as fragmented. Of course, it is possible that narratives of success such as Adam’s have been rehearsed and told many times to different audiences, aiding their telling in traditional story format of beginning, middle and end (see also Reissner & Pagan, 2013). Similarly, it is possible that narratives of decline such as William’s may be told in a more tentative manner because they will be more difficult to tell in a face-saving manner. Rather, I chose these two practical examples to explore some of the potential differences in personal identity narratives that researchers may encounter in their data. Before critically evaluating plot and storyline analysis as introduced above, I want to briefly comment on the fact that the two narratives were part of a longer answer to an – at first glance – unrelated question. In none of the interviews did I ask research participants about their identity; yet, many times they referred to who they were/are/could be. This implies that collecting narratives of personal identity in research interviews might be more straightforward

22  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations than readers new to this approach might expect (see also Czarniawska, 2004). By using largely open-ended interview questions about people’s experiences, researchers can ‘elicit’ personal identity narratives both ‘big’ and ‘small’ (Bamberg, 2006). As such, there is no need to learn a specific interviewing technique, although reflexive engagement with one’s interviewing practice and commitment to continually developing it further might be beneficial.3 In terms of the analysis itself, you will have realized that narratives with a chronological structure are easier to examine because, metaphorically speaking, the listener/reader is ‘walked through’ the events step by step, as shown in Adam’s account. In contrast, more fragmented narratives, such as William’s account, may need to be rephrased by the analyst to trace the order in which events happened as I have done above. This will help researchers to understand what happened when, what causality is stated or implied, and what gaps there may be. The implication for research design is that deeper engagement with the context of the study and/ or group(s) of research participants (for example, as part of a case study) can aid this filling of gaps as each interview, conversation and observation will add to the ‘mosaic’ of the research context. While I have sought to make sense of William’s narrative, the limitations of searching for meaning in the content and structure of his account have been reflected in the questions posed at the end of the previous section. Hence, narrative analysis does not enable identification of a person’s ‘real’ identity. While Czarniawska (1998, p. 28) posits that narratives ‘relate actual, not generalized, events…or hypothetical events…[and] come near to…direct observation’, they are situated in the specific research context and therefore do not ‘reflect’ a single, ‘true’ reality (Edwards, 1996). Indeed, narrative analysis is typically employed in social constructionist research (Brown, 2019), which assumes that knowledge and meaning are generated in and through social interaction and the stories that people tell. The insights gleaned from narratives are thus contextual, providing but glimpses into often multiple and fluid identities (Weick, 1995). Researchers, therefore, should not draw conclusions about who a person is outside of the specific context of the research interview or observation (Silverman, 2017). Rather, the strength of narrative analysis lies in examining how people report who they (think they) are or, rather, who they wish to be seen as (Czarniawska, 1997) at different times, in different contexts, and through different symbolic roles (Gabriel, 2008). Hence, personal identity narratives are a social construction of a particular identity that research participants communicate either to a researcher in an interview, as in my study, or to an organizational audience as part of a meeting that may be observed for research purposes. Paying attention to what people say and how they construct a narrative can help researchers to interrogate their data from different angles and construct new and/or further potential meanings (Daiute, 2014; Gubrium & Holstein, 2009). I have used plot and storyline, context and audience, and the use of language and metaphor to analyse the two narratives above to underpin the conclusions drawn in Reissner (2010). An emphasis on the narrative features of plot and storyline distinguishes narrative analysis from other discursive approaches, which might examine the reproduction of social inequalities (critical discourse analysis), the impact of power regimes on the self (Foucauldian discourse analysis), or the achievement of social or ideological actions (interpretative discourse analysis). The decision of which approach to use will depend on the specific focus of a study. However, since these approaches are underpinned by similar onto-epistemological assumptions, it is possible to analyse a qualitative dataset by using more than one method in a comparative manner.4

Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives  23

RECOMMENDATIONS To conclude this chapter, I wish to make three recommendations for readers new to narrative analysis, informed by my learning and development as a researcher over the years. First, I would encourage you to engage with the different definitions and conceptualizations of narrative, story and storytelling in management and organization studies as well as the wider social sciences to better understand the nuances between these concepts that I have deliberately glossed over in this chapter so as not to overcomplicate the subject matter. I would specifically recommend the seminal work by Boje (1991), Czarniawska (1997) and Gabriel (2000) as well as subsequent articles to develop your understanding of what is meant by narrative, story and storytelling, and whether and how to distinguish between them in your research. While this might take some time, a thorough understanding of these concepts will provide you with a strong foundation for the use of narrative analysis as a research method to study identities in and around organizations. Second, I would encourage you to explore and, where appropriate, experiment with, different approaches to narrative analysis in the light of your research question, research design, and underpinning onto-epistemological position. I would specifically recommend the seminal texts by Lieblich et al. (1998), Elliott (2006), Riessman (2008), Holstein and Gubrium (2012) as well as articles published in relevant methodological journals.5 You may want to experiment with applying different approaches to narrative analysis to get a hands-on understanding of their respective benefits and limitations before deciding on one or the other. It is possible that only a combination of techniques from different approaches to narrative analysis does justice to your study and dataset, which might lead to a novel approach to narrative analysis and subsequently to methodological innovation that Lê and Schmid (2022) have recently called for in the context of qualitative research more generally. Third, I would encourage you to embrace the multiplicity and fluidity of narratives (Weick, 1995) of personal identities and the diverse interpretations they invite. It can, of course, be challenging for narrative researchers to convince reviewers and editors of the rigour of their work when there is no single, ‘true’ conclusion about who a person ‘really’ is, which appears to be widely expected in a publishing landscape that values quality criteria grounded in positivistic paradigms (Cassell & Symon, 2015). However, given that the purpose of research is to challenge existing and/or construct new knowledge, trying to find out who a person ‘really’ is might actually limit the further development of identity research in and around organizations.

NOTES 1. For readers wishing to learn more about the study and its findings, an analysis with excerpts from the other two case organizations can be found in Reissner (2008, 2010). 2. See Holstein and Gubrium (1995) for details about the co-construction of research interviews. 3. Reissner (2018) posits that critical engagement with one’s interviewing practice can aid researcher reflexivity. The paper provides a summary of reflective, ethnographic, relational, conversation analytic, and visual-textual approaches to advancing researcher reflexivity. 4. Cassell and Bishop (2019) provide a powerful account of the insights gleaned through different compatible methods of data analysis, which inspire the use of different narrative approaches to the analysis of personal identity narratives. 5. In organization research, these journals include, in alphabetical order, the methodology sections of British Journal of Management and European Management Review, and Organizational Research

24  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Methods and Qualitative Research in Organization and Management. In the wider social sciences, journals worth considering include, again in alphabetical order, Narrative Inquiry, Qualitative Inquiry and Qualitative Research.

REFERENCES Alvesson, M. (2011). Interpreting interviews. SAGE. Bamberg, M. (2006). Stories big or small: Why do we care? Narrative Inquiry, 16(1), 139–147. Boje, D. M. (1991). The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(1), 106–126. Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative methods for organizational and communication research. SAGE. Boje, D. M. (2006). What happened on the way to postmodern? Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 1(1), 22–40. Brown, A. D. (2015). Identities and identity work in organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(1), 20–40. Brown, A. D. (2019). Identities in organization studies. Organization Studies, 40(1), 7–22. Browning, L. D. (1991). Organisational narratives and organisational structures. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 4(3), 59–67. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press. Cassell, C., & Bishop, V. (2019). Qualitative data analysis: Exploring themes, metaphors and stories. European Management Review, 16(1), 195–207. Cassell, C., & Symon, G. (2015). Qualitative research in organizations and management: Ten years on. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 10(4). Retrieved March 27, 2023 from https://​www​.emerald​.com/​insight/​content/​doi/​10​.1108/​QROM​-10​-2015​-1329/​full/​html. Czarniawska, B. (1997). Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity. University of Chicago Press. Czarniawska, B. (1998). A narrative approach to organization studies. SAGE. Czarniawska, B. (2004). Narratives in social science research. SAGE. Daiute, C. (2014). Narrative inquiry: A dynamic approach. SAGE. Edwards, D. E. (1996). Discourse and cognition. SAGE. Elliott, J. (2006). Using narrative in social science research: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. SAGE. Fisher, W. (1989). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. University of South Carolina Press. Forster, E. M. (1962). Aspects of the novel. Penguin. Gabriel, Y. (2000). Storytelling in organizations: Facts, fictions, and fantasies. Oxford University Press. Gabriel, Y. (2008). Organizing words: A critical thesaurus for social and organization studies. Oxford University Press. Gubrium, J., & Holstein, J. A. (2009). Analyzing narrative reality. SAGE. Holstein, J. A., & Gubrium, J. (1995). The active interview. SAGE. Holstein, J. A., & Gubrium, J. (Eds.) (2012). Varieties of narrative analysis. SAGE. Kenny, K., Whittle, A., & Willmott, H. (2011). Understanding identity and organizations. SAGE. Lê, K., & Schmid, T. (2022). The practice of innovating research methods. Organizational Research Methods, 25(2), 308–336. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research: Reading, analysis and interpretation. SAGE. Mazzei, L. A. (2003). Inhabited silences: In pursuit of a muffled subtext. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(3), 355–368. McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myth and the making of the self. Guilford Press. Norrick, N. (2010). Conversational narrative: Storytelling in everyday talk. John Benjamins. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. State University of New York Press.

Plot and storyline analysis of personal identity narratives  25 Reissner, S. C. (2008). Narratives of organisational change and learning: Making sense of testing times. Edward Elgar Publishing. Reissner, S. C. (2010). Change, meaning and identity at the workplace. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23(3), 287–299. Reissner, S. C. (2018). Interactional challenges and researcher reflexivity: Mapping and analysing conversational space. European Management Review, 15(2), 205–219. Reissner, S. C., & Pagan, V. (2013). Storytelling in management practice: Dynamics and implications. Routledge. Riessman, C. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. SAGE. Silverman, D. (2017). How was it for you? The Interview Society and the irresistible rise of the (poorly analyzed) interview. Qualitative Research, 17(2), 144–158. Sommer, K. L., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). The construction of meaning from life events: Empirical studies of personal narratives. In P. T. P. Wong & P. S. Fry (Eds.), The human quest for meaning (pp. 143–161). Lawrence Erlbaum. Squire, C., Andrews, M., & Tamboukou, M. (2008). What is narrative research? In M. Andrews, C. Squire & M. Tamboukou (Eds.), Doing narrative research (pp. 1–21). SAGE. Sveningsson, S., & Alvesson, M. (2003). Managing managerial identities: Organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle. Human Relations, 56(10), 1163–1193. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. SAGE.

3. Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis Isidora Kourti

INTRODUCTION Identity is not a fixed and stable entity but is transformed, challenged and adjusted through actors’ interactions (Horstmeier et al., 2016; Horton & Griffin, 2017). Identity is a process in a state of becoming (Fachin & Langley, 2018) and its development is the result of individuals’ social relations, experiences and interactions with the social context (Brown, 2015). This processual understanding of identity suggests that, as organizational members engage in everyday work, the context of interaction shifts, requiring individuals to bring forward different identities to respond to the changing needs of the organization (Kourti et al., 2018). Through identity interplay, organizational members can make use of the deposit of identities they have available and bring forward identities that fit emerging organizational situations, needs and contexts (Kourti, 2021). It is hardly surprising that organizations seek ways to understand the identity interplay that takes place in times of organizational instability and change (Kreiner et al., 2015), while organizational identity researchers seek ways to cover the gaps that remain in our exploration and understanding of the interplay between multiple identities (Miscenko & Van Day, 2016). Horstmeier et al. (2016) call for organizational studies that examine more than one particular identification focus, while Horton and Griffin (2017) call for studies that go beyond a single and fixed organizational identity. Within this call for more studies on multiple identities, Ramarajan (2014) requests new methodological approaches that enable the exploration of identity interplay that takes place in organizational settings. This chapter responds to the need for methodological approaches that enable the exploration of multiple possible identities simultaneously. In particular, this chapter offers a method of analysis that distinctively combines the textual (Gee, 1991) and performative approaches (Goffman, 1981) for the analysis of personal narratives in order to explore identity interplay in organizational settings. As Kourti (2016) explains, narratives have been used as a methodological approach to explore qualitatively the multiple identities present in organizations. Research has illustrated that narratives have several levels (Boje, 2001; Czarniawska, 2000), with each level assisting the exploration of different identities. For example, macro-level narratives are used for the exploration of cultural identities (Hermann, 2011), meso-level narratives have commonly been employed in the exploration of organizational identities (Kramer & Miller, 1999), and micro-level narratives for the analysis of personal identities (Preuss & Dawson, 2009). Nevertheless, research has also illustrated that organizational members could have more than one identity (Ramarajan, 2014) and studies look for ways to explore how actors move between different identities in organizational settings (Brown, 2015; Haslam, 2001). It is therefore difficult to capture the transformed and adjusted nature of identities (Horstmeier et al., 2016; 26

Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis  27 Horton & Griffin, 2017) and explore identity interplay using a single level narrative. We need to find an alternative methodological way that will allow the use of narratives for the analysis of different identities. This chapter suggests the use of personal narratives as a valuable tool to explore multiple possible identities and identity interplay. The terms narrative, account and story are often used interchangeably (Vaara et al., 2016). Following other organizational studies (e.g., Czarniawska, 2000; Rhodes & Brown, 2005), a distinction between narratives and stories is not being made here. The extracts below from Kourti (2013) along with original work present the role of personal narratives for the exploration of identity interplay. People of every social background use personal stories in different kinds of settings as an everyday activity (Ruebottom & Auster, 2018) to transform knowing into telling (Figueiredo, 2009). In their interviews, individuals may provide personal stories to organize their experiences, events and reality in a meaningful way, and reply to the interviewer’s questions. However, these personal narratives are not fixed stories formed in a similar way for different audiences (Bold, 2012). They are alive (Riessman, 2013), composed in the dynamic context that the interaction between the narrator and interviewer creates. Personal narratives ‘are works of history, as much as they are about individuals, the psychosocial contexts they inhabit, and the societies they live in’ (Mills, 1959, cited in Riessman, 2002, p. 697) and when narrators present their stories, they offer information about the specific context in which their narratives were developed. They also present information about individuals, the societies in which they live, and situations they experience (Bruner, 1991). By presenting information about the context, narrators can position events and actors, organize their experiences, and make sense of actions and events (Riessman, 2013). Personal narratives therefore operate as structures for meaning-making (Riessman, 2002), ‘located in particular times and places’ (Mills, 1959, cited in Riessman, 2002, p. 697) that allow interviewees to present events that were affected by a specific context of interaction while they also affected this context. Even though they are personal narratives, they emerge through the narrators’ interaction with the context and others, illustrating experiences, social relations and events that occur in a particular time and place. This means that the context that participants present in their narratives is not stable, but changes as a result of the participants’ experiences, social relations and (inter)actions. Personal narratives are context-related presentations regarding specific experiences and actions that narrators have experienced (Ruebottom & Auster, 2018). By examining personal stories, knowledge about the context and contextual changes, as well as about narrators’ actions located in particular times and places, is acquired (Bold, 2012). Exploring personal narratives presented in interviews not only offers information about social and historical processes and practices, and historicized views about relations and actions developed in specific contexts, it also offers information about participants’ identities (ibid.). In fact, while participants talk about their lives, they present their experiences and understanding of themselves, others and the world (Hermann, 2011), claiming identities that affect and are affected by the context they experience every time (Riessman, 2013). Narrators are able to position events and actors (Czarniawska, 2000), moving between different identities that allow them to organize their experiences and make sense of actions and events while telling their personal stories (Riessman, 2013). Personal narratives are located in particular times and contexts (Figueiredo, 2009) that allow narrators to present events that were affected by a specific context of interaction, while affecting the identity they brought forward. Therefore, personal stories not only tell someone or oneself about one’s life, but they are also tools that

28  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations allow individuals to fashion their identities and disclose their identity to justify their actions (Ruebottom & Auster, 2018). From this perspective, personal narratives are important tools with which to analyse identities since they illustrate the dynamic, self-shaping quality of human thought along with the ability of stories to fashion and refashion identities (Figueiredo, 2009). They illustrate ‘the active, self-shaping quality of human thought, the power of stories to create and refashion personal identity’ (Hinchman & Hinchman, 1997, p. xiv) and allow the exploration of how organizational members move between different identities as a response to contextual and situational conditions. Even though personal stories are a useful methodological tool with which to focus on the participants’ context, their (inter)actions and presentations of themselves, the use of personal narratives for identity exploration in organizational settings is scarce (e.g., Kourti, 2013, 2016; Rappaport, 1993). In this chapter, by applying textual analysis (Gee, 1991) with a performative lens (Goffman, 1981), it is demonstrated how personal narratives can be used as a methodological tool with which to examine the multiple identities that members may have available at different points of time, and how identity interplay takes place in shifting organizational contexts. The chapter is structured in three sections. First, it describes how, through a combination of textual and performative approaches, personal narratives are prepared and analysed with an aim to uncover the multiple identities that could be available at different times and organizational settings. The next section uses a particular personal narrative as an example to illustrate how the textual and performative analysis is applied in practice and how the findings emerging for this analysis could be presented. The chapter concludes with a critical evaluation of the methodology and suggestions to assist researchers that are new to the method.

DESCRIPTION OF THE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS WITH A PERFORMATIVE LENS FOR PERSONAL NARRATIVES To explore how individual actors bring forward different identities in response to changing organizational situations and contexts, the method of analysis that distinctively combines the textual (Gee, 1991) and performative approaches (Goffman, 1981) for the analysis of personal narratives is presented next, based on original work and extracts from Kourti (2013). The multiple possible identities that actors adapt are examined in relation to specific organizational contexts to understand the effect that identity interplay has on organizational life. Approaching personal narratives with a performative lens means that ‘everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role… It is in these roles that we know each other; it is in these roles that we know ourselves’ (Park, 1950, cited in Goffman, 1981, p. 17). When participants perform, they do so in relation to an audience; they produce ‘performances with others’ (Young, 2000, p. 109). Performances are treated as ‘expressive attempts to involve an audience’ (Riessman, 2003, p. 7). During their interviews, participants tell stories they develop in collaboration with an audience (the interviewer or with other organizational members) (Wells, 2011). The social and historical contexts also play an important role with respect to the stories the members express. In fact, narrators ‘look back on and recount lives that are located in particular times and places’, therefore structuring their performances temporally and spatially (Laslett, 1999, p. 392).

Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis  29 The performative element does not propose that participants stage an identity. Instead, it suggests that narrators accomplish and express their identities with an audience, and therefore identities dynamically change in social interaction with others. The stories they tell are ‘socialised, moulded, and modified’ based on specific contexts and people (Goffman, 1981, p. 30) that trigger identity interplay. The researcher looks at the context, events and people involved to examine how narrators move between identities in the presence of others. The performative element is also employed to focus on the participants’ (inter)actions, on the everyday actions that define how individuals act towards others and themselves on particular occasions and in particular contexts and therefore trigger identity interplay (Mishler, 1999). Following a performative approach therefore means that the focus is on ‘narrative as action’ (Riessman, 2003, p. 8), and the analysis not only focuses on what is told (the events that the language describes) (Bold, 2012) but also on the telling (the positions of characters, listeners and self) (Mishler, 1999). The researcher pays attention to the linguistic understanding of actions that indicate the way things were done with words (Riessman, 2002). They arrange the events and elements of the narrative into an order and take into consideration related events to provide the context where the narrative is placed and the identity is constructed. The researcher also notes the interactions with the audience (the interviewer or with other organizational members) as well as references to the audience. In this way, it is possible to investigate how the identities shift in social interaction ‘performed, produced for (and by) audiences in social situations’ and particular contexts (Goffman, 1981, p. 701). Following this line of thought, the performative approach is combined with the poetic structural analysis (Gee, 1991) to identify the structure and meaning of each text in relation to its context. This analysis does not seek to identify a plot in the text. Instead, it leaves space for the open-endedness of the narratives and therefore the inclusion of the ambiguities related to identity interplay. According to the textual approach, the researcher analyses the text in stanzas, scenes and parts (Gee, 1991; Riessman, 2008) (for an example, see Box 3.1). Stanzas are used to incorporate non-narrative parts of the interviews for analysis. ‘Each stanza is a particular “take” on a character, action, event, claim, place of information, and each involves a shift of focal participants, focal events, or a change in the time of framing of events from the preceding stanza… it represents an image, what the camera is focused on’ (Gee, 1991, p. 23). Gee (1991) suggests that stanzas fall into related pairs that he calls strophes. ‘The strophe is a pair of stanzas of alternating form on which the structure of a given poem is based’ (Gee, 1991, p. 24). However, here, because of the direct performative reference of the narratives, stanzas are not organized into strophes, but into scenes (Riessman, 2008). Scenes describe the action that takes place in a different time and setting, and help achieve coherence in the story. They also make clear the different ways the narrators position themselves in the interviews. Therefore, where narrative segments appear, they are directly presented in scenes. Finally, the scenes are placed within parts that bring the scenes together and produce a coherent narrative. Before analysing personal narratives textually and performatively, the text should be prepared for analysis. For example, brief exchanges between the researcher and the participants, the researcher’s questions, and clarification questions or comments should be deleted (Riessman, 2002). Paralinguistic utterances (e.g., ‘a’, ‘uhm’, etc.), silences (indicated with --) and discourse markers (e.g., ‘it’s’, ‘so’, etc.) are included. When the narrator presents in detail information that is clearly irrelevant to the aim of the analysis, the content should be summarized and marked with brackets [ ]. Whenever necessary for the flow of the text and meaning,

30  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations the researcher adds some information presented in parentheses ( ). Furthermore, to facilitate the flow of the text, the researcher may correct and/or delete obvious mistakes in the narrators’ speech. Finally, when necessary, the researcher replaces pronouns that the narrators used (e.g., she, her, we, them, etc.) with nouns to maintain the flow of the text. The edited texts are then examined with a performative lens by looking at both the events that the language describes and the positions of the characters, listeners and self to determine the beginnings and endings of the narratives. This is a complex interpretative task. In some narratives, the researcher may signal the beginning and ending of the narrative with questions. In other narratives, the boundaries may not be clearly presented and their identification becomes a subjective endeavour by the researcher based on the context, theoretical interests and emergent issues. Alternatively, the start and finish of a narrative may be similar to the beginning and ending of an interview, while the narrators may also indicate when their narrative started and when it was over. Once the boundaries of a narrative are decided, following a performative lens, the researcher reads the narrative several times to identify its main image. The main image frames the whole narrative, indicates its tone, provides its theme and gives a title to the personal narrative. The edited transcripts are then divided into stanzas, scenes and parts following the textual analysis. Finally, the performative approach is applied to identify in each narrative the turning points that indicate an important change in the anticipated sequence of the narratives and the narrators’ identities. This analysis process also aims to discover the narrative context of the personal narratives to explore how the narrators positioned themselves in changing organizational contexts through identity interplay.

APPLICATION OF THE METHOD Analysis Process To illustrate the application of the textual analysis with a performative lens for the exploration of identity interplay in organizational contexts, Maria’s personal narrative is employed in this chapter based on original work and extracts from Kourti (2013). Her narrative was identified through 21 narrative interviews that the author conducted with KEDDY (a centre for differential assessment, diagnosis and support of disabled children) in Greece. Maria works for KEDDY as a psychologist who is expected to collaborate with KEDDY teachers to examine disabled children and produce joint diagnoses and plans for the educational support of the children. Even though Maria has been working in KEDDY for two years, she narrates a story from her first days there in an attempt to illustrate to the researcher how important it is for the organizational members to collaborate. The author analysed the text in two stages. First, a thematic analysis was conducted with all the interview transcripts to obtain both general contextual knowledge about the organization and to explore whether the narrators had brought to the fore the organizational identity while telling their stories. The second step applied textual analysis with a performative lens on the interview transcripts to explore the multiple (team, personal, professional and organizational) identities present and the interplay between identities in different organizational contexts.

Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis  31 The textual and performative analysis followed the following steps (see also Box 3.1 for an analysis example): 1. The interview transcript is prepared for analysis. In Maria’s interview, the transcript was cleaned of brief exchanges with the researcher as well as of interviewing, prompting or clarification questions. Information irrelevant to the topic was also deleted and replaced with a short summary marked with [ ]. For example, ‘Anyway, he told me about KEDDY [Maria presents general information that she exchanged with the manager about KEDDY]’. Information was added in ( ) when necessary. For example, ‘All the team members (psychologist, teacher and social worker) met to discuss their evaluation and diagnosis’. Moreover, obvious mistakes in the speech were corrected. For example, ‘she presented her arguments and my ideas. I meant arguments’ became ‘Kate presented her arguments and my arguments’. Pronouns were also replaced when necessary. For example, in the phrase ‘she presented her arguments and my arguments’ became ‘Kate presented her arguments and my arguments’. 2. The personal narrative is located and the main image of the narrative is identified. The start and end of Maria’s narrative was similar to the beginning and ending of the interview. The start was signalled by the researcher’s questions and the end of the narrative by the narrator. The main image of Maria’s narrative was identified performatively. The main image framed the whole narrative, offered the main theme around which the narrative was developed, while the narrator returned to this image several times as they told their story. The author read the stories several times to position the characters, understand the role of the audience, the sequence of the events and the language that the narrator used. After several readings, the main image ‘The power of the organization is in working together’ was identified. This image was presented at the start of the narrative in the first paragraph: ‘I thought that the power of organization was in acting as one unit to achieve our aims’. It was also presented in other parts of the narrative (e.g., part 1, scene 3: ‘only if we cooperate, we can achieve our aim’) and at the end of the narrative, (part 4, scene 3: ‘KEDDY will achieve its aims only if the members actually collaborate’). At the end of this process, Maria’s personal narrative consisted of 2002 words. 3. The personal narrative is then divided into stanzas, scenes and parts following the textual analysis. The scenes are particularly useful in the method of analysis since they indicate how the narrative boundaries and the way the narrator identifies themselves change during the interview. At the end, the narrative is structured with a main image and parts that include stanzas and scenes. An important aspect of the performative element in the textual analysis is the chronological ordering of the text within the interview. Intentional change of the order is therefore avoided. In Maria’s narrative, four parts were identified: each of the first and second parts consisted of three scenes, and two of the three scenes had stanzas; the third part consisted of two scenes, one of which had stanzas; and the fourth part consisted of three scenes, all of which had stanzas. Following a performative lens, similar to the identification of the main image of the narrative, each part and each scene were assigned a title that reflected its focus. Box 3.1 offers an example that illustrates how the textual analysis is performed in the first part of Maria’s narrative.

32  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations

BOX 3.1 EXTRACT FROM KOURTI (2013, P. 292) FROM THE EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF MARIA’S INTERVIEW INDICATING THE TEXTUAL STRUCTURE FOR ‘THE POWER OF THE ORGANIZATION IS IN WORKING TOGETHER’ Image: ‘The power of the organization is in working together’ Working for KEDDY’s collaboration creates mixed feelings. Do I enjoy it? I am not sure. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. To be honest, when I started working for KEDDY two years ago, I was very excited. It was a new challenge for me. I was aware of KEDDY’s role and aim. I found fascinating the fact that the organization must overcome so many difficulties in order to support disabled children. You know this is a closed society with many stereotypes. [She talks about the negative image the society has about disabled children.] I can still remember the excitement of my first day at work. I was naive back then. I thought that the power of the organization was in members acting as one unit to achieve our aims. I couldn’t see any other way to make it work. However, I didn’t know much about the organization, I had to learn how it works. Part 1: Entering KEDDY Scene 1: Meeting the nice manager I met the manager while I was waiting outside KEDDY. It was the first day you see, and I had arrived quite early. (Manager’s name) is a really nice person, everyone likes him. Well, not everyone exactly but everyone should like him. Anyway, he told me about KEDDY. [Maria presents the general information that she exchanged with the manager about KEDDY.] From what I understood, employees were expected to work in teams to produce diagnoses and educational plans. He told me that KEDDY employees are like a family and I could always ask for their advice. However, he clarified that he should be informed about everything and that all reports should be signed by him. Scene 2: Meeting the helpful colleagues Stanza: (1) Then, he introduced me to the rest of the team. (2) He asked everyone to come to his office, which is also our conference room. (3) Everyone was nice. (4) I guess they were truly nice, they didn’t pretend then. -- (5) Oh, actually apart from (employee’s name) who wasn’t very sociable, everyone else was. But that’s his style, not that he didn’t like me. (6) I was nervous and I think they could see that. It is a bit stressful to meet fourteen people in one day! (7) But when I saw how nice they were to me, I relaxed and became friendly. (8) (Secretary’s name) gave me a tour of KEDDY and he showed me my office. (9) (Physiologists’ and social workers’ names) explained to me the main rules of the organization and their role in KEDDY. They also offered me their help. (10) Kate (KEDDY primary teacher who will later be a main actor in the narrative) explained to me how the report production works. (11) At the time, I didn’t realize that she was actually trying to show me the boundaries between my work and hers. (12) I thought she was trying to help me. Scene 3: Good start Stanza: (1) Actually, this was my perspective when I started working in KEDDY. KEDDY’s

Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis  33 role is very important for our society. [She explains that it is very important to support children with disabilities.] (2) Although I was new in KEDDY, I could see that the obstacles against our aim are many and only if we cooperate, can we achieve our aim. (3) I made it clear to my colleagues that I wanted to work hard, learn my job well and help. (4) I participated in discussions, I asked questions – perhaps too many questions, I offered my perspective, I read books. (5) I was so excited about my new job at first. (6) I wanted to carry out my role as soon as possible. So I did my best to learn quickly. 4. The personal narrative is also analysed for the identification of the turning points as well as of the main narrative context. This enables the identification of multiple possible identities and examination of identity interplay in a personal narrative. Following the performative lens, the researcher focuses on each narrative part identified through the textual analysis. The researcher explores the linguistic understanding of the action that the narrator presents to identify the way interactions and occurrences take place with words. By placing the events and elements of the narrative in order, it is possible to identify the main turning points (events, episodes, occurrences) that change the course of the narrative and the way the narrator positions themselves. In Maria’s narrative, three turning points were identified, one in each part of the narrative. Each turning point challenged an established identity and made Maria reconsider the way she understood herself as a member of the organization. In the first part of the narrative, the turning point comes at the end of scene 2: ‘At the time, I didn’t realize that she was actually trying to show me the boundaries between my work and hers. I thought she was trying to help me’. As such, each turning point indicated a main event, situation or occasion that made Maria revisit her deposit of identities and brought another identity forward, signifying identity interplay. Identifying the context of Maria’s narrative was also a performative task. Personal stories are about individuals who are trying to make sense of their reality as it is expressed in a specific context. As such, every narrative is produced, articulated and positioned in a dynamic context, while the narrator is represented as an agent that acts in this specific context. Indeed, ‘narratives…articulate the deepest structures of the social world and their contradictions’ (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 511), and only by taking into consideration the context of the telling is coherence established. In Maria’s case, the main context was competitive as she found herself, a psychologist, in competition with the teachers of the organization, with whom she was expected to collaborate to arrive at a diagnosis for a disabled child. Examples of contextual elements that illustrate the competitive context of Maria’s narrative were statements such as: ‘I was naive back then’; ‘…everyone likes him. Well, not everyone exactly but everyone should like him’; ‘I didn’t realize that she was actually trying to show me the boundaries between my work and hers’. Locating the story in a narrative context offered an understanding of the particular contextual elements that affected how Maria understood and positioned herself in particular situations, enabling the conditions for identity interplay through interactions in a competitive context. An example of the main elements of the textual and performative analysis performed by the author to Maria’s narrative is presented below (Kourti, 2013, 2016): A. Narrator/main narrative image/narrative context: Maria in a narrative of ‘The power of the organization is in working together’ that takes place in a competitive context. B. Narrative parts/turning points/identity interplay:

34  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Entering KEDDY/dealing with a case/new organizational member. One case, two diagnoses/disagreement with the teachers about the diagnosis/expert psychologist. Experienced vs inexperienced staff/bringing forward different experience/inexperienced colleague. Being a psychologist/proving the validity of the diagnosis/expert organizational member.

The application of a textual analysis with a performative lens focuses on the narrators’ own structuring of the narrative to discover how they adapt different identities, organizing accordingly their interactions with the audience (organizational actors and the researcher). The outcome is the emergence of self-narratives that describe the participants’ self-understandings and identity interplay in different organizational contexts and situations. Findings Presentation It is important to present the findings in a way that reflects both the textual and performative analysis of the text. The findings section could offer a title that reflects the main actor and the main image of the narrative. One or two introductory paragraphs that summarize the main events of the narrative and introduce the main actors could help the reader immerse themselves in the narrative from the start. Presenting the whole narrative or complete parts of the narrative is important for the reader to understand the main image assigned to the narrative, the events, turning points and context in which the narrative takes place. Elements of the textual analysis (stanzas, scenes and parts) and elements of the performative analysis (audience, performances, main image, character positioning, context and turning points) should be included in the findings presentation to guide the reader through the parts of the narrative that indicate the ways the narrator identifies themselves and others when they present specific events, situations and actors in their personal story. The performative element indicates the dynamic process of identity construction that takes place in relation to an audience. The narrator switches between identities in their accounts of shared practice and individual experience while they try to construct a particular self in the presence of others. The researcher puts the events and elements of the narrative in a sequence and considers related cases. This produces a context in which the narrative is placed and the narrator’s identity shifts are demonstrated. In this way, it is possible to present the multiple identities that organizational members bring forward in relation to specific organizational contexts and understand the effect that identity interplay has on organizational life. An example of findings presentation emerging from a textual and performative analysis performed by the author is presented in Box 3.2 using Maria’s case. This example is put together from a textually and performative approach throughout. However, here some words are presented in italic to assist the reader in the identification of instances where the researcher clearly indicates the performative and textual analysis elements.

Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis  35

BOX 3.2 EXTRACT FROM KOURTI (2013, PP. 162–164) FROM THE FINDINGS PRESENTATION OF MARIA’S PERSONAL STORY DEMONSTRATING THE TEXTUAL AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH Maria (KEDDY employee): The power of collaboration is in working together Maria has been working as a psychologist in KEDDY for two years. The main image of her narrative presents her view that only if the members collaborate will the organization achieve its aims. Maria presents this image throughout the whole interview. She does not initially admit that some of KEDDY’s employees are divided into teachers and psychologists because this contradicts the ideal view of the collaboration she has constructed. However, her disagreement with KEDDY teachers over a child’s diagnosis offers the turning point in the narrative. This disagreement shifts the boundaries that fitted all of her colleagues, and Maria identifies herself as a psychologist. Maria’s narrative is divided into four parts. By presenting Maria’s first days in KEDDY, the first part introduces the physical context and the main characters in the narrative. The second part describes the case of a child who went to KEDDY for support. The third part presents the main tension in the narrative: the disagreement between KEDDY’s teachers and Maria regarding a child’s diagnosis. In the final part of the narrative, disappointed about the lack of collaboration between colleagues, Maria turns to the psychologists’ group for support. Narrative context: Competition Maria carefully introduces the researcher into her narrative which is a complex performance presented in four parts. The narrative was prompted by the researcher’s question ‘Do you enjoy working for the collaboration?’, which aimed at positioning Maria in the organization life. Maria refers to her arrival in KEDDY and how her colleagues welcomed her as a new member in their team. She provides narrative detail and therefore the audience should not infer a great deal. In the following segment, which serves as the introductory part of the narrative, Maria introduces the main challenge she experiences as a member of the organization – namely, the lack of cooperation between the KEDDY members. This challenge is also the main image of her narrative. Maria also introduces herself as a newcomer to the organization who is excited about her new job: Working for KEDDY creates mixed feelings. Do I enjoy it? I am not sure. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. To be honest, when I started working for KEDDY two years ago, I was very excited. It was a new challenge for me. I was aware of KEDDY’s role and aim. I found fascinating the fact that the organization must overcome so many difficulties in order to support disabled children. You know this is a closed society with many stereotypes. [She talks about the negative image the society has about disabled children.] I can still remember the excitement of my first day at work. I was naive back then. I thought that the power of the organization was in members acting as one unit to achieve our aims. I couldn’t see any other way to make it work. However, I didn’t know much about the organization, I had to learn how it works.

In this context Maria frames herself as a newcomer willing to collaborate. She then enters the first part of her narrative and presents her first days at work. In this way she introduces

36  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations the context of the narrative, competitive KEDDY, and the main characters. Maria constructs the first scene of her narrative with only one character besides herself. This scene refers to her arrival in KEDDY and more particularly to her meeting with the manager. It is clear that Maria likes her manager, although it seems that some of the KEDDY employees do not share her feelings: I met the manager while I was waiting outside KEDDY. It was the first day you see, and I had arrived quite early. (Manager’s name) is a really nice person, everyone likes him. Well, not everyone exactly but everyone should like him. Anyway, he told me about KEDDY. [Maria presents the general information that she exchanged with the manager about KEDDY.] From what I understood, employees were expected to work in teams to produce diagnoses and educational plans. He told me that KEDDY employees are like a family and I could always ask for their advice. However, he clarified that he should be informed about everything and that all reports should be signed by him.

In the second and third scenes of the first part, Maria presents many characters in an attempt to introduce Kate to the researcher, the other main actor of her narrative, with whom she had to collaborate later for the production of a diagnosis. In the second scene, Maria explains her first meeting with her colleagues, her anxiety and her positive first impression. By positioning the KEDDY employees as social and helpful, she expands the boundaries of the narrative to include all her colleagues as well as constructing her identity as a friendly employee. At the end of this scene, she very briefly presents the main narrative context: Then, he introduced me to the rest of the team. He asked everyone to come to his office, which is also our conference room. Everyone was nice. I guess they were truly nice, they didn’t pretend then. -- Oh, actually apart from (employee’s name) who wasn’t very sociable, everyone else was. But that’s his style, not that he didn’t like me. I was nervous and I think they could see that. It is a bit stressful to meet fourteen people in one day! But when I saw how nice they were to me, I relaxed and became friendly. (Secretary’s name) gave me a tour of KEDDY and he showed me my office. (Physiologists’ and social workers’ names) explained to me the main rules of the organization and their role in KEDDY. They also offered me their help. Kate (KEDDY primary teacher who will later be a main actor in the narrative) explained to me how the report production works. At the time, I didn’t realize that she was actually trying to show me the boundaries between my work and hers. I thought she was trying to help me.

Through the description of her first meeting with KEDDY’s staff, in the third and last scene of the first part, Maria constructs a twofold identity without positioning other characters in this scene. On the one hand, she restates her identity as an excited newcomer that she had presented at the start of her narrative. She also explains that she is a newcomer willing to collaborate, offer and share with her colleagues. On the other hand, Maria is also a learner who tries to adapt to a new working environment and respond to her job responsibilities. In restating herself, she gets the chance to expand the boundaries of the context so as to become a more active participant in her narrative: Actually, this was my perspective when I started working in KEDDY. KEDDY’s role is very important for our society. [She explains that it is very important to support children with disabilities.] Although I was new in KEDDY, I could see that the obstacles against our aim are many and only if we cooperate, can we achieve our aim. I made it clear to my colleagues that I wanted to work hard, learn my job well and help. I participated in discussions, I asked questions – perhaps

Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis  37 too many questions, I offered my perspective, I read books. I was so excited about my new job at first. I wanted to carry out my role as soon as possible. So I did my best to learn quickly.

Although the first part of the narrative was not initiated by the researcher, the second part of the narrative was prompted by the researcher’s question ‘What made you change your attitude towards your job and your colleagues?’ The second part of the narrative takes a different direction and in it Maria constructs a different identity.

CRITICAL EVALUATION The performative and textual analysis of personal narratives can be employed to explore how organizational actors identify themselves in interaction with others, taking into consideration that the narratives are performed in a specific context and for/with a specific audience. This illustrates the co-construction of the narratives at different points of the text, while also allowing the examination of the different positioning and identification of the actors in different parts of the text. From this perspective, identity is not explored as something stable and absolute but as a process that develops and changes through social interactions that take place in specific contexts (Watson, 2016) and with different audiences (Young, 2000), in which the actors try to generate meaning and adapt new identities engaging in identity interplay. In this sense, both the way the identities affect the organization and the way identities are affected by it can be examined. The textual and performative approach provides a very helpful method to analyse transcripts of talk produced in a variety of contexts. The ideal data for textual and performative analysis can be produced by recording personal narratives created naturally and spontaneously in non-research situations (e.g., through written narratives and observational narratives), or by narrative interviews where the interviewer gives more space and control to the interviewee to formulate the information through telling a narrative, structuring and selecting the elements that they perceive as important. The method can be used to identify important personal narratives within the transcripts and to reveal the specific structure and the context of those narratives. Combining the textual with the performative approach provides a useful methodological tool for undertaking a systematic textual analysis while at the same time analysing the linguistic elements, positioning the main actors and interpreting the events of the narrative. This combination offers an analysis below the surface of the text without isolating the personal stories from events, main actors and the audience. In particular, the method allows researchers to explore participants’ narratives developed in collaboration with an audience, placed in particular contexts that affected the development and narration of those narratives. In personal narratives, particular (team, personal, organization etc.) identities are claimed by narrators and the story they shared works to express, confirm and authenticate the claimed identity. The analysis of the linguistic elements of the narratives enables the encoding of the actions that the narrators present, allowing the researcher to examine the perspective of the narrator on the events that occur. It should be noted that combining the textual and performative approach can be time-consuming since preparing the texts for analysis and performing the analysis can take a considerable amount of time. Moreover, the researcher must collect extensive information

38  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations regarding the participants and the organizational context to fully understand how personal narratives are performed. For example, the researcher needs to immerse themselves in the organizational context by familiarizing with the organization and the members before their first visit, spending time in the organization, conducting a large number of observations and collecting internal and external documents. When a large number of personal narratives is identified in the data, researchers may find it challenging to perform this analysis. Moreover, the interpretative element involved during the text preparation and the analysis can make this approach more difficult or complex, particularly for inexperienced researchers. Challenges can also emerge in gathering data for textual and performative analysis since affording the power to the interviewees in what and how to tell about a topic can lead to extensive and unhelpful data. Moreover, personal narratives capture only a limited number of experiences, which then the researcher uses to approximate a coherent narrative through textual and performative analysis. As such, the researcher needs to be mindful of what is omitted from the individual’s narratives along with inconsistencies across narrative accounts, or the meaning of hesitations or saliences in the accounts. This further increases the time required for preparing the text for analysis. The researcher should also be a patient and active listener, and accept that ‘wasting time’ is part of the process of listening to the narrators while gently guiding them to stay within the research focus. Despite these challenges, the textual and performative approach enables the exploration of identities as dynamically constructed in social situations, expressed in collaboration with an audience. As such, it puts at the centre of the analysis identity shifts rather than identity stability, which makes this method particularly valuable to explore how individual actors move between identities while interacting with others and responding to dynamic organizational contexts.

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Exploring identity interplay through performative textual analysis  39 Hinchman, L. P., & Hinchman, S. K. (1997). Introduction. In L. P. Hinchman & S. K. Hinchman (Eds.), Memory, identity, community: The idea of narrative in the human sciences (pp. xiii–1). State University of New York Press. Horstmeier, C. A., Homan, A. C., Rosenauer, D., & Voelpel, S. C. (2016). Developing multiple identifications through different social interactions at work. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 25(6), 928–944. Horton, K. E., & Griffin, M. A. (2017). Identification complexity and conflict: How multiple identifications affect conflict across functional boundaries. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 26(2), 286–298. Kourti, I. (2013). Between planned and emergent collaboration: Boundary activation and identity development in the psychosocial space of a Greek educational partnership [PhD thesis]. London School of Economics and Political Science. Kourti, I. (2016). Using personal narratives to explore multiple identities in organizational contexts. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 11(3), 169–188. Kourti, I. (2021). Managing the identity paradox in inter-organizational collaborations. European Management Review, 18(4), 445–449. Kourti, I., Garcia-Lorenzo, L., & Yu, A. (2018). Managing the interactions between multiple identities in inter-organizational collaborations: An identity work perspective. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 27(4), 506–519. Kramer, M. W., & Miller, V.D. (1999). A response to criticisms of organizational socialization research: In support of contemporary conceptualization of organizational assimilation. Communication Monographs, 66(4), 358–367. Kreiner, G. E., Hollensbe, E., Sheep, M. L., Smith, B. R., & Kataria, N. (2015). Elasticity and the dialectic tensions of organizational identity: How can we hold together while we are pulling apart? Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), 981–1011. Laslett, B. (1999). Personal narratives as sociology: Featured essay. Contemporary Sociology, 28(4), 391–401. Miscenko, D., & Van Day, D. (2016). Identity and identification at work. Organizational Psychology Review, 6(3), 215–247. Mishler, E. G. (1999). Storylines: Craftartists’ narratives of identity. Harvard University Press. Preuss, L., & Dawson, D. (2009). On the quality and legitimacy of green narratives in business: A framework for evaluation. Journal of Business Ethics, 84(1), 135–149. Ramarajan, L. (2014). Past, present and future research on multiple identities: Toward an intrapersonal network approach. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 589–659. Rappaport, J. (1993). Narrative studies, personal stories, and identity transformation in the mutual help context. The Journal of Applied Behavioural Science, 29(2), 239–256. Rhodes, C., & Brown, A. D. (2005). Narrative, organizations and research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 22(3), 167–188. Riessman, C. K. (2002). Analysis of personal narratives. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research: Context and method (pp. 695–710). SAGE. Riessman, C. K. (2003). Performing identities in illness narrative: Masculinity and multiple sclerosis. Qualitative Research, 3(5), 5–32. Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. SAGE. Riessman, C. K. (2013). Analysis of personal narratives. In A. E. Fortune, W. J. Reid and R. L. M. Miller (Eds.), Qualitative research in social work (pp. 168–191). Columbia University Press. Ruebottom, T., & Auster, E. R. (2018). Reflexive dis/embedding: Personal narratives, empowerment and emotional dynamics of interstitial events. Organization Studies, 39(4), 467–490. Vaara, E., Sonenshein, S., & Boje, D. (2016). Narratives as sources of stability and change in organisations: Approaches and directions for future research. Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 495–560. Watson, T. J. (2016). Organizational identity and organizational identity work as valuable analytical resources. In M. Pratt, M. Schultz, B. E. Ashforth & D. Ravisi (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organizational identity (pp. 123–139). Oxford University Press. Wells, K. (2011). Narrative inquiry. New York: Oxford University Press. Young, K. (2000). Gesture and the phenomenology of emotion in narrative. Semiotica, 131(1/2), 79–112.

4. Organizational small storymaking and change: identity work as coming into being in narrative story dynamics Ann Starbæk Bager

INTRODUCTION This chapter conceptualizes a discourse- and dissensus-based dialogic approach to identity work in organizational contexts in a change communication perspective. Here, focus is on identities in organizations as co-creative accomplishments and as socially negotiated phenomena that come into being in the complex and subtle discursive storymaking processes that continuously (re)constitute organizational life. From this view, organizations are perceived as fascinating, subtle and everchanging storymaking ecologies that are constantly (re) communicated or story-made into being in complex processes. From an organizational small storymaking (OSS) approach, processes of identity construction in organizations are seen as collectively worked up by organizational members in local situations through complex ongoing positioning activities involving several entangled storymaking layers. This approach foregrounds local practices as the analytical point of departure and allows us to reflect on how identity work in organizations is (re)constituted in a complex schism between local social interaction and the macro-social processes in which it is embedded (Bager & McClellan, 2023). This chapter spotlights how an OSS approach involves taking a dissensus orientation towards organizational phenomena and embraces aspects such as ambivalence, paradoxes, dissent, interconnectedness, processuality, context dependency, open-endedness, polyvocality and the constitutive qualities of communication and discourse in identity-creative processes. First, I will position the research within the broad field of organizational studies and benchmark it against other approaches to organizational identity and change. Thereafter, I elaborate on the specificities of the approach and explain central concepts and the attached analysis strategy by applying it to a strip of interaction drawn from audio-recordings from a change process in a management team in a Danish electrical company. Finally, I will critically evaluate the approach, discuss its potentials for supporting plurivocal ongoing change and point towards future research avenues. Dissensus-based and Dialogic Organizational Studies An OSS approach is based in discursive, constitutive and poststructuralist thinking and involves taking a dissensus orientation towards identity work and change in organizations. Dissensus orientation entails that scholars embrace and foreground plurivocality, dissent and ambivalence as premises in organizational practices (Deetz, 2001). From this perspective, traditional and dominant consensus-oriented perspectives are challenged for being too fixed on the creation and maintenance of unified and streamlined cultures and identity work – 40

Organizational small storymaking and change  41 for instance, by fixating on the creation of common grounds and shared value sets. From a dissensus perspective, scholars reject these ideas of streamlined and unified cultures and identities and show how consensus-oriented perspectives tend to neglect and repress conflicts and dissent in their quest to obtain unity and neatness, thereby overlooking crucial messy and diversifying aspects of organizational practice (e.g., Grant & Iedema, 2005; Vásquez & Kuhn, 2019). By contrast, dissent and differences of interests are seen as premises when subjects co-create meaning and work on their identities in organizations. Hence, taking a dissensus orientation involves a change of attitude, which welcomes dissent and differences of interests as crucial innovative and productive features of organizing instead of closing them in the pursuit of unitary and streamlined cultures and identities, as is often seen in monologic and consensus-oriented perspectives. Concurrently with embracing conflicts and the subtle, ongoing and diversifying aspects of identity work, an OSS approach embraces process-oriented perspectives that promote change as continuous processual co-creative efforts. Rather than picturing organizational change as happening in episodic and static ways (often indicating that rational subjects, identities and cultures can be managed through linear and functionalist stage models), change is seen here as the normal plurivocal, ongoing and complex condition of organizational life (e.g., Langley & Tsoukas, 2017; McClellan, 2011; Shotter, 2008; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). An OSS approach links up to perspectives foregrounding the constitutive qualities of communication (e.g., Vásquez & Kuhn, 2019) and discourse (e.g., Grant & Iedema, 2005), embracing these as the very building blocks of organizational phenomena. From such perspectives, identities and change are continuously (re)constituted in and through communicative practices (Kuhn & Simpson, 2020), and scholars are increasingly exploring how communication recursively impacts identities, which further influences organizational practices (e.g., Chaput & Basque, 2022). Following these trains of thought, an OSS approach aligns with contemporary studies in which dissensus-oriented and dialogic scholars are increasingly focusing on the relationship between organizing and identity work and advocating the need for polyvocality to overcome issues of organizational control (e.g., Bager & McClellan, in press; Beech, 2008; Boje, 2014; Brown, 2006). However, scholars argue that we need to know more about the processes that engender/constitute polyphony in communication to fully understand the role of multiplicity in the communicative and discursive constitution of organizational phenomena (e.g., Bager, 2015; Chaput & Basque, 2022; Christensen et al., 2011). An OSS approach precisely zooms in on local communicative practices in social interaction to become more knowledgeable about when and how resistance and compliance come about, with the future aspiration of designing more plurivocal change processes (Bager & McClellan, in press). Identity in Organizations: Dissensus-based and (Counter-)Narrative Approaches Consensus-oriented and monologic approaches to identity tend to share the assumptions of a ‘convergence on a consensual organizational identity’ (Gioia et al., 2013, p. 166). In such perspectives, employees are often perceived as continuously making sense of claims about an organization’s identity, whereby these employees over time come to share a joint understanding of an organization’s common, distinctive and continuous features. They thereby incorporate organizational identity in entity-like ways with attached pre-ascribed features existing independently of specific situations at hand (Haslam et al., 2017).

42  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Organizational identity research has evolved into several branches and more nuanced perspectives such as institutional, social actor, population ecologist and social constructionist perspectives (Gioia et al., 2013). However, although some scholars zoom in on multiple identities (Pratt & Foreman, 2000), hybrid identities (Cornelissen et al., 2021) or ‘reservoirs’ of identity attributes (Kroezen & Heugens, 2012), they still tend to ascribe the guiding power of organizational identity to the construction of common grounds and creation of a consensus regarding the central, distinctive and continuous features of an organization (Gioia et al., 2013). Such perspectives thereby frame organizational identity and the related process of identification of organizational members in monologic ways by framing it as a guide for action that reflects unified beliefs and claims about ‘who we are as an organization’ (Haslam et al., 2017). An OSS approach is part of the (counter-)narrative field that has evolved into a promising and important arena for the study of dynamics between resistive and controlling forces in organizational contexts (e.g., Frandsen et al., 2018; Humphreys & Brown, 2017; Rhodes & Brown, 2005). Such studies are particularly interested in inquiring into local power dynamics and resistance-control mechanisms. Identity work in organizations is mostly foregrounded on a collective level where loosely connected individuals co-create identities in social interaction. Rather than focusing on a shared organizational identity, such studies foreground processes of identity construction in organizations and hence understand organizational identity as constantly being re-composed or re-storied by the many voices that populate and continuously re-constitute it through multilayered storymaking practices (e.g., Bager et al., 2021; Ernst & Jensen Schleiter, 2021; Johansen, 2021; Langley et al., 2020). With a focus on storymaking rather than storytelling, an OSS approach aims to capture the dynamic and multimodal qualities of narrative as always co-created with others in the everyday processes of performing professional identities through narrative story dynamics (Bager & McClellan, 2023).

DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATIONAL SMALL STORYMAKING The methodological framework combines storytelling organization theory (SOT) (e.g., Boje, 2014) and the narrative practice approach involving discourse-based small story analysis (SSA) (e.g., Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). Both theoretical bodies have contributed pivotally to narrative studies and have many similarities, as among other things they are grounded in Bakhtinian (e.g., 1982) perspectives of dialogue (see Bager & Lundholt, 2021). A combination of insights from SOT and SSA allows for the study of organizational narrative story dynamics and identity work spanning abstract/global and situated storymaking identity-creative efforts in local organizational practices among its members. The former offers relevant metaphors and ways of reflecting organizations as storytelling ecologies and its members as active storymakers that constantly partake in (re)storying identity work in organizations. SSA provides a discourse-based analytical lens that aligns well with the SOT perspective and through which we can closely study how complex storymaking dynamics and ongoing identity work play out through multilayered discursive positioning activities (for a thorough elaboration on how aspects from SOT and NPA are combined, see Bager & Lundholt, 2021).

Organizational small storymaking and change  43 Central Metaphors and a Discourse-analytical Orientation Organizations are seen as (re)constituted through intense, chaotic and ambiguous storymaking and identity creative practices, thereby offering a strong and ontological view of organizational storytelling and narrative processes (e.g., Rantakari & Vaara, 2017). This is captured through metaphors of a ‘Tamara play’ and ‘a chaotic soup’ (Boje, 2014) to explain the counter-narrative complexities and entanglements characteristic of organizational realities and identity work. OSS engenders differentiation between several narrative layers constituting the complex and plurivocal process of identity work, that is: (1) situated small stories; (2) organizational narratives; and (3) societal narratives. The former small stories (also referred to as living stories (Jørgensen & Boje, 2010)) emerge and circulate in diverse situated organizational practices and cover the chaotic, open-ended and tension-filled everyday story efforts that take place amid organizational practice. The latter two layers can be seen as the results of small story and local identity creative efforts that have crystallized over time through retrospective sense-making processes (Bager & Lundholt, 2021). As an example, much strategy work is seen as the result of retrospective sense-making that guides organizational members’ identity work, which can often be detected in various texts (e.g., codes of conduct, strategy papers, web texts) and which is often supported in management talk (ibid.). However, such strategy work is often disaligned with real organizational practice, and there tends to be gaps between organizations’ aspirational talk and concrete doings. From an OSS approach, the aim is to make organizations’ concrete plurivocal doings more visible in organizations’ strategy work and management talk (Bager & McClellan, 2023). An important point is that identity work in organizations is seen as a complex and dynamic phenomenon to study, and one can never gain a complete picture of that identity work, nor can it be controlled in streamlined and linear ways, as it is always in flux and is an everchanging multilayered and plurivocal phenomenon. An OSS approach takes its analytical outset in local small storymaking and identity creative practices and from there investigates how such practices comply with or challenge more crystallized knowledge forms – for instance, as reflected in organizations’ strategy work. To capture the dynamics between these entangled storymaking layers, OSS draws inspiration from SSA, benefitting from its detailed analysis strategy to add conceptual and analytical precision to the analysis of complex multilayered counter-narrative processes that are claimed to be lacking in much narrative literature (e.g., Bamberg & Wipff, 2021; Keller, 2021). Through this analytical strategy, processes of identity work can be thoroughly analyzed by studying subjects’ embodied positioning activities and strategies in situ (Bamberg, 2016), as it offers a window ‘into the micro-generic processes of identities as “in-the-making” or “coming-into-being”’ (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008, p. 379). Small Stories Small stories is ‘an umbrella-term that captures a gamut of under-represented narrative activities, such as tellings of ongoing events, future, or hypothetical events, shared (known) events, but it also captures allusions to (previous) tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusals to tell’ (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008, p. 378). As such, SSA work makes important contributions in identity studies, moving from the exploration of psychological aspects of identity toward examining how identities play out and are co-constructed in situ (Bamberg,

44  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations 2016). This move invites us to zoom in on concrete processes of identity work in multimodal interactions and capture the subtle positioning work taking place and from there zoom out, tracing connections to broader narrative layers (Bager & Lundholt, 2021). The focus here is on how local identity work is worked up through subjects’ multilayered positioning activities, straddling here-and-now story efforts and more crystallized narrative structures. By zooming in on such local identity work, an OSS approach studies identity aspects that otherwise would have been left unnoticed (Bager & McClellan, 2023). Small stories are always co-constructed; small stories arise out of the interactive discursive/ narrative struggles among subjects in situated practices. Hence, small stories are not something organizations have, nor are certain identity positions something organizational members carry around that occur in certain situations, nor can they be treated as reflective of employees’ authentic selves. Rather, small stories become real as they are co-created interactively, and identities emerge as interactive and polyphonic co-accomplishments of doing complicity and or doing resistance (Bamberg, 2004). In a dissensus-based organizational change perspective, small stories are relevant to study, as dialogic and polyphonic change can be detected as ongoing accommodation of otherness – that is, when subjects stay open to each other’s strange perspectives and gain surpluses of seeing. This is opposed to monologic change processes in which subjects are mostly confirming own viewpoints or already made decisions, thereby missing the opportunities to accommodate otherness (Bager & McClellan, in press; Barge & Little, 2002).

ILLUSTRATION/APPLICATION The analytical strategy in OSS consists of a three-levelled positioning model composed of certain ways of asking questions about interactional data to explore identity work as it plays out (Bager & Lundholt, 2021; Bamberg, 1997; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). The level of analytical detail can be turned up or down according to specific research aims and data types. The analysis example is mainly conducted from transcribed audio recordings following Jeffersonian (1984) transcription conventions in combination with explanations of contextual specificities and illustrations of the material workshop setting. In the first level of analysis, focus is on how the participants are positioned in relation to each other in space/time and involves an explanation of the contextual and sociomaterial circumstances of the concrete organizational practice. This first level centers on exploring how the participants position themselves and others and how they invoke and position a wide range of others within the storyline. In the second level, we can ask questions about sequential aspects and interactive accomplishments. Furthermore, we are guided to pay attention to the scene as a research set-up together with the joint interactional engagement between all participants. These moves foster an analytical orientation toward the sequential and embodied co-creation of identities and struggles of meaning that take place in local situations. In the third level, focus is on exploring how the participants/storymakers co-establish certain kinds of persons and identity positions through their story performance by linking up to a broader and often contradictory set of organizational and/or societal narratives. Following these three analytical levels allows opportunities to see how small story efforts and local

Organizational small storymaking and change  45 identity work draw trajectories toward broader and more manifest organizational and societal narrative structures. Level One: Who Are the Characters, and How Are They Relationally Positioned? First, I explain the overall characteristics and purposes of the change process from which the strip of interaction for close analysis is drawn. This move spotlights how ethnographic contextual knowledge is a crucial part of the analysis. The specific change process takes place in a Danish electrician company with a total of 1100 employees organized in five divisions situated across larger Danish cities. Due to confidentiality issues, the company name and the participants’ names are pseudonymized and henceforth the company is referred to as EL. The situation plays out as a part of a current interdisciplinary research-based project led by the author, which aims to explore and translate complex communicative constitutive tenets into various organizational practices. The research project involves a dialogue tool in the form of a digital platform and an integrated e-learning system1 in combination with a series of dialogue-based workshops. The specific situation involves the specialty divisions management team, comprising the head of division and eight area/team managers, a consultant representing a consultancy firm specializing in developing research-based digital solutions for organizations, and two researchers (the author and a colleague, John G. McClellan, associate professor at the University of Aalborg). The situation plays out in the initial workshop facilitated by the researchers, aiming at (1) fostering the leaders’ ownership of the change process involving seven communication qualities; (2) providing insights into some of the features of the digital platform; and (3) co-deciding on the next steps in the change process. Prior to the workshop, EL’s employees completed an interactive questionnaire on the platform providing insights into the employee’s evaluation and comments regarding how the seven communication qualities had been playing out in EL. The workshop was designed as shown in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1

Illustration of the workshop agenda

46  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations The dialogue exercise and the physical arrangement is visualized in Figure 4.2.

Figure 4.2

Illustration of the workshop situation seen from a bird’s-eye view showing how the three participant types were placed in the room

The leaders were organized in two groups standing around tables 2 and 3. On each table were placed a poster of a seven-quality model involving short descriptions of the qualities, a poster for each quality, writing utensils and an audio recorder. The leaders were asked to discuss the seven qualities in turn related to their everyday practices, reflecting whether, why and how they find the specific quality important for their task-solving and team practices. They were encouraged to take notes on the posters attached to each quality and reflect on concrete examples. The chosen data excerpt plays out approximately one hour into the dialogue exercise, when the group of four leaders move on to discuss the involvement quality illustrated by the speech bubble in Figure 4.2. The transcript in Figure 4.3 is translated from Danish into English.2 We will now zoom in on the interaction and investigate how the participants co-create small stories and identities in situ. With regard to content, the excerpt reveals several interesting positioning activities. For instance, we see how identity work in the form of positioning battles

Organizational small storymaking and change  47

Figure 4.3

Transcript excerpt from the dialogue exercise

plays out between the four storymakers, most clearly with Jan against Tom, Bob and Carl. In this respect, Jan positions himself in a more expert-oriented and agentive manner than the others, according to the involvement quality under consideration. For instance, his language use reflects high modality when he starts accounting for himself as a leader who has ‘always’ (line 3) performed involvement, which he finds to be ‘really easy’ (line 3). As such, Jan can

48  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations be said to elaborate an expert-oriented storyline in which he aligns involvement with his usual leadership practice involving a discussing and explaining attitude. The others challenge Jan’s expert-oriented and agentive positionings several times. For instance, Carl (line 6) utters ‘I guess you are a communication superstar then’, which prompts laughter among all four leaders, indicating an ironic and humorous jargon. At the same time, Carl seemingly challenges Jan’s self-claimed agentive leader position. Jan laughs but he also rejects the superstar position by arguing ‘no, I really mean it…’ (line 7) and continues: ‘I have always hhhmmm been talking a lot to my employees… explaining and discussing stuff with them… this is the only way to do leadership the right way if you want your employees to take things seriously’ (line 7). In Jan’s account, several positionings occur as he reclaims involvement as being a matter of explaining and discussing things with employees. At the same time, he reclaims himself as an agentive leader who already knows how proper involvement is exercised among his employees. He also positions his way as being the only right way of performing leadership, indicating that other ways that do not involve a high degree of discussing and explaining issues to employees are wrong. Furthermore, he implicitly positions employees in EL as people who want their leaders to explain and discuss matters with them if they are to take things seriously. Bob also challenges Jan’s expert positioning by mentioning a ‘work clothes (situation) mentioned in the evaluation report’ (line 10). Bob thereby makes an example relevant that was provided by the researchers earlier in the workshop. The work clothes situation was presented to show an example of comments made by employees in the survey as well as in interview situations, reflecting their snapshot evaluation regarding the involvement quality. Here, several employees refer to how they were asked to provide requests and input regarding the purchase of new work clothes, but their input were not taken seriously, as the management ended up buying ‘the cheapest and lousiest work clothes that nobody requested’ (employee comment in the survey). Bob thereby challenges Jan’s agentive position regarding how he always involves his employees by uttering: ‘That is not exactly involving your employees’ (line 10). Bob continues the storyline by accounting for the work clothes situation as an ‘an eye-opener’ (line 12) referring to how ‘it’s not merely a matter of involving our employees by talking to them and explaining stuff… it also highly matters how we do it and whether we actually take their input into account and that we remember to follow up’ (line 12). Here, Bob positions himself as a leader experiencing an eye-opening moment earlier in the workshop. Carl and Tom support this story line, and the three of them co-unfold a shared storyline in which they, with lower modality than Jan, discuss new ways of understanding and practicing involvement that differs from their usual leadership practices. Here, they talk about involvement as being more than taking a ‘retrospective discussing and explaining attitude’ towards employees and that it is more a matter of ‘how we do it’, whether they ‘actually take their inputs into account’ (line 12), ‘involving them before we make decisions’ (line 13), ‘listening to people’s concerns and ideas in the process of making decisions’ (line 19) and ‘take their inputs to heart and act on them’ (line 13). They further emphasize ‘follow up’ (line 12) and that they ‘also need to consider what is suited for involvement’ (line 23) as important features. Interestingly, they discuss how the insights from the survey together with the content of the workshop have provided ‘eye-openers’ and explanations as to why they have previously ‘sometimes have failed’ (line 20) and why their employees have been ‘unsatisfied’ (line 21). They further discuss how performing these new leader features will help them reposition employees ‘as active participants and not just as passive receivers’ (line 24).

Organizational small storymaking and change  49 All in all, the strip of interaction shows how the four leaders are co-negotiating how the involvement quality is to be understood in relation to their former, present and future leadership practices in EL, to which I will return. Level Two: How Do the Storymakers Position Themselves, and How Are They Positioned in the Interactive Situation? How is the Relation Between the Participants Managed? Level two of the analysis deals with sequential aspects and interactive accomplishments of the situation. Here, analytical moves are derived from conversation analysis (CA), in which interactional aspects, such as turn-taking patterns, are investigated to see how the tellers link up to previous accounts/turns and what happens next in interaction (Bager, 2015; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). The turn-taking pattern in the excerpt starts with a couple of adjacency pairs – that is, a two-part exchange in which the second utterance is functionally dependent on the first – as, for instance, exhibited in conventional greetings, invitations and requests, also known as the concept of nextness, in which a different person speaks each pair (Schegloff, 1992). These question–answer pairs occur in the excerpt when the leaders are negotiating what they are to talk about. From here four occurrences of overlapping talk occur, reflecting when the storymakers are speaking at once (Schegloff, 2000). All these occurrences involve Jan: Jan is interrupted by Bob (line 10), twice by Carl (lines 19, 23) and the fourth occurrence happens when Jan interrupts Bob (line 16). This overlapping interactional pattern supports the previously mentioned meaning negotiations and positioning battles between the four storymakers. Interactively, Carl positions himself and is positioned by the others as the one who takes charge of the conversation’s progress. For instance, he frames what they are to talk about (line 1) and he closes the conversation by positioning the conversation content as important by guiding the group to take notes (line 25). This ‘in-charge position’ is most likely linked to formal power issues, in that Carl is head of division and usually takes charge of their meeting activities. As such, the interaction order reflects that all four storymakers position themselves as being ‘good’ research and workshop participants who productively align with the process plan and engage actively with the tasks provided by the researchers/facilitators. The research design mainly reveals itself through the audio recorders lying on the tables. However, as I will elaborate later, the research agenda further impacts the identity co-construction in subtle ways. Overall, the interaction order aligns with a typical organizational change-oriented workshop design. Level Three: How Do Narrators Position Themselves to Themselves? Who Am I in All This? Level three is oriented towards exploring how the storymakers co-establish identities towards the wider social world through their story performance by linking up to broader organizational and societal narrative structures (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). It is also here that we can discuss the interplay between the three layers of narrative identity work by investigating how the local story efforts comply with or resist crystallized narrative structures in EL

50  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations and in wider society, making it possible to observe how change unfolds continuously and plurivocally. The leaders clearly invoke narrative aspects outside the interaction. For instance, they (1) refer to previous events in the workshop; (2) link up to organizational narrative structures in EL in making employee voices and former experiences in EL relevant; and (3) tap into current societal and even global dominant narratives, reflecting tendencies regarding leadership. With respect to point (1), the strip of interaction shows how the leaders link up to points made by the researchers/facilitators prior to the situation, spotlighting how the researcher/facilitator’s voice and process design play important roles when the leaders co-create stories and identities. Regarding point (2), the leaders co-construct a main storyline in which involvement is more about inviting their employees’ opinions and concerns prior to or during the process of making decisions rather than merely retrospectively discussing and explaining to them decisions that have already been made. The temporal features further show how they align the latter, retrospective involvement part with their usual practices, and the proactive involvement part with a type of wanted future state. Thereby, they co-produce an ante-narrative storyline – that is, ‘a bet on the future’ – which is proposed by Boje (2014) as being the bridge that brings the story (present) and narrative (past) into stories on possible futures, which is highly relevant when we examine organizational change processes (Bager & McClellan, in press). As such, the workshop content and design – in this instance, the affordances of involvement quality – seem to provide a frame according to which the leaders accommodate otherness and gain surpluses of seeing regarding their leadership communicative practices. These surpluses of seeing seem to promote plausible interpretations and explanations of earlier events that prompted unsatisfactory outcomes in the form of unwanted leader and employee actions and dynamics. They thereby co-create counter-stories against the dominant narrative structures in EL, pointing towards possible futures capable of creating narrative/discursive openings and challenging the hegemonic practices in EL (ibid.). In terms of point (3), the leaders tap into several and contradictory narratives/discourses regarding leadership, which are detectable in the positioning battles playing out between the four leaders. Jan’s accounts produce a form of counter-position to the main storyline by invoking an expert-oriented leader position aligned with what Western (2019) has coined a messiah discourse. This discourse foregrounds the leader as a hero that charismatically sets the direction and creates followers through inward transformations (ibid.). The co-created main storyline differently aligns with emerging leadership tendencies, pointing towards the becoming of an eco-discourse and challenging the hero/messiah leader discourse. In this context, leaders are foregrounded as being capable of inspiring and changing followers and cultures through outward transformations rather than inward (ibid.). In the latter, discourses of sustainability, connectivity, inter-dependence, ethics and leadership spirit are further transforming leaders into what is dubbed eco-leaders focused on distributed leadership at local levels and building networks that are responsive and adaptive to change. As such, they are invoking contemporary leadership tendencies promoting involvement, participation and the co-creation of meaning, as well as competencies needed to promote active participation and new forms of eco-leadership. In this perspective, employees are positioned as active sense-makers capable of creating, recreating and altering the meanings guiding organizational life. In terms of power, it is worth noticing how the leaders link up to the same discourse on leadership as promoted by the seven-quality model and the overall research agenda, and the process itself can be seen as a research-based attempt to foster and explore new eco-leader

Organizational small storymaking and change  51 competences. Thereby, the normativity of the research agenda clearly impacts the leader’s identity work. However, the eco-leader tendencies seem to resonate with the leaders, as the involvement quality seems to provide a recognizable explanatory frame capable of reflecting some of the challenges the leaders have experienced in EL and provides reasonable future leader guidance. To sum up, we see how the leaders continuously accommodate otherness as they co-construct small stories and identities, pointing towards their past, present and future leadership practices. This process prompts new ways of perceiving and accounting for the leaders’ leadership practices, thereby challenging previous identity work in EL and providing new possible avenues. In a change perspective, they are preoccupied with creating new leader identity/ subject positions requiring new competences and actions, thereby questioning dominant narrative structures and their dominant ways of performing leadership. As such, we get a glimpse into how change is communicatively played out in the micro-practices of the workshop and how the leaders are polyphonically co-storying new identities and subject positions.

CRITICAL EVALUATION OSS is a relatively new approach that has so far shown great potential for the study of identity work in organizations and organizational change from a counter-narrative, dissensus-based and polyphonic orientation. In this respect, the approach provides novel insights into how identities are processually, communicatively and polyphonically negotiated and co-produced in local situations through multileveled positioning activities. It further allows us to study how change plays out micro-communicatively and how meaning negotiations and positioning battles among organizational members are central parts of countering or complying with diverse organizational as well as societal narrative/discursive structures in their identity work. The OSS approach also entails a range of intriguing challenges for newcomers. For instance, it relies heavily on the three-levelled positioning model, linking discourse analysis, conversation analysis and narrative analysis, which provides challenges for those unfamiliar with these fields. The combination can seem rather complex, and the interdisciplinary features leave various complex decisions to the analyst. For instance, the positioning model can be turned up or down according to specific research aims, data types and the desired level of analytical detail. The workshop example is inspired by the three levels of analysis as elaborated in Bamberg’s earlier work (e.g., 1997); however, in his and colleagues’ later works, these levels are accompanied by five analytical steps inviting a higher degree of analytical and multimodal density (e.g., Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). As the workshop data is audio based, and as the purpose of the analysis is to show an isolated example of how identities are polyphonically co-created on a collective level in a management change process, the five steps were found unnecessary. When analyzing video data, the five steps can be applied to reflect multimodal aspects more thoroughly, such as the impact of the material and embodied features of interaction. This would allow further scrutiny of the impact of the material and embodied setting, such as how the table and poster set-up, as well as the other co-present participants, are part of co-constituting identity work. Such multimodal analyses can spotlight how diverse material and multimodal scenes prompt various interactional orders, providing good reasons for critical reflections regarding how different organizational scenes are materially and multimodally configured and how they impact identity work and change (see Bager, 2015). Further, it would

52  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations be interesting to draw inspiration from other discourse-analytical strategies that study multimodality and material aspects in interaction in more depth (e.g., Cooren, 2020; Iedema, 2007). Following the model further requires knowledge regarding basic discourse and conversation-analytical assumptions and concepts. CA involves a highly technical and rather extensive analytical toolbox, and it is up to the analyst to choose the tools best suited for the purpose. In relation to CA, the level of transcript detail can also vary according to research aims. In the workshop example, the transcript does not encompass length of pauses and other fine-grained interactional aspects that play important roles in other CA-oriented analyses. For an easy understandable introduction, I can recommend Cooren’s (2015) textbook, which provides basic insights into various organizational discourse-analytical strategies. For more detail, see also a range of Schegloff’s (e.g., 1992, 2000) texts. In terms of identity studies, some of the benefits of an OSS approach are that it foregrounds important subtle aspects of identity that are often overlooked in more traditional consensus-oriented approaches. For instance, the three-levelled analysis strategy paves the way for linking two approaches in narrative analysis – a traditional, structural approach with a more performance-based approach (Bamberg, 1997, p. 335). Moreover, the strategy allows for an approach to the construction of identity in discourse that occupies a middle ground between talk-in-interaction approaches centering exclusively on participant orientations at the local level and approaches regarding identity as basically determined by macro-social processes only manifested in discourse (De Fina, 2013). Hence, it offers an exciting lens through which we can address the micro–macro problem detected in much discourse-based positioning theory (e.g., Foucault, Harré), which often assumes that subject positions and local identity work are mainly guided/formed by macro-structures (Deppermann, 2019). By contrast, and in line with its inspiration from CA, the focus of OSS is guided toward how local organizational subjects make specific discursive/narrative aspects relevant in interaction as part of their identity creative activities and does not presume them to be the main guiding power per se. Further, it directs attention to the diverse and dilemmatic aspects of how dominant discourses/narratives are formed, complied with, and contested in social organizational interaction over time. In a dissensus-based organizational change context, the benefits of an OSS approach are that it invites us to study and reflect on change as plurivocal and the subtle dynamics between stability (broader discursive/narrative structures) and continuous change (story efforts) by zooming in on how local ongoing change processes and identity work unfold. In this context, the dynamics of co-accomplishing small stories are seen as integral parts of change processes engendering identity (re)construction and culture (re)creation that continuously play out in polyphonic and power-infused organizational interactions. In the analysis example, we saw how such tensions were negotiated, revealing how the leaders’ co-production of stories was both complicit with the organization’s dominant meaning systems and counter to, and thus challenging, the dominant narrative structures. Hence, the management workshop holds the potential to change EL’s collective identity work and may over time be detected in the broader organizational narrative layer. The next step is to involve employees in the identity and culture reconstruction and further investigate how the involvement quality over time is complied with and/or changed in other communicative practices in EL involving both leaders and employees to get a better understanding of the effects of the managements change process and to alter it to become even more polyphonic and dissent embracing. In this respect, OSS research is closely tied to issues of power and hegemony and how resistance and compliance come about. A main claim is that by embracing and studying how

Organizational small storymaking and change  53 subject positions and identities emerge in situated power-entrenched organizational change processes, we can become better at designing egalitarian and inclusive organizational change and identity creative practices (Bager & McClellan, in press; Bamberg, 2004). However, more studies are needed to explore the potentials of OSS thoroughly and critically.

NOTES 1. See https://​www​.orgcom​.org/​. Retrieved March 14, 2023. 2. Jeffersonian (1984) inspired transcription conventions: • Double parentheses (( )) = description of what is happening and not a transcription. • Brackets [ ] = utterances are produced simultaneously. Left-hand brackets designate the beginning of simultaneity, while right-hand bracket mark ends it. • Underlining = words emphasized by the speaker. • … = pauses.

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Organizational small storymaking and change  55 McClellan, J. G. (2011). Reconsidering communication and the discursive politics of organizational change. Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 465–480. Pratt, M. G., & Foreman, P. O. (2000). Classifying managerial responses to multiple organizational identities. Academy of Management Review, 25(1), 18–42. Rantakari, A., & Vaara, E. (2017). Narratives and processuality. In A. Langley & H. Tsoukas (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of process organizational studies (pp. 271–285). SAGE. Rhodes, C., & Brown, A. D. (2005). Narrative, organizations and research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 7(3), 167–188. Schegloff, E. A. (1992). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology, 97(5), 1295–1345. Schegloff, E. A. (2000). Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language in Society, 29(1), 1–63. Shotter, J. (2008). Dialogism and polyphony in organizing theorizing in organization studies: Action guiding anticipations and the continuous creation of novelty. Organization Studies, 29(4), 501–524. Tsoukas, H., & Chia, R. (2002). On organizational becoming: Rethinking organizational change. Organization Science, 13(5), 567–582. Vásquez, C., & Kuhn, T. (Eds.). (2019). Dis/organization as communication: Exploring the disordering, disruptive and chaotic properties of communication. Routledge. Western, S. (2019). Leadership: A critical text. SAGE.

5. The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity Anne Crafford and Johann Mouton

INTRODUCTION Albert and Whetten (1985) originally defined organizational identity (OI) as that which is central, distinctive and relatively enduring about an organization. It is considered to arise from both institutional claims (social actor approach) as well as organizational members’ collective understanding of them (the social constructionist perspective) (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). Ravasi and Canato (2013) identify five research designs used to study OI. The quantitative designs include survey-based research and extended metaphor analysis (a sub-set of survey research). The qualitative designs include grounded theory, ethnography and narrative analysis. Case studies should be added to this list (see, for example, Corley, 2004; Empson, 2004; Oliver & Roos, 2007). The downside of the qualitative designs includes their time-consuming nature and the difficulty of conducting them in large multi-national companies that are geographically dispersed. For example, case studies and ethnographies typically rely on smaller samples as data is gathered by a single or small group of researchers, making it difficult to access a truly multi-vocal account of OI in multi-site organizations. Furthermore, traditional surveys are ill-suited to the exploration of identity (Brown, 2006), as they are unable to capture the distinctiveness central to the concept (Albert & Whetten, 1985). One possibility is the use of a qualitative survey, which is particularly suited to exploring a phenomenon and the diversity in it (Jansen, 2010; Sandelowski, 2000). Given that OI is assumed to be revealed by multiple voices through discourse and narrative (Sheep et al., 2015), a qualitative survey allows for the open-ended exploration of OI reflecting a plurality of voices, thus avoiding the domination of the identity narrative(s) by one group or sub-group (Crafford, 2015). A qualitative survey in an online format provides access to the multiple perspectives of which OI narrative(s) are potentially composed. It makes possible the cost-effective study of identity in large organizations whose members are geographically dispersed (Jackson & Trochim, 2002). The aim of this chapter is to explore an online qualitative survey as a means of describing a multi-vocal account of OI. We begin the chapter with a description of the qualitative survey as a legitimate research design from a methodological point of view, highlighting the online qualitative survey as one type. We then discuss the application of this design in the study of OI, followed by a critical evaluation of the method.

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The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity  57

DESCRIPTION OF THE QUALITATIVE SURVEY AS A RESEARCH DESIGN The Qualitative Survey as a Method In compiling this section we have drawn primarily on the work of Sandelowski (2000), who discusses what she terms ‘qualitative description’, and Jansen (2010), who attempts to develop a research design logic for what he terms a qualitative survey. Jansen (2010) argues that the qualitative survey constitutes a legitimate research design, yet although it is often used, it is seldom considered a true research design. The aim of surveys is the exploration and description of diversity (Jansen, 2010; Sandelowski, 2000). In a qualitative survey, the researcher explores empirical diversity within a population with respect to the properties or concepts of interest. In contrast, a quantitative survey aims to establish the numerical distribution of properties within the population. Although the qualitative survey may contain less interpretation than other qualitative research designs (Sandelowski, 2000; Seixas et al., 2018) it nevertheless provides a richer description than a quantitative survey can provide. A qualitative survey does not attempt to quantify the responses elicited (Brickson, 2005) but has as its focus the analysis of textual data, as do other qualitative methods. Sandelowski (2000) suggests that qualitative surveys have their origin in naturalistic inquiry, which aims to study something in its natural state. Jansen (2010) argues that due to its focus on exploring diversity it can be used in various paradigms, including positivist, post-positivist, critical or constructivist projects; for example, a constructivist feminist project could use a qualitative survey to explore the diversity of construction with respect to economic equality in couples. The focus on diversity has implications for sampling, which should be done purposively to maximize the exploration of diversity and achieve saturation in respect of population diversity (Jansen, 2010). In this regard, maximum variation sampling may be helpful as it ‘allows researchers to explore common and unique manifestations of a target population across a broad range of phenomenally and/or demographically varied cases’ (Sandelowski, 2000, pp. 337–338). Data gathering can be done in many ways, although it has traditionally been done by means of individual and group interviews (qualitative) and structured questionnaires (quantitative), which are gathered in an online format. Nothing precludes other methods of data collection, however – for example, observation of interactions or artefacts (Jansen, 2010; Sandelowski, 2000). Data analysis can be either open or pre-structured; Jansen (2010) distinguishes between an inductive and a deductive survey. In an open inductive survey, relevant dimensions and categories are identified through the interpretation of raw data – for example, interview transcripts. In a deductive, pre-structured survey, main topics, dimensions and categories are defined beforehand and explored in the population under study. Self-administered Online Qualitative Surveys Neither Jansen nor Sandelowski suggests that the qualitative survey implies any form of self-administered or online format, the meaning that other authors (Braun et al., 2021; Crafford, 2015; Seixas et al., 2018) attribute to it. Braun et al.’s (2021) definition refers to ‘a series of open-ended questions, crafted by a researcher and centered on a particular topic. They are self-administered with questions presented in a fixed and standard order to all partic-

58  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations ipants’ (p. 1). While they also highlight the value of the design for exploring a diverse range of responses, their meaning is restricted to a self-administered format, most likely online. As such, it represents a particular type of qualitative survey. In this chapter, the term qualitative survey refers to a design that is focussed on the exploration of diversity, with the online version of a self-administered format as the focus of this particular chapter. The online format allows for exploring large, diverse groups with a range of perspectives, experiences and sense-making, especially those with sub-groupings (Braun et al., 2021; Crafford, 2015). Accessing input from a range of people mitigates the risk that a participant from a particular grouping is treated as representing the group rather than being included as one person within a group of many (Braun et al., 2021). The online format encourages greater anonymity as there is no clear way of identifying people participating in the survey (Simsek & Veiga, 2001), especially important in settings where people may fear speaking out and risking identification, as often happens in organizational research. Moreover, the online format reduces the power effects related to race, class and position and allows for greater use of creativity, stylistic devices and expressions of emotion (Shields, 2003). The online survey encourages disclosure and participation in research that involves sensitive topics, especially where social desirability or anxiety about social interaction may influence data gathering (Braun et al., 2021). In addition, it is unobtrusive, requires no travel, can be completed anywhere at a time suitable for the participant and ensures safety for the researcher and participants alike (ibid.). Finally, the format associated with online surveys includes ease of typing and allows participants to revise a response, which leads to more detailed and self-disclosing answers (Reja et al., 2003). This may be enhanced by respondent interest in the topic and ample time to respond fully (Holland & Christian, 2009).

USING THE QUALITATIVE SURVEY TO EXPLORE ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY The online survey was conducted in an organization comprising two heritage entities (Alpha and Beta) that had merged shortly beforehand. This provided ideal circumstances under which to study OI, as it is best captured when participants are under threat or are faced with major disruptions, such as bad publicity or crises (Elsbach & Kramer, 1996). Coming so soon after the merger meant that memories were still fresh and nostalgia was likely to be present (Brown & Humphreys, 2002). We believe this was an additional reason why the responses were so rich: our survey provided organizational members an opportunity to ‘mourn their loss’. The Design of the Online Organizational Identity Survey For the purpose of the study, OI was considered to be a ‘collection of individual-level understandings’ (He & Brown, 2013, p. 6) that reflect collectively held and socially constructed realities (Corley et al., 2006), influenced by more formal identity claims made by the organization as social actor (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). It is the potentially diverse individual-level understandings that make the qualitative survey particularly useful in exploring OI as it provides the scope to capture the ambiguity and plurivocity of OI (Crafford, 2015). Ambiguity provides organizational members scope in the way they define themselves, allowing for a range of beliefs, opinions and actions, given the influences and dynamics of various contexts

The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity  59 (Brown, 2006). Plurivocity refers to the multiple perspectives of identity and their potentially unlimited meanings, which does not necessarily imply fragmentation but reflects the various contexts, stories and perspectives that members associate with the organization (ibid.). The questions were designed around elements of the organization as social actor because, as Coupland and Brown suggest, ‘identities are constructed in relation to material and social factors’ (2004, p. 1329). The assumption was that in presenting various organizational dimensions, employees would contextualize them, locating them in particular socially constructed discourses perceived to be relevant to the organization’s identity (Crafford, 2015). The open-ended nature of the survey invited organizational members to engage in OI work as they drew on organizational, professional, national and political discourses as resources in constructing identity (Kreiner et al., 2015; Sheep et al., 2015). Our logic was guided by the following assumptions regarding social constructionism: in addition to language, the factors that play a role in the social construction of reality are embodiment, materiality, socio-cultural institutions, interpersonal practices and historical trajectories (Nightingale & Cromby, 2002). It is this weaker version of constructionism that informed the development of our online qualitative OI survey. Informed by the work of Bronn et al. (2006) and Alvesson and Empson (2008) as well as the extant literature on OI, we developed open-ended survey questions to address various characteristics of organizations around which centrality and distinctiveness could be based (Crafford, 2015). These included elements associated with the social actor on which collective meanings could be constructed, such as types of staff and clients, services and reputation, management systems and styles, values and culture, dominant logic and company motto. These questions and the sources that inspired them are listed below (ibid.): 1. ‘For me the three core values of my heritage organization are…’. Values are an integral part of identity because they act much like a constitution – a guideline for making decisions in line with identity, and have implications for the moral and legal parameters for identity (see also Alvesson & Empson, 2008; Bronn et al., 2006). 2. ‘My organization’s culture could best be described as (culture is viewed as the generally accepted way of doing things in an organization)…’. To ensure that people understood what was meant by culture in this context, we added a brief descriptor: ‘Culture is viewed as the generally accepted way of doing things in an organization’. Culture is often termed ‘the way we do things around here’ and refers to the practices and routines organizational members engage in and which are assumed to reflect OI, which is embedded in culture, acting as symbolic context for its development and maintenance (Hatch & Schultz, 1997; see also Albert & Whetten, 1985; Alvesson & Empson, 2008). 3. ‘In my heritage organization, change is viewed as…’. The relationship between OI and change has been a focal point in OI research (Backer, 2008; Corley, 2004; Corley & Harrison, 2009). Change is an integral part of the environment in which organizations function and the capacity to adapt to change has affected the continued survival of some high-profile organizations. The question was included to get a sense of the degree to which change is seen to be an integral part of identity or not. 4. ‘I would describe successful staff in my heritage organization as…’. The logic underlying this question is that staff who embody the characteristics of the organization should be seen to be the successful ones (see, for example, Alvesson & Empson, 2008; Hogg & Terry,

60  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations 2000). The aim was to understand what is perceived as success, so as to understand what characteristics are viewed as embodying OI. 5. ‘I would characterize staff relations in my heritage organization as…’. Given that OI is given life through interactions, descriptions of staff relations should constitute something of the identity of the communal, reflecting the shared values and beliefs regarding how people ‘should’ act. 6. ‘I would characterize client relations in my heritage organization as…’. Much like relationships with internal members, the nature of client relations and attitudes of employees towards clients should constitute part of their identity (see Alvesson & Empson, 2008). 7. ‘Relationships with external stakeholders could be described as…’. External stakeholders form an important part of work processes, especially within the engineering industry in South Africa (Engineering Council of South Africa, 2006), and was thus included as a dimension in the questionnaire. 8. ‘I would describe my heritage organization’s reputation in the marketplace as…’. Reputation refers to the signification that the company is subject to, based on its institutional and physical context, and its relationships within this, thus constituting a significant element of identity (see Alvesson & Empson, 2008). 9. ‘I would describe my heritage organization’s service in the marketplace as…’. The products or services an organization produces or offers are central to the purpose of its existence, and for this reason, service is a critical element of identity (see Alvesson & Empson, 2008). 10. ‘The management style in my heritage organization could be described as/The leadership in my heritage organization could be described as…’. Leadership and management are considered to be critical influences in the construction and maintenance of identity, and should provide an important source of information regarding identity (Albert & Whetten, 1985). We decided to use both terms to access meanings associated with both management and leadership. 11. ‘At my heritage organization, the relationships between management and employees could be described as…’. Like other relational elements of the organization, management– employee relationships provide a clue as to what is modelled as acceptable behaviour central to identity (see Alvesson & Empson, 2008). 12. ‘I would describe the management systems in my heritage organization as…’. This was an element suggested by Bronn et al. (2006) as well as Alvesson and Empson (2008) and was raised by the HR Director, as it was an area in which the two organizations differed significantly. It proved to be a valuable addition in terms of understanding identity. 13. ‘If you had to, in one short phrase, summarize what was distinctive about your heritage organization, what would that be? (Think of it as devising the company motto.)’: This question was drawn from Brickson (2005) and in contrast to the previous questions in which we had provided a dimension in which to comment on; in this question, they were free to highlight aspects they deemed crucial in making sense of their organization. Also important here was the emphasis on ‘distinctive’, attempting to get to differences between the organizations. 14. ‘In what key ways would you say that Alpha and Beta differ?’ We were concerned that, due to the merger process which relied on similarities between the two heritage firms, the differences between the two may not have been apparent. By including a question on differences, we prompted participants to consider those aspects that, in their view, were truly

The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity  61 unique about their organization. The idea of difference is also related to distinctiveness as a characteristic of identity. 15. ‘Describe your emotional connection to the organization’. In their metaphor of identity as an onion, Albert et al. (1998) use the peeling back of the layers of the onion and the subsequent tears as a good illustration of the importance of emotion in identity. For this reason, a question regarding the participant’s emotional connection to the organization was included. 16. ‘Imagine you meet someone at a cocktail party or on a plane. What would you say about your organization?’ Much like the motto question of Brickson (2005), the final one allowed participants the freedom to express elements of their organization that they may not have had the opportunity to voice. Conducting the Online OI Qualitative Survey Given the need to gather a diverse range of views regarding OI, a mixture of stratified and random sampling was used (Fricker, 2008). Stratified sampling ensured representation from varying job and hierarchical groupings; within these groupings, members were selected on the basis of probability sampling. Of the total of 340 questionnaires sent out, 242 responded: a response rate of approximately 71 per cent. Once the questions were developed, they were sent to a survey specialist to transfer into the SurveyMonkey format. Once this was done, the link was sent to the HR Director for distribution. An email containing a request to participate in the survey was sent to participants, with a link to the survey itself. All completed responses were sent directly to the survey specialist, an independent consultant, who prepared the responses for analysis. Analysing the Online OI Qualitative Survey Open-ended questions generate interesting and challenging texts to analyse as they contain various types of data (Jackson & Trochim, 2002). In this study, a variety of textual data was present, including one-word answers, short phrases and brief paragraphs, the longest being 234 words (Crafford, 2015). The responses included a wide-ranging assortment of identity-related material including metaphors, statements of ideology, management philosophy and beliefs, culture, values and practices and the recollection of meaningful personal experiences and brief anecdotes (Albert & Whetten, 1985). There were also examples of identity work; for example, the participant in the final extract listed below draws on a supposedly ‘outsider’ position, being part of the ‘Makhado Municipality’ of South Africa, to promote an ostensibly objective perspective of the organization. Listed here we include examples of data from the answers by the participants (P) to the question: ‘Describe your emotional connection to the organization’ (Crafford, 2015) with an indication of word length. Given space constraints, longer extracts have not been included: ‘rain-makers’ (P 54) (metaphor: two words); ‘administration kills innovation’ (P 29) (management philosophy: three words); ‘We were like trendsetters in the market’ (P 23) (belief: seven words); ‘It’s always out to sabotage young candidate technicians’ (P 118) (dissonant voice: eight words); ‘Do the best work possible using acceptable standards, maintain client relationships. Control costs. Streamline decision making’ (P 22) (management beliefs and practices: 16 words);

62  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations ‘People who were prepared to work hard, invest in themselves, had a balanced outlook, had a good professional standing’ (P 102) (description of staff: 19 words); ‘And this has really happened to me on the way to Angola – I mention that I work for Alpha and the attention is all there. I tell them about our projects, all the different clients, and it just seems like I am talking about a company that I have created’ (P 6) (anecdote: 50 words).

The challenge was integrating the multiple individual perspectives of OI contained in the data to present a composite sketch (Seixas et al., 2018) that reflected commonly held identity-related meanings of the heritage organizations. Taking an open and inductive approach to the analysis (Jansen, 2010), we were guided by the concept of the bricoleur (Lévi-Strauss, 1962) as described by Crotty (1998). In the context of Lévi-Strauss’s The Savage Mind (1962), the text in which the term is used, the bricoleur is far more than a multi-skilled handyperson, but rather ‘a makeshift artisan, armed with a collection of bits and pieces that were once standard parts of a certain whole but which the bricoleur, as bricoleur, now reconceives as parts of a new whole’ (Crotty, 1998, p. 50). The question that faces the bricoleur is: ‘What can I make with what I have?’ The focus is on the possibilities presented by the material the person is working with. With this conception in mind, the data was analysed using the following steps: Developing open codes We began the analysis by assigning open-ended codes to data extracts in ATLAS-ti. In cases where only one word was given, we assumed these words to have a similar meaning as they belonged in the same ‘language game’ (Wittgenstein, 1958). In other instances, we were able to make sense of responses based on other data extracts as well as company documentation. Identifying possible meta-themes or narratives The development of second-order codes proved challenging when faced with so many narrative fragments representing multiple perspectives. To overcome this and to allow for direction and coherence in the process of second-order coding, we identified three (tentative) broad meta-themes or narratives for each organization, and constructed categories within them, using a form of abductive reasoning that aimed to find plausible and imaginative explanations for the data at hand (Reichertz, 2010). These were initially fairly intuitive, based on patterns in the data, but were tested and refined as the process of developing second-order categories within the narratives proceeded. We used the term ‘narrative’ to capture these ‘meta-themes’, as identity is considered to be narrative and captured through the stories people tell (Brown, 2006). Developing identity statements Within the broad meta-themes, we developed categories to describe the data in a meaningful and manageable way; they reflect the multiple perspectives contained in the data (Crafford, 2015). Using tables in Word, we began by grouping similar aspects together, based on the open codes but bearing in mind the context of the identity narrative. Codes were compared and tested against the identity narrative and their assigned second-order category until distinctive identity characteristics were constructed. In naming them, we chose phrases that would be suitable responses to the question: ‘Who are you?’, in most instances using phrases from the participants themselves (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Using the identity statements within the broader narratives, we were able to reflect the multiplicity of identity within the collectively held meanings. Because identity is open to question and contestation, we paid particular attention to dissonant voices and included them as part of the identity narratives to provide alterna-

The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity  63 tive voices to the dominant ones, allowing for a more complex rendering of the organization’s identities (Crafford, 2015). Here is a list of identity statements for one of the identity narratives associated with Beta, one of the heritage partners: ● ● ● ● ●

We are the ‘grand old lady’ of South African consulting engineers. We are a well-known engineering firm. We are numbered amongst the best in our field. We are a leader in the field of water engineering. We are reputable purveyors of engineering expertise.

Developing the company’s identity narratives Finally, in a process not unlike montage, we developed identity narratives that were a series of textual snapshots, each one capturing a description of the organization’s identity. In the identity narratives, various related perspectives of identity were combined to produce a more or less coherent description of facets of the organization’s identity. It is important to acknowledge that the identity statements and narratives are the outcome of a process of bricolage, with the participant inputs reconstructed by means of our own reflexive processes, both of which are designed to inform and persuade (McAdams, 1996). Included below are extracts highlighting sections from Beta’s identity statements (Crafford, 2015). Space constraints unfortunately do not permit including them in their entirety. We are the ‘grand old lady’ of South African consulting engineers Although the emphasis on the feminine in this metaphor is somewhat misleading, as leafing through the Beta Founder book,1 female faces were scarce and appeared mostly in the form of sisters and wives (in the early days particularly). Nevertheless, the phrase ‘grand old lady’ captured the image of something stately, elegant and old, almost timeless. The firm was certainly one of the oldest in the country, and despite being predominantly male-led, promoted ‘old-fashioned values’ such as providing excellent services even when this was not profitable; building close relationships with clients; keeping ‘the family’ close; and, like many old ladies, struggling with transformation, as it attempted to adapt to a changing political environment. We are a well-known engineering firm Staff members believed the company was ‘well-known’ and ‘highly regarded’ in the industry, and it was described as ‘a well-known firm that was very well respected’ (P 103). Other descriptions made reference to being ‘very highly regarded’, ‘highly respected’ (P 106) and one even referred to its iconic status ‘An icon, dependable’ (P 113). Another participant also mentioned the bond with Beta Head, who was named Engineering Icon of the Century: ‘the emphasis will be on the opportunity we had to be involved with very interesting and “one of a kind” type projects in the water field and our bond with Engineering Icon of the Century’ (P 131). We are numbered among the best in our field Much as was the case with Alpha, several participants made reference to the company being ‘the best’. While some used this phrase specifically, others made use of similar wording with the same meaning. The title of this identity statement was taken directly from one of the participants, who stated: ‘we love our work and by Providence, have been numbered amongst

64  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations the best in our field’ (P 126). Once again there is some variation as to the standard/benchmark against which ‘the best’ is determined: some indicating the ‘best in the water field’, another more broadly referring to the ‘best in the business’, another using civil consulting engineers as the mode of comparison. We are a leader in the field of water engineering Given the history of the firm, and its roots in the field of water engineering, an identity statement reflecting this should not be surprising. The identity statement captures two key areas: the first related to leadership in the field generally, and then more specifically, in the field of water engineering. The firm is described by participants as a ‘class leader’ (P 113), ‘leaders in the profession’ (P 81) and ‘acknowledged for excellence and leadership in our field’ (P 124). Two other participants referred to the company as being ‘a leader in its field’, one of them citing the awards it had achieved as evidence: ‘a leader in its field as depicted by the several awards for professionalism by client bodies’ (P 132). We are reputable purveyors of engineering expertise This identity statement had its roots in an extract from one of the participants who, in responding to the question on reputation, described Beta as a ‘reputable purveyor of engineering expertise’ (P 13). The aim of this identity statement was to capture the many references to the standard of products and services provided by Beta and the expertise and skills that made these possible. This is to be differentiated from the previous identity statement in that it did not attempt to claim ‘leadership’ or ‘being the best’, but rather emphasized the skill and expertise making leadership possible. Reflections on the Efficacy of the Online OI Qualitative Survey In this section, we consider the value of each of the questions in accessing OI (Crafford, 2015). This will help other OI researchers when using or adapting the online qualitative OI survey described here. Responses to the question on values were typically restricted to one-word answers, although this nevertheless gave us a good idea of what each participant viewed as critical in their heritage organization. The question on culture was particularly useful as many participants provided a brief description – typically a sentence or two describing their organization – highlighting aspects that for them were central. The question regarding successful staff and staff relations was particularly valuable in clarifying identity dimensions, as there is assumed to be a close relationship between the characteristics of the organization and the qualities required by staff to achieve them (Hogg & Terry, 2000). Questions related to clients and stakeholders led to some surprising answers; these unusual responses to what can be considered a normal part of organizational life were informative in identifying areas that were distinctive. The questions regarding management, leadership and management–staff relations were particularly relevant in understanding the dynamics surrounding employee relations, but also opened up the themes of development related to the professional environment. These questions also highlighted mixed responses from participants, attributed to the fact that participants reported to different managers with diverse management styles. Many participants compared their sections or departments both favourably and unfavourably with others, indicating that they had their own section in mind when answering

The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity  65 the question. Others referred more generally to the management and leadership style in the organization and to staff relations generally. There were thus different interpretations given to the meaning of leadership, management style and employee relations; future versions of the questionnaire would need to clarify on which level participants should focus when answering the questions. The question regarding differences provided mixed responses, with many participants responding as ‘unsure’ or ‘don’t know’, or ‘very little difference’; this can be attributed to the fact that many did not know the merger partner well enough to comment in detail about differences. Nevertheless, some participants provided a very detailed analysis of the differences, which proved instructive in checking the differences that emerged when comparing the narratives. Interestingly, the question regarding management systems was particularly informative in highlighting differences between the companies, even though this was hardly the intention. The reason was that Alpha’s strong business orientation was underpinned by generally excellent management systems; the obvious difference in the systems reinforced the difference in business orientation, and thus identity. The questions that provided most insight into OI were those related to what is distinctive about your organization (company motto), emotional connection and the cocktail party or plane question. These responses were typically longer and gave participants the opportunity to highlight key issues they felt set their heritage organization apart and were thus helpful in understanding the distinctiveness of its identity. Since it didn’t require knowledge of the other heritage organization, participants were able to respond more easily. Some went so far as to develop their own version of a company motto, although they were in the minority; most participants resorted to more formal identity statements. The responses to the question regarding emotional connection were revealing as they gave an indication of just how strongly members identified emotionally with their heritage organization, supporting Harquail and King’s (2010) assertion of the value of emotion in understanding OI. It also suggested an exercise in nostalgia, as described by Brown and Humphreys (2002).

CRITICAL EVALUATION As with any method used to explore OI, there are advantages and challenges, and we will discuss a few of each. Some of these related to qualitative online surveys more generally and others to the online OI qualitative survey more specifically. Advantages The qualitative online OI survey proved valuable in gathering data about the organization’s identity from a wide range of members. While some elaborated on the meanings of words or descriptions, others simply invoked a location within a classificatory scheme (Albert & Whetten, 1985). By allowing participants to describe the organization in their own terms, the online qualitative survey allowed for their perspectives in accounting for identity, making it possible to capture anonymously (Jackson & Trochim, 2002) the plurivocity associated with it (Brown, 2006). In this way, many participants were given a voice with which to express their views of OI, allowing the researchers to identify (potential) ‘symbolic rallying points’ (Brown, 2006, p. 742) employees associate with their organization’s identity, drawing on

66  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations the ‘local world of stories’ within which they operate (McAdams, 1996, p. 298). Within the multiple voices it was possible to discern broad narrative descriptions of the central features of two heritage organizations’ identities. The online qualitative survey was useful in identifying dissonant voices, which, although in the minority, may not have come to the fore outside of the online format of the survey. While this study was conducted post-merger, the online qualitative survey could be used fruitfully to determine an organization’s suitability as a merger partner prior to the fact. It could also be used to track changes in OI. While the outcomes in this study were the broad identity narratives, a similar online qualitative survey could be used to explore other collective identity constructions – for example, professional identity. While Braun et al. (2021) argue that the online qualitative survey produces comparable data to an interview study, the study under review resulted in a mix of data, ranging from one-word answers to short paragraphs. While it cannot be compared with a thick description gained in case study or ethnographic research, it allowed for a diverse range of responses in respect of OI from participants who were geographically dispersed. Although this study was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges posed by the pandemic to modes of research conducted in person, such as case studies and ethnography, highlight the need for alternatives. The online qualitative survey provides an ideal option and can be used on its own or to complement existing designs. Disadvantages Potential disadvantages of the online qualitative survey include poor response rates, little or no interaction with others and the inability to ask for further guidance or additional information (Reja et al., 2003). Although the response rate in the study under consideration was high (71 per cent), opportunities for further probing were limited; we were unable to follow up on interesting responses or answers that were unclear, which proved to be frustrating at times. To overcome this challenge and provide a context for the data, we drew on the participants’ other responses, the responses of other members and company documentation to help contextualize the discursive fragments, thus ensuring a more probable interpretation of meaning (Boje, 2008). Documents included company profiles per country, staff newsletters, marketing brochures, project reviews, a biography of the founder of one of the companies, chairperson’s reports and group magazines. In other designs associated with OI research, the researcher is the means through which data is collected and interpreted. However, in the online qualitative survey, the researcher does not engage face to face with participants, making it difficult to account for personal interactions with participants and their implications. Furthermore, because participation in the survey was anonymous, we were unable to conduct member checks to confirm our interpretations (Creswell & Miller, 2000). For example, we were not being able to confirm the meaning of specific words and had to rely on the assumption that they were part of the same language game, relying on probable meaning. To overcome this limitation, one possibility would be to develop a means of interacting with survey respondents in an anonymous way to explore elements of the data, much like the online forum used in Coupland and Brown (2004). It is possible that other researchers would have arrived at different identity statements and narratives; to account for the first author’s place within data analysis and interpretation, a detailed audit

The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity  67 trail of the process was developed (Schurink, 2009) to ensure a conceptual link between the narratives produced and the data upon which they are grounded (this is available on request).

CONCLUSION The aim of this chapter was to explore an online qualitative survey as a means of describing a multi-vocal account of OI. We suggest that using an online qualitative survey is particularly suited to the exploration of diversity, making it valuable for studying OI, which is assumed to be constituted by multiple voices. Moreover, it is ideal for the safe and cost-effective study of identity in large organizations whose members are geographically dispersed. The chapter provides an overview of the qualitative survey as a legitimate research design, with specific application in the form of an online qualitative survey designed to explore OI. It includes a description of the development, execution and analysis of the survey data and a critical evaluation of the method and its application in the study of OI.

NOTE 1. The founder of Beta was a well-known engineer, and instrumental in conceiving and driving some key water-related projects in the country. The company had commissioned a book telling his story.

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68  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Coupland, C., & Brown, A. D. (2004). Constructing organizational identities on the web: A case study of Royal Dutch Shell. Journal of Management Studies, 41, 1325–1347. Crafford, A. (2015). Identity in organisations: A methodological study [PhD thesis]. Stellenbosch University. Creswell, J., & Miller, D. L. (2000). Determining validity in qualitative inquiry. Theory into Practice, 39, 124–131. Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. SAGE. Elsbach, K. D., & Kramer, R. M. (1996). Members’ responses to organizational identity threats: Encountering and countering the Business Week rankings. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 442–476. Empson, L. (2004). Organizational identity change: Managerial regulation and member identification in an accounting firm acquisition. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 29, 759–781. Engineering Council of South Africa. (2006, March 17). Code of Conduct for Registered Persons: Engineering Profession Act, 2000 (Act No. 46 of 2000). Government Gazette No. 28605. Fricker, R. D. (2008). Sampling methods for web and email surveys. In N. Fielding, R. M. Lee & G. Blank (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of online research methods (pp. 195–217). SAGE. Harquail, C. V., & King, A. W. (2010). Construing organizational identity: The role of embodied cognition. Organization Studies, 31, 1619–1648. Hatch, M. J., & Schultz, M. (1997). Relations between organizational culture, identity and image. European Journal of Marketing, 31, 356–365. He, H., & Brown, A. D. (2013). Organizational identity and organizational identification: A review of literature and suggestions for future research. Group & Organization Management, 38, 3–35. Hogg, M. A., & Terry, D. J. (2000). The dynamic, diverse and variable faces of organisational identity. Academy of Management Review, 25, 150–154. Holland, J. L., & Christian, L. M. (2009). The influence of topic interest and interactive probing on responses to open-ended question in web surveys. Social Science Computer Review, 27, 196–212. Jackson, K. M., & Trochim, W. M. K. (2002). Concept mapping as an alternative approach for the analysis of open-ended survey responses. Organizational Research Methods, 5, 307–336. Jansen, H. (2010). The logic of qualitative survey research and its position in the field of social research methods. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 11(2), Article 11. Kreiner, G. E., Hollensbe, E., Sheep, M. L., Smith, B. R., & Kataria, N. (2015). Elasticity and the dialectic tensions of organizational identity: How can we hold together while we are pulling apart? Academy of Management Journal, 58, 981–1011. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). La science du concret [Concrete science]. In C. Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage [The savage mind] (pp. 1–47). Paris Librairie Plon. Retrieved March 17, 2023 from https://​monoskop​ .org/​images/​f/​f6/​Levi​-Strauss​_Claude​_La​_Pensee​_sauvage​_1962​.pdf McAdams, D. P. (1996). Personality, modernity, and the storied self: A contemporary framework for studying persons. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 295–321. Nightingale, D. J., & Cromby, J. (2002). Social constructionism as ontology: Exposition and example. Theory & Psychology, 12, 701–713. Oliver, D., & Roos, J. (2007). Beyond text: Constructing organizational identity multimodally. British Journal of Management, 18, 342–358. Ravasi, D., & Canato, A. (2013). How do I know who you think you are? A review of research methods on organizational identity. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15, 185–204. Ravasi, D., & Schultz, M. (2006). Responding to organizational identity threats: Exploring the role of organizational culture. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 433–458. Reichertz, J. (2010). Abduction: The logic of discovery of grounded theory. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 11(1), Article 13. Reja, U., Lozar Manfreda, K., Hlebec, V., & Vehovar, V. (2003). Open-ended vs. close-ended questions in web-questionnaires. Developments in Applied Statistics. Retrieved March 24, 2023 from http://​ mrvar​.fdv​.uni​-lj​.si/​pub/​mz/​mz19/​reja​.pdf Sandelowski, M. (2000). Whatever happened to qualitative description? Research in Nursing and Health, 23, 334–340.

The qualitative survey as research design in exploring organizational identity  69 Schurink, W. (2009). The internal audit as tool to enhance the quality of qualitative research. Journal of Public Administration, 44, 788–802. Seixas, B. V., Smith, N., & Mitton, C. (2018). The qualitative descriptive approach in International Comparative Studies: Using online qualitative surveys. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 7, 778–781. Sheep, M. L., Hollensbe, E. C., & Kreiner, G. E. (2015, September 8–10). ‘Tearing the fabric’ or ‘weaving the tapestry’? A discursive psychology approach to organizational identity work [Paper presentation]. British Academy of Management Conference, University of Portsmouth, UK. Shields, C. M. (2003). ‘Giving voice to students’: Using the Internet for data collection. Qualitative Research, 3, 397–414. Simsek, Z., & Veiga, J.F. (2001). A primer on Internet organizational surveys. Organizational Research Methods, 4, 218–235. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. SAGE. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations (3rd ed., G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Prentice-Hall.

PART II VISUAL METHODS

6. Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work Antoni Barnard

INTRODUCTION The significance of identity in healthy psychological functioning is a primary reason for studying identity in various work and life contexts. Identity encompasses a person’s subjective definitions of the self, based on the person’s unique personality attributes, group memberships and social roles (Stets & Serpe, 2013). While the content of identity remains a valuable research focus, interest in the dynamics and processes of identity development has taken flight as the extant identity literature converges on the idea that an individual’s identity is not only multiple, but also fluid, dynamic and evolving (Brown, 2022; Caza et al., 2018). Identity research exploring the dynamics and processes of identity development is known as identity work, and from this perspective, identity is conceptualized in processual terms (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). There are multiple approaches to identity work, with most research methods favouring conscious and observable indicators of identity work (Caza et al., 2018; Hoedemaekers, 2010). Recognizing that identity work entails both conscious and unconscious process dynamics (Beech et al., 2008), there is a call for more research to engage at the intersection of conscious and unconscious identity processing (Caza et al., 2018). This chapter presents social dream-drawing (SDD) as a potentially valuable method for studying identity work because it draws on both the conscious and unconscious aspects thereof. SDD is rooted in socioanalytic methodology, which focusses on studying unconscious dynamics through methods aimed at surfacing and conscious processing of unconscious thoughts and experiences (Long, 2013a). The application of SDD to the study of identity work in this chapter is first situated in identity theory, which focusses on conceptualizing identity and identity work. As SDD is a novel method in identity research, the second section of the chapter is dedicated to grounding SDD in socioanalytic methodology. The third section contains a detailed description of the method followed by a guide for data analysis. Application of the method to the study of identity work is then illustrated by an example in the fourth section. The chapter concludes with a critical reflection on the potential pitfalls and strengths of using SDD as a method for studying identity.

IDENTITY WORK Identity theory, one of the dominant approaches to identity research, studies the self as a social being in whom multiple identities derived from one’s personal characteristics, group affiliations and social roles converge to form the confluence of self-meanings that constitutes a person’s identity (Stets & Serpe, 2013). How one defines the self is therefore construed by the personas, positions or roles a person holds in a social structure and the person’s understanding 71

72  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations or meaning-making of concomitant self–other expectations (Brenner et al., 2018). Identities, whether person, group or role based (Burke, 2007), imply taking up congruent personas to adapt to changing global, societal and organizational circumstances and expectations (Watson, 2008). In this sense, individual identity is always socially constructed and relational, because it is influenced by the sociocultural meanings, language and normative ideas that influence the meaning a person attaches to their different identities (Beech et al., 2008). Importantly, identity theory is concerned with how one’s multiple identities relate to the self-concept (Brenner et al., 2018) and aligns aspects of the self-concept with person identity (authenticity), group identity (self-worth) and role identity (self-efficacy) (Stets & Serpe, 2013). Identity change is predicated on the need to maintain a congruent self-concept (Snow & Anderson, 1987) or identity standard (Burke, 2007). Such self-congruence can be explained by the need to verify one’s self-understanding and the enactment of one’s identity with the perceived person, group and role expectations of the self (Brenner et al., 2018). In the multiple, changing social contexts and groups that people belong to, identity tension and conflict arise when the individual experiences incongruence between self–other expectations (Burke, 2007). Such identity tension and conflict elicit the need to balance or integrate new, opposing, different and unique expectations of being, causing the individual to engage in identity work (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). Identity work refers to the range of activities individuals engage in to create, present and sustain personal identities that are congruent with and supportive of the self-concept (Snow & Anderson, 1987). Building on this, Alvesson and Willmott (2002, p. 626) and Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003, p. 1165) relate identity work to the process activities, such as ‘forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising’ that individuals continuously engage in to produce a coherent and distinctive sense of self. The activities of identity work have been referred to as a form of sense-making, entailing the emotional, cognitive and social processes of constant self-reflection and self-verification in consciously and unconsciously deciding to assimilate and accommodate new ways of being (Petriglieri & Petriglieri 2010). Identity theory acknowledges that identity work contains unconscious and conscious elements and processes (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Stets & Serpe, 2013), yet integrating these elements is frequently overlooked in identity work research (Caza et al., 2018). Engaging both the unconscious and conscious elements of behaviour lies at the core of socioanalytic methodology. Studying identity work from a socioanalytic stance focuses on how individuals’ covert emotional needs shape their sense of self in a social system (Cilliers, 2017; Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010). Socioanalysis recognizes that identity tension results from contradictory self–other identity meanings that frequently manifest unconsciously and emphasizes the anxiety that stems from this perceived incongruence (Cilliers, 2017). Studying identity work through the socioanalytic method of SDD thus focuses on exploring unconscious identity tensions and the resolution thereof by bringing into awareness its emotional consequences and the emotional, cognitive and social processing that individuals apply when consolidating meanings that define the self (Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010). Before explaining SDD in detail, its underlying socioanalytic methodology is discussed.

Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work  73

SOCIOANALYTIC METHODOLOGY Socioanalysis is an evolving social science in which individuals, groups, organizations and societies are studied from a systems psychoanalytic perspective (Long, 2013a). Bain (1999) originally suggested socioanalysis as an action research activity combining epistemological and methodological assumptions from psychoanalysis, systems thinking and related theories such as group relations, organizational behaviour and social dreaming. In the field of socioanalytic research and consultancy, various methods have evolved such as organizational role analysis, role biography, social dream matrix, social photo matrix, photo voice, the listening post and SDD (see Long, 2013a, 2013b; Mersky & Sievers, 2019; Stamenova & Hinshelwood, 2019). The epistemological focus is on the unconscious and on applying abductive logic to knowledge generation (Long & Harney, 2013). The Unconscious Following the psychoanalytic tradition, socioanalysis highlights the unconscious, emphasizing three aspects: the interaction between the unconscious and the conscious (Shepherd, 2018); the associative unconscious as a key element in constructing meaning (Mersky, 2015); and the unconscious as a dynamic collective thinking resource (Long & Harney, 2013). Understanding behaviour from a socioanalytic view requires access to both the unconscious and conscious aspects of thinking (Shepherd, 2018) because understanding is believed to lie in the space between raw emotional experience and conscious thinking (Bion, 1970/1984). Regarding identity work, this implies the surfacing of unconscious anxieties and defences that mirror identity tensions and conflicts and exploring how these are dealt with. Focusing on synthesizing unconscious and conscious thinking in this way facilitates an understanding of identity and identity work aspects that may otherwise remain indiscernible or unexplained (Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010). The unconscious in socioanalysis is regarded as a social phenomenon and ‘is devoted to understanding how subjectivity works collectively’ (Long, 2013b, p. 307). Socioanalytic methodology acknowledges the collective unconscious but foregrounds the notion of the associative unconscious (Long & Harney, 2013). While the collective unconscious represents the shared meanings held by individuals in a social context, the associative unconscious refers to individuals not necessarily sharing identical meaning, but associative understandings. This entails that each individual carry some meaning that may differ from the other, but collectively contributes to a fuller understanding and insight (Long & Harney, 2013). In regarding the unconscious as a rich thinking resource (Long & Harney, 2013), socioanalysts recognize how its expression in dreams, visual and written artwork, jokes and metaphors uses symbolic and metaphoric meaning as a link to conscious understanding (Mersky & Sievers, 2019). Socioanalytic methods such as SDD draw on the psychoanalytic idea that drawings and dreams are powerful analytical tools representing the symbolic language of the unconscious (Long & Harney, 2013). As with other socioanalytic methods, in SDD, the intention is to elicit thoughts from the unconscious and surface these into awareness so that they can be reflected on critically and consciously (Shepherd, 2018). Synthesizing deep, symbolic thinking with purposeful conscious thinking about a specific topic of interest provides a rich basis for individual and organizational insight (Mersky, 2017).

74  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Abduction and Working Hypotheses Working with the unconscious in the above-mentioned manner lends itself to C. R. Peirce’s abductive process of knowledge creation (see Frankfurt, 1958), as noted by Long and Harney (2013, p. 19): ‘The associative unconscious as a crucible for abductive logic and creativity’. In working with the unconscious, the researcher needs to make meaningful connections from seemingly disconnected, yet associated, thoughts, emotions, symbols and ideas to generate knowledge and help people make sense of their experiences (Mersky, 2015). Abduction is a logic of creative discovery and insight to make sense and meaning of intriguing human experiences (Long & Harney, 2013). Abduction results in tentative knowledge and mirrors a dynamic and ever-evolving process of sense-making in which possible and preliminary conclusions are reached (Mersky, 2015). Peirce also links abduction to pragmatic knowledge generation, which is generating possible understanding in an interactive or experiential manner (Frankfurt, 1958). Similarly, socioanalytic methods are described as action learning research methods because researcher and participants engage interactively and experientially in a process of sense-making and discovery of meaning (Shepherd, 2018). Ultimately, socioanalytic inquiry applies Peirce’s abductive philosophy of science to create what is referred to as ‘working hypotheses’ (Frankfurt, 1958; Long, 2013b; Mersky, 2015; Mersky & Sievers, 2019). Working hypotheses are defined as interpretations reflecting possible, rather than probable, suggestions to explain phenomena (Frankfurt, 1958). Through abductive logic, meaning-making in SDD entails a form of reasoning that allows the researcher or consulting psychologist to make useful inferences from data generated in practice (Mersky, 2015). An SDD session provides an interactive forum where participants can reflect on a topic in a way that synthesizes creative unconscious thought with conscious collective processing. In doing so, participants engage with, experience and demonstrate identity work activities (Barnard, 2018) and in studying identity, an SDD session stimulates and facilitates identity work within the context of an identity-related topic – for example, students exploring their leadership identity (Pule & May, 2021). An SDD session can be compared to what Petriglieri and Petriglieri (2010) call an identity workspace and Mersky (2017) calls an action research method.

SOCIAL DREAM-DRAWING Rose Mersky developed SDD for organizational consulting and research purposes (Mersky, 2008, 2012, 2015). The objective of SDD is to enhance individuals’ thinking about difficult organizational and professional issues by surfacing their unknown thoughts into awareness and facilitating collective creative thinking for possible resolutions (Mersky, 2008). Essentially, the SDD method entails an interactive work session with a small group of participants, in which individual dream drawings are used as a stimulus for the group to collectively generate ideas about a specific topic (Mersky, 2008). The purpose is not to focus on the individual dreamer (Pule & May, 2021) nor to analyse the dream (Barnard, 2019). It is intended to use participants’ dream drawings as impetus to evoke emotional experience, which can then be used to generate collective meaning and knowledge of a topic (Pule & May, 2021). Because SDD is one of the more recent methods in the socioanalytic field and in its infancy as a method applied to identity work, I next detail its procedure. Then, because SDD litera-

Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work  75 ture is not clear about a specific data-analytic methodology, the section concludes with how I approach data analysis. The Social Dream-drawing Procedure SDD is described according to what happens prior to an SDD session, the strategies used in SDD, and the systematic procedure followed during the session. Preparing for the social dream-drawing session Generally, a few people, preferably three or four, sharing a similar concern or interest, are invited to participate in an SDD work session (Mersky & Sievers, 2019). Participants are purposefully selected in line with the research objective when SDD is used for research purposes. Prior to the actual session, participants are informed about the purpose and nature of the SDD session, their participation and the role of dream drawings in the session. From an ethical perspective, to ensure informed consent, participants should be informed whether the session is part of a research or consultancy project. It is also important to inform participants that the session will not be used to analyse them or their dreams, but that the dream drawings are used as stimulus to generate discussion about the topic. Participants are therefore also informed about the session topic, as relevant to the research or consultancy project. In identity work research, a topic could, for example, be ‘Women in leadership’. Participants are requested to draw a picture of an actual dream they had whilst sleeping, either recently or one they remember well (Mersky, 2008). Dreams are a way of stimulating and connecting participants’ interest in the session topic and help them to relate their personal experiences to the issue at hand. Sharing dreams can be an intimate, sometimes exposing experience. According to Mersky (2008), drawing one’s dream makes it easier to share deep personal experiences because drawing transforms the inner experience into a tangible object that can be looked at and worked with. Strategies used in social dream-drawing: free association and amplification Before describing the procedure of the SDD session, it is important to understand the strategies of free association and amplification. During the SDD session, the pre-prepared dream images constitute the first and basic stimulus for reflecting on the predetermined session topic. Free association and amplification are additional strategies to access thoughts in the unconscious and make them available for conscious reflection and processing (Mersky, 2017). Freud developed free association as a way of accessing unconscious thinking by expressing one’s inner unprocessed responses to dream material (Mersky, 2019). Free association results in any instant thoughts or ideas that come to mind when viewing dream images during the SDD session (Mersky, 2012). Amplification stems from Jung’s work on dreams and is a way of encouraging participants to connect the dream images to current sociocultural and work–life experiences (Mersky, 2019) such as familiar cultural or political elements, current news, events, music and lyrics, literature and films (Mersky, 2017). In SDD, free association and amplification elicit impromptu thoughts and ideas that intuitively come to mind in relation to the dream drawing and its presentation. Mersky (2019) notes that through free association and amplification, the unconscious as a creative thinking resource is stimulated because unknown thoughts become available for conscious thinking and processing.

76  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations The procedure followed during a social dream-drawing session An SDD session is structured along two broad stages with a clear session topic. The first stage focuses on processing each of the participants’ dreams through three reflective steps. This stage can last between 2 and 3 hours, allowing equal time for each dream drawing. The second stage concludes the session with an overall reflection on insights derived and lasts 30 minutes (see Mersky, 2008, 2017). Time spent depends on the researcher, the context of the project, the number of participants and time available. A complete SDD session with four participants may therefore take approximately 2.5 to 3.5 hours. The two stages are detailed below: Stage 1: Reflective processing of individual dream drawings In the first stage of the SDD session, participants sit in a circle and individual pre-prepared dream drawings are presented one by one. For each dream drawing, the group’s thinking about the dream is encouraged following three steps: (1) presenting the dream drawing; (2) free association and amplification; and (3) generating insights about the session theme. One participant starts by placing their dream drawing in the middle of the group circle for all to see and tells the story of the dream. The other participants can ask clarifying questions about the dream and the drawing. In step two, the facilitator/researcher invites all participants, including the dreamer, to offer free associations and amplifications for the dream drawing and its story. The strategies of free association and amplification are usually explained to the group prior to the session and again while busy with the first dream drawing. In the third and last step, participants switch seats in the circle and are asked by the facilitator/researcher to offer and discuss possible insights emanating from the dream material in relation to the topic. As dreams, free association and amplification engage participants in the sphere of unconscious emotional experience, the act of switching seats creates a clear shift from working with unconscious material to conscious thinking and sense-making (Mersky, 2017). After the first dream has been discussed, the second one is facilitated in the same way and then the third and the fourth. Stage 2: Thematic reflection on the SDD session as a whole In the second and concluding stage of the SDD session, after all the dreams have been dealt with, the facilitator/researcher invites the group to discuss and reflect on the dream material and the discussions that were generated during the first stage, and to identify any trends, patterns and unique learnings that emerged for them in relation to the topic of the SDD session (Barnard, 2018). Data generated during an SDD session include the actual dream drawings or photos thereof and a transcription of an audio-recording. Analysing Social Dream-drawing Data To date, Mersky’s work has predominantly focused on the development of SDD as a method, and guidance on the analysis of SDD data is not particularly clear. I follow a hermeneutic phenomenological approach (Barnard, 2018, 2019), which emphasizes subjective experience, co-constructed meaning and aims to uncover concealed aspects of social phenomena that are not often talked about, described or noticed (Crowther et al., 2017). Hermeneutic phenomenology allows for emergent creative meaning-making, which aligns with the abductive logic fundamental to socioanalysis (Long & Harney, 2013). Analytical strategies in hermeneutic phenomenology typically process data iteratively through the three stages of naïve reading, structural thematic analysis and comprehensive

Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work  77 understanding (Lindseth & Norberg, 2004). During the naïve reading of data, the intention is to achieve a close familiarity and intuitive overall understanding by viewing, reading and re-reading the data. The result is a summarized overview of the storyline that the researcher recognizes in the data, and this constitutes a benchmark for reflecting on meanings derived in consequent analytical steps. Applying the naïve reading while viewing and reading through SDD data transcripts, I tend to ask myself the following: (1) what was the dream about; (2) what were the free associations and amplifications about; and (3), what were the discussions and reflections about in relation to this dream? The second stage constitutes a structured thematic analysis in which sections of essential meaning are highlighted in the verbatim data and paraphrased and condensed in the researcher’s own words. Subsequently, related meanings are categorized and synthesized into themes descriptive of the research topic. During this structured thematic analysis stage, I focus on the following questions: (1) what does the dream material reveal or elicit about the research phenomenon in this specific context; (2) what patterns of meaning emerge from the dream material and the group’s reflective discussion of it that help to better understand the research phenomenon; and (3), how are identity work phenomena evident in the dream material and in the group’s processing thereof? The third concluding phase is referred to as the comprehensive understanding or the composite description of the research phenomenon. Here the intention is to convey a meaningful proposition explaining the research phenomenon by synthesizing the themes and their interrelatedness. In socioanalytic terms, synthesized meaning results in the formulation of working hypotheses about the research phenomenon (Long, 2013a). During this stage, I consider: (1) what working hypotheses can be formulated about the identity tensions experienced; and (2), how are identity tensions coped with or processed in attempting to resolve them (processes or activities of manifest identity work)?

AN ILLUSTRATION OF IDENTITY RESEARCH THROUGH SOCIAL DREAM-DRAWING The case illustrated here was done in the context of a research project exploring how women sustain well-being through identity work within the context of the multiple roles they hold in society. An SDD session was held with four white, Afrikaans-speaking South African women in their mid-forties. They all worked either part-time or full-time and were married with two or three school-aged children. The women represented the middle-class, white, Afrikaans-speaking, Christian household, in which their husbands are regarded as the primary breadwinners. The four women all had tertiary qualifications and were involved in community and school outreach projects. Three dreams are shared here as a case example. The objective of the SDD session was to elicit and facilitate discussion on the session topic of ‘Women doing and being different roles in everyday life’. The research objectives were to surface and explore identity tensions and generate understanding about the identity work processes they applied to resolve these tensions within a coherent sense of self. The analysis of the SDD follows the three stages of naïve reading, structural thematic analysis and a comprehensive understanding.

78  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Naïve Reading The first dream drawing (Figure 6.1) was about sitting back-to-back with a stranger, holding a notebook containing Bible verses and looking over her shoulder to realize with surprise that the strange man had different yet very similar notes. Free associations and amplifications included references to striped prisoner uniforms and Judgement Day. The dream material and free associations and amplifications led to a discussion about the fear of making new connections outside accepted social conventions, feeling imprisoned by gendered and normative social boundaries and feeling guilty for judging others. The women noted a wish for new and broader horizons, but also recognized how they, in what they did and who they were, frequently extended restrictive boundaries to transform their social context.

Figure 6.1

Comparing notes with a stranger

The second dream drawing (Figure 6.2) was about a wife receiving flowers from her husband’s workplace and being surprised but pleased that his colleagues had sent it. Free associations and amplifications included references to the cross, crossroads, flowers on a grave and a water lily. The dream material and the free associations and amplifications led to a discussion about the way women sacrifice themselves in work and in life, the feeling that their roles are downplayed, the striving for acknowledgement and appreciation, finding acknowledgement of the self through meaningful and religious endeavours, and how women give meaning and hope in their families and society.

Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work  79

Figure 6.2

Flowers from my husband’s work

The third dream drawing (Figure 6.3) was about stepping out of an apartment window onto a spiral staircase while being watched from behind by her family and from below by colleagues. To her shame, the wind lifts her dress and the people below see her undergarments, yet she continues to move down. Free associations and amplifications included references to Marilyn Monroe, Alice in Wonderland going down the rabbit hole, and Jacob’s Ladder. The dream material and the free associations and amplifications led to a discussion about feeling vulnerable and exposed, being torn between family security and work expectations, and feeling courageous and excited to explore the unknown potential of her competence. Spiritual connotations of Jacob’s Ladder led to reflections on how different work–life roles provide meaning and purpose, despite struggles endured. Structural Thematic Analysis Reflecting on the dreams holistically, a theme about identity tension and two about identity work connect across the dreams. The themes are discussed with substantiating verbatim data. Identity tension: performance and survival anxiety The first theme relates to identity tension and derives from the difficult and conflicting emotions that were expressed. These provided clues to the tension originating from the multiple and conflicting expectations in their role and social identities. Identity tensions are described

80  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations

Figure 6.3

Going down the open spiral staircase

as survival and performance anxieties located in the self, leading to self-doubt and a consistent struggle to integrate person, role and social identities. Survival anxiety surfaced in the expressed fears, guilt and feeling imprisoned by contextually rooted religious and gendered beliefs. Reflecting on the first dream, one participant said ‘I feel guilty when I dream of sitting and knitting under a tree, with no one telling me what I must do. Because, I mean it is our purpose on earth to bear children and be wonderful wives to our husbands’. Another remembered: ‘My mother frequently said she was not good enough, she was pathetic. I hear myself repeating this, “see how pathetic you are”, and I judge myself’. The gendered role restrictions felt by women are exacerbated because they are cemented in religious beliefs: ‘It seems as if I am not loyal [to my husband and children]…the spiritual part puts a burden on me because I do not get to everything [sic]. There are so many things I have to do’. Performance anxiety also revealed identity tension and was evident in feeling undervalued, unrecognized, vulnerable, exposed and stretched in relation to women’s work–life roles. A woman spoke about the wonder of receiving recognition (flowers from her husband’s work) yet feeling unsure whether they were meant for her: ‘I wondered if they were for me and what they were for’. Another noted ‘I am thinly stretched like the table, spider-web thin’, and ‘When I think about my life and it is actually going well, I feel like a table and the table is bending. I feel as if I am at a breaking point’. Identity tension surfaces in the work overload that results from the multiple role expectations, but also in their experience of the conflicting expectations

Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work  81 that underlie any role. One participant spoke about this, juxtaposing her struggle to be both strong and dependent: ‘You know you have this role in which you have to be strong and hold everything together. You must have backbone and sometimes be like a sergeant major. My husband wants this in me, he wants me to cope, but he also wants me to be soft and vulnerable. Vulnerability is important for intimacy… Our strength is needed but it is also a problem and I struggle to make that switch’. Identity tensions appear to be caused by self-judgement, stemming from engrained socio-religious beliefs. The effect of the identity tension seems first to manifest as self-doubt and second in the struggle to integrate different parts of the expected self. Engaging consciously with these emotions gave women self-awareness of the identity tensions they entertain because of trying to conform to perceived social expectations. Identity work: emotional and cognitive processing towards self-congruence The women’s identity work became evident in the way the discussions of each dream evolved and, overall, from speaking about conflicting emotions to progressively expressing more positive emotions because of the two identity processing tasks. The identity work processes identified were self-authorization of person identity and authentic self-expression and integration. The identity tensions were resolved through these (evidence of emotional and cognitive identity processes) towards the attainment of identity integration and self-coherence. Self-authorization of person identity The women’s discussions progressed towards recognizing their agency in resolving the identity tensions noted above. They became aware of their role in subscribing to socially engrained beliefs that conflict with self-beliefs and restrict their sense of competence and self-confidence. They became more aware of their agency in choosing who and how to be, as reflected in sentiments such as ‘I want to be both…and’. Reflections on the second dream led them to recognize that they ‘are at a crossroads to choose and find meaning’. This demonstrated the women’s recognition of their agency and led to expressing self-value and a sense of emancipation by means of self-authorizing: ‘We have choices, and nobody said that choosing A or choosing B was going to be without difficulties. In the choices we make we must know our lives are not going to be easy because of whatever choice we made. Your life and your choices are not easier or more difficult than mine’. Self-reflective work in the SDD generated self-awareness of personal needs and desires and a recognition of their importance. This led to a stronger self-authorization of the person identity. Authentic self-expression and integration A strong existential theme was evident in the dream about the gift of flowers, with connotations of life and death and sacrifice, but also hope, fertility and rebirth, as symbolized by the water lily. These life-giving symbols were reflected in the women’s discussion on how they contributed to society (‘what we do as women is go out in the community and keep the community’s balls in the air’) and enabled others to succeed (‘how you catch balls for me that I cannot catch and how I catch balls for you’). In reflecting on their contributions not only to their inner family circle and their work, but also to society at large, the women found their voice and their confidence increased, as is evident in one woman’s story about speaking up at her husband’s year-end Christmas function: ‘It was a formal function for all the directors and in the speeches, they were saying thank you. So, I put my hand up and I said I just wanted to say thank you to

82  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations all the women who enable their husbands to do the work they do’. The tensions brought about by splitting work and family roles (dreams 2 and 3) seem to be overcome in the third dream discussion. Here, initial performance anxiety is experienced both in the family and the work role (‘they were looking at me from behind and up from below’), but the ladder symbolically connects the two roles as the woman ‘descends the open staircase that gives access to both roles’. The identity work moves to a possible resolution of identity tensions in that the women realize their roles are connected within them and by their choice. They progressed to a point where their thoughts reflected constructive engagement with their performance anxiety (feelings of shame, dream 3), recognizing their own worth (feeling surprised and happy, dream 3) and experiencing a sense of authentic self-expression and integration (the courage to explore competence and self-efficiency, dream 3). One participant noted: ‘I see the blood drip and I see the strength of it. I identify with the pain and with the power’. Comprehensive Understanding In generating a comprehensive understanding, the researcher formulated two working hypotheses about the identity tensions and the identity work that women do to cope with multiple work–life roles. Other propositions and explanations are also possible, especially since the data produced in an SDD session are rich and abundant. The working hypotheses reflect a context-specific understanding about the preceding case example: Women’s self-judgement relate to their social identities, reflected in cultural and religious beliefs about being a woman. They experience identity tension when realizing their personal beliefs and needs differ from the social expectations and connotations of the gendered role. To resolve identity tensions, they self-authorize their person identity and engage in authentic self-expression and integration. In terms of identity theory and the value of identity work, a second proposed insight can be formulated: women experience survival and performance anxiety when they take up various roles at work and in life. The anxiety manifests in the identity tensions they experience between their social, personal and role identities. When women become aware of identity tensions they move towards resolving them. Such self-awareness leads to a conscious recognition of their agency and self-worth. When doing identity work, women reflect consciously on the work–life roles they fulfil and are enabled to celebrate their inner strengths and their contribution to society.

CRITICAL EVALUATION In conclusion, I reflect on the value of SDD by reviewing the literature on its applications to date and by highlighting its strengths as a socioanalytic method for studying identity and identity work. Finally, I consider potential challenges and make some recommendations for researchers to consider when deciding whether the use of SDD in their identity research is appropriate and viable.

Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work  83 Application of Social Dream-drawing Although Mersky’s work refers to SDD as working with organizational, collective and professional issues, the relevance of the method for the study of identity in the work context is evident throughout her writings. In one of the first publications on the method, she describes SDD as a method ‘designed to access the unconscious of role holders through drawings of their dreams’ (Mersky, 2008, p. 35). Later, Mersky (2013) notes that SDD provides a safe collective thinking space for the individual to experiment with ‘aspects of one’s identity and personality in role’ (p. 163). Moreover, although not pertinently situated as identity or identity work studies, she emphasizes that her research demonstrates that participation in SDD can be a valuable individual learning experience for anyone during work and life role transitions (Mersky, 2012, 2017). In her research, SDD has been applied in consulting with individuals about personal and professional role identity issues (Mersky, 2012, 2013, 2017) and in constructing sociocultural identity meanings (Mersky, 2015; Mersky & Sievers, 2019). Apart from Mersky’s work, very limited SDD research has been published. Pule and May (2021) published a study using SDD to study the role identity of student leaders. In my own work, I have applied SDD to the work role identity of women researchers (Barnard, 2019) and to the identity work of women reflecting on their multiple work–life roles (Barnard, 2018). The Value of Social Dream-drawing for Studying Identity Work People engage daily in the self-evaluation, self-verification and self-adjustment processes of identity work, frequently without consciously knowing they do. Yet research emphasizes the value of doing identity work, implying a need for purposefully facilitated identity work interventions (Barnard, 2018, 2019). As with other socioanalytic methods, SDD offers the benefits of an action research method because it can be applied simultaneously as an intervention and a research activity (Mersky & Sievers, 2019). Action research embraces the epistemological notion of knowledge creation in action based on participants’ practically acquired experience, with the intention of bringing about change or transformation. By facilitating an SDD session in relation to identity-relevant topics, participants engage in self-reflective meaning-making about the identity tensions they experience, and as the collective discussion unfolds, identity work becomes evident in the emotional and cognitive processing of their identity issues. Identity change, or the potential for it, becomes evident during the SDD session, as participants develop self-awareness, self-authorization, self-regard and authentic self-expression (Barnard, 2018). While SDD offers an intentional or purposeful opportunity for identity work, it is also a method that draws on unconscious knowledge about the self. Dreams have strong personal significance and connecting with one’s dreams is a way of linking to the affective thinking space in which the self is the predominant actor. Through SDD, the researcher/facilitator initiates and facilitates a process of deep self-reflection that integrates the creative and innovative thinking that the unconscious mind is known for, with conscious thought and reflection. The dream material involves thinking about the self in a novel way, exploring previously unthought fears and anxieties in a collective space, and bears the fruit of new self–other insights for the potential resolution of identity conflicts. The collective thinking space that SDD offers is noteworthy when used in identity research. The dream drawing is used as a stimulus for collective thinking. Associative thoughts and

84  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations feelings are offered, thoughts are collectively generated relevant to the topic, resulting in self-insight and a wealth of research data. Collective thinking and meaning-making underscore the value of SDD for studying identity work, because identity theory is rooted in theoretical perspectives that emphasize a socially constructed conceptualization of the self. Challenges and Recommendations Due to the intimate nature of dreams, sharing them with others is self-exposing and some participants are initially hesitant. The hesitance is seen in defensive behaviour such as ‘I cannot draw’ or ‘I don’t dream’ or ‘I never remember my dreams’. It is therefore important to establish rapport and set participants at ease with detailed preparation and informed consent protocols. Participants should be informed about the purpose of the session; about the use of dreams, free association and amplification; and about what is expected of them as participants. I have also found that it takes time at the start of the session to explain the procedure and the role of the dream in the session, and to focus attention on the session topic. Additionally, in the role of researcher/facilitator, I usually prepare a dream drawing myself and sometimes use it to ease participants into the session. Ultimately, it is important to set participants at ease by explaining to them that neither they nor their dreams will be analysed or interpreted, but that the dream drawings will be used as a creative way to stimulate thinking about the session topic. I have found that participants relax after the presentation of the first dream. They frequently become very excited about participating in the sharing of a dream, which brings about the challenge of keeping the session procedure within the time constraints. Participants can become so enthused by the creativity and meaning of their free associations and amplifications that it is sometimes difficult for them to disengage from this stage and move on to the topic-focused reflection stage. To address this challenge, it is useful to create a physical boundary between these two stages by changing seats. The physical change in position in regard to the drawing seems to enable a fresh perspective when cognitively processing the collective insights on the session topic. One should always consider the time-consuming nature of an SDD session without discouraging participation. I have found that SDD sessions have incremental value for identity work when the same participants engage in this self-reflective opportunity more than once over a longer period. A series of SDD sessions with the same participants enables one to gauge how identity tensions move over time and allows participants to become aware of these tensions, empowering them to continue to work with how they adjust and cope. Repeated exposure to SDD furthermore educates participants on the method, and they become more familiar with psychological concepts and tactics such as free association and amplification. Initially, people find it difficult to engage in free association and amplification and they tend to want to interpret dreams, especially when they know the dreamer. It is therefore often necessary to bring the group back to the task of free association and amplification, either directly or by modelling the activity and offering free associations and amplifications as examples. The more people do free association, the more accustomed and comfortable they become with offering the intuitive and impulsive thoughts, memories and connotations evoked by the dream material. It seems that participants in academia (e.g., researchers), or in disciplines of psychology, work with SDD with more ease because they already have a sense of what it entails to freely associate with something. It is therefore very important to consider who your

Social dream-drawing: a socioanalytic method for studying identity work  85 participants will be and to prepare background information and preparatory instructions in an honest, simple, clear and non-threatening manner. Once participants start to engage in an SDD session, they have space to reflect on the self, they identify with one another in various ways, and this leaves them feeling stronger, supporting the idea that identity work has healing value when it is actively and consciously engaged in.

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7. A picture is worth a thousand words: social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections Sarah V. Bentley, S. Alexander Haslam, Katherine H. Greenaway, Tegan Cruwys and Nik Steffens

INTRODUCTION A person’s sense of self plays a key role in shaping their cognition, emotions and behaviour. Traditionally, selfhood has been understood with reference to a person’s individual characteristics, such as their personality traits or intellectual capacity (Gormly, 1983; Robert et al., 2001). More recently, though, psychologists have recognized that the self is also structured by a person’s social context – in particular, by their membership of the social groups that furnish them with a sense of social identity (Turner et al., 1994; Turner & Onorato, 1999). To varying degrees, different aspects of a person’s selfhood are informed by these group-based identities, and there are generally multiple social identities that bear upon a person’s sense of self. Zara, for example, may define herself, and act, as a woman, an academic, a parent, a chess player, a vegetarian. Moreover, these social identities not only evolve over time, they will also be rendered more or less salient according to the context in which Zara finds herself (e.g., at work, at home, at a restaurant). Building on this insight, over the last 50 years, work in the social identity tradition has sought to understand and measure both the formation of social identities and their consequences. A key focus for this work has been the development and use of tools that assess a person’s degree of identification with particular groups, with a view to understanding the extent to which membership in those groups informs their sense of self (Onorato & Turner, 2004; Spears et al., 2002; Tajfel, 1972; Turner, 1982/2010). As with other psychological constructs, most of these tools have involved rating scales designed to collect quantitative information about the strength and nature of a person’s social identifications (e.g., Doosje et al., 1995; Leach et al., 2008; Postmes et al., 2013). However, as an alternative to this survey-based approach, the present chapter explores the value of a new tool designed to provide a pictorial representation of a person’s social identities: social identity mapping (SIM). This tool serves not only as a psychometrically validated methodology with which to collect quantitative data but also as an activity able to provide experiential insight as well as qualitative data. The tool can be deployed in an online version (oSIM) at scale or in a paper-based version (pSIM) in small-group or one-on-one settings. It can used with a range of populations and is designed to yield a rich source of social psychological data for both researchers and practitioners. In what follows, we first describe SIM and its relationship to social identity theorizing, in the context of also discussing the limitations of existing scales designed to measure identification. We then describe what social mapping is – both in its paper-based form as well as its online version – and illustrate each delivery method with an example. We go on to review the 87

88  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations psychometric validation of SIM, and its deployment in a range of populations and research settings. Finally, we move beyond the tool’s quantitative properties to explore the ways in which it can be used to support engagement and reflection as an integral part of clinical, educational and organizational interventions. We also discuss some of the challenges and limitations of the mapping process.

THE SOCIAL IDENTITY APPROACH The social identity approach combines two complementary perspectives: social identity theory and self-categorization theory (Tajfel et al., 1971; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987; Turner & Oakes, 1989). Social identity theory emerged in the 1970s in the wake of Tajfel and colleagues’ formative minimal group studies (Tajfel et al., 1971). This research observed that in a range of social contexts, people define themselves as members of social groups, and that when they do this, it has a profound impact on their cognition and behaviour – in particular, because it leads them to prioritize the interests of their group over other groups, and indeed over their interests as individuals. Tajfel referred to these group-based aspects of the self as a person’s social identity and defined this as ‘that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his [their] membership of a social group (or groups), together with the value and emotional significance attached to this’ (Tajfel, 1978, p. 78). Self-categorization theory was subsequently developed to provide a cognitive account of the process through which the self changes when a person comes to define themselves in terms of a particular social identity (Turner, 1982/2010; Turner et al., 1987, 1994; Turner & Oakes, 1989). Being able to know which groups people identify with, and how much, has subsequently been shown to be key to almost all research informed by this approach and so this question of measurement continues to be a crucial one for the field. Traditional Approaches to Social Identity Measurement and Their Limitations Historically, research has sought to get an empirical handle on social identity and social identification using Likert-type scales (Norman, 2010). For instance, respondents are asked to select a number on a scale to indicate how much they agree or disagree with a statement such as ‘I identify with Group X’ (e.g., Cameron, 2004; Doosje et al., 1995; Leach et al., 2008; Postmes et al., 2013). Yet while this has been a successful form of measurement and thus has been central to ongoing social identity enquiry, this approach typically involves the researcher specifying and labelling a group that a person may or may not see as relevant to themselves. For instance, depending on the research question, a researcher may ask a collection of first-year psychology students about the degree of identification they feel with fellow university students or with fellow psychology students. However, this pre-determination of group membership runs the risk of restricting (and sometimes biasing) a participant’s response. For instance, in an educational context, asking a student how much they identify with their university might produce a very different response to asking them about their level of identification with their subdiscipline. Or, alternatively, asking voters about their level of identification with a national political party (and thus inferring political orientation) might produce different results when compared to asking them about their political identification at a local, or regional level. Recognizing that social context is key to understanding outcomes, the assumptions

Social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections  89 embedded in this measurement approach may therefore limit the insight that can be gained into individuals’ psychology. To address this limitation, when measuring identities researchers need to recognize the subjective lens through which identities come to be real for perceivers. Without this fundamental first step – in which participants spontaneously define their relevant identities – the agency of participants may be compromised in ways that can skew the data that the process generates (Liu et al., 1999). Furthermore, full appreciation of a person’s subjective experience of their social identities needs to capture not only the various groups in their lives that give rise to these identities, but also the range of feelings they might have towards those groups. For here, research has shown that it is not just the presence (or absence) of groups that drives relevant outcomes, but also the qualitative nature of a person’s feelings towards those groups. For instance, an identity that is perceived to be important in a person’s life will have very different psychological impact if they feel (vs do not feel) a strong sense of belonging to the group. Here, then, a more psychologically valid approach to assessing social group membership would involve a person identifying the range and extent of their own group memberships, and then appraising these on different dimensions. For instance, they might indicate how positive they feel about a group, how much they feel they fit in with that group, or how much support they feel they receive from the group (Haslam et al., 2012, 2018). Although it is possible to ask these things using survey formats, a ‘group-listing’ approach can be time-consuming and burdensome for the survey-taker, and ultimately may fail to capture the full picture of a person’s sense of connection to the various groups that make up their social world. Finally, people tend to belong to many groups and to live out these memberships in a diverse set of contexts, and accordingly, it will often be the constellation of a person’s group memberships that researchers are interested in, rather than their level of identification with one single group. To understand self-esteem, for example, researchers may need to capture both the breadth of a person’s social identities, as well as the relationship between those different identities (Jetten et al., 2015). Not least, this is because research has shown that the extent of harmony between groups is predictive of increased well-being (Brook et al., 2008), while perceived incompatibility between group memberships has been shown to be associated with reduced well-being and poor adjustment (Haslam et al., 2021; Iyer et al., 2009). For example, research into addiction has shown that group incompatibilities can be highly problematic for recovery (Best et al., 2014). Speaking to the question of identity constellations, research into multiple group memberships has also demonstrated the dynamic nature of social identities, such that the impact of various groups can change depending on the range of groups present within the constellation (Doosje et al., 1995; Miller et al., 2009; Roccas, 2003). Providing people with a means of representing their own group memberships simultaneously – what these groups are, how they feel about them, and how they all fit together – is therefore a way for researchers and practitioners to ensure that they are engaging appropriately with the full range of social identities that matter in people’s lives.

SOCIAL IDENTITY MAPPING (SIM) As a way of addressing the foregoing issues, SIM has recently been developed to provide a means of representing and assessing the multiple groups memberships that people see as relevant to the self, and capturing their subjective experience of each of these on multiple

90  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations dimensions. SIM provides a visual platform – either in paper form or online – through which a person can name, depict and quantify their feelings towards their group-based identities, as well as the interrelationships between them (Bentley et al., 2020; Cruwys et al., 2016). Social mapping evolved within both organizational and clinical domains. SIM was initially deployed as part of ASPIRe – a social identity-informed model for identifying and utilizing social capital in organizations (Haslam et al., 2003; Peters et al., 2014). In this context, people’s maps were created on paper using pens and Post-It notes, and the activity was delivered as part of a facilitated process intended to provide insight for both the map-maker and researcher into workgroup identities. This same delivery was then developed further in the clinical domain where it was used as a tool to provide insight into group memberships in the context of health events (e.g., during rehabilitation after a stroke). Here the activity proved to be a useful way of measuring social changes over time, while the number of groups in people’s maps was also found to predict a range of important health and well-being outcomes (Haslam et al., 2008). Procedure SIM involves a person representing the various groups that exist in their world, reflecting on how important each one is to them, rating key features relevant to each group, and finally, assessing the quality of relationship between their groups. It is worth noting, however, that map-making is not a rigid process in which one stage must necessarily follow another. Indeed, the reflective nature of making a social identity map should encourage a participant to revisit groups, adjust ratings, and reposition relationships throughout the process. Nevertheless, a map is generally constructed in five steps. First, participants are instructed to think widely about all the different social group relationships they have in their life, and each one is represented as a separate entity in their map. Second, participants are asked to position the groups that are similar to each other close together, and those that are dissimilar further apart. Third, participants rate each group in terms of importance, and this is often visually depicted through size – where bigger is indicative of the group being more important in a person’s life. Fourth, participants are asked to reflect on – and rate – their feelings towards each of their groups. These ratings questions focus on key features underlying the experience of group membership. Working from a social identity evidence base – and particularly social identity research pertaining to health and well-being (SIAH; Haslam et al., 2018) – these questions often target such things as positivity (‘How positive do you feel towards this group?’), prototypicality (‘How representative or typical do you feel you are of this group?’), support (‘How much support do you receive from this group?’), and time spent (‘What percentage of an average month do you spend interacting with this group?’), with responses provided on a standard ten-point scale (Cruwys et al., 2013; Haslam et al., 2018; Jetten et al., 2009, 2012). This scale was chosen because of its intuitive appeal for users, as well as its capacity to provide the researcher with a more fine-grained level of analysis than, say, a one-to-five scale. Finally, participants are asked to consider and rate the level of compatibility or incompatibility between groups by drawing lines between them, with different types of lines representing different levels of compatibility, or incompatibility. As noted above, SIM can either be done manually with paper and Post-It notes (Cruwys et al., 2016), or digitally using the online social identity mapping tool (Bentley et al., 2020). In the sections below, we provide illustrative examples of each process.

Social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections  91 Paper-based Social Identity Mapping (pSIM) The paper-based social identity mapping process has been used in a number of research settings, but due to its manualized delivery format, it tends to be deployed in contexts in which there is human facilitation (e.g., as part of an intervention). In one recent example, it was used within a workplace as part of a leadership programme, in which team leaders invited no more than ten members of their team to come to a group workshop on the topic of connection in the workplace (5R Leadership programme: see Haslam et al., 2017 for more details). The sessions lasted for about an hour, and the team leader had organized to run the session in a room with large tables on which they had set up A3 pieces of paper and packs of different sized Post-It notes. Each person had a sheet of A3 paper, and the Post-It notes were used by participants to represent each of their different social groups. Each group was named on a single Post-It note, with different-sized notes used to represent different levels of group importance. See Figure 7.1 for an example of a paper-based social identity map. For the team leader to successfully guide their team through the activity, they had previously created their own map. This was important not only to familiarize facilitators with the process, but also to provide them with experience of the reflective nature of the activity as a basis for guiding team members through it. The team leader began the session by talking through their own social identity map. This allowed them to give general instructions, and for more complex points of reflection to be introduced with relatable real-world examples. For instance, in this case the team leader introduced the concept of compatibility between groups by talking about work meetings in which there may be complex and competing agendas between different groups in the organization. For ease of reference, the team leader wrote the mapping instructions on a whiteboard, using an annotated diagram to show how group ratings were to be written in each corner of the Post-It note. The general protocol is as follows: positivity (scored from 1, not at all positive, to 10, very positive) in the top left-hand corner; prototypicality (scored from 1, not at all typical, to 10, very typical) in the top right-hand corner; support (scored from 1, none, to 10, lots of support) in bottom right-hand corner; and percentage of time spent interacting with the group (scored from 0, no time, to 100, all the time)1 in the bottom left-hand corner. Team members were also provided with a diagram to illustrate the different lines used to represent the levels of compatibility between groups, with a smooth straight line representing compatibility, a wavy line representing a mix of compatibility and incompatibility, and a zig-zag line representing incompatibility. In the context of the 5R Leadership programme, the mapping activity was designed to be a key part of leaders’ development – giving them the opportunity to gain insight into their team’s level of group connectedness, as well as a medium through which they could facilitate discussion with their team members on issues related to social identity in the workplace. Such facilitated delivery of social identity mapping therefore represents both a form of quantitative data collection (capturing the number of groups, average group ratings, and proportion of compatible relationships between groups) and a reflective activity in which facilitators can also gather qualitative data and insight. In the context of 5R, this more reflective aspect of the mapping process can involve the facilitator (in this case the team leader) asking team members a range of questions about their maps. For example, which groups are important for you? Where do you get most of your support? How does this visualization compare to an organizational chart? Such questions encourage team members to reflect on their group life, and also to talk about the less obvious

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Note: The size of the Post-It notes represents perceived group importance, and group ratings are provided in each corner of the Post-It notes. The lines between groups represent subjective judgements of intergroup (in) compatibility, with smooth lines representing compatible relationships, wavy lines representing a mix of compatibility and incompatibility, and zig-zag lines representing incompatibility. In this particular map, there is strong evidence of incompatibility, and this seems to be more heavily present between the less important groups (the smaller Post-It notes). Further, there are a lot of less important groups, and these are all rated as providing low support. It is also worth noting that the groups that are rated high on positivity, support and prototypicality are the groups that this person does not report spending much time with.

Figure 7.1

An example of a social identity map

groups (e.g., an informal coffee group) that may nevertheless play a non-trivial role in shaping feelings of belonging in the workplace. In many cases, the session often concludes with a discussion about the changing nature of people’s maps – for instance, how a map might have looked a year ago, what brought about changes, and how people might want their maps to look in the future. The role of the facilitator has a significant bearing on the delivery of the mapping activity, and for this reason the execution of this role needs to be given careful consideration. For example, suggestions about which group memberships to consider need to be made lightly so as not to bias the ‘flavour’ of the maps. Team leaders may also consider running mapping sessions as a one-on-one activity rather than in a group, to allow for more focused attention, as well as to avoid possible peer biases. If appropriate, external consultants could also be deployed to run mapping activities, so long as they themselves are well versed in the task.

Social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections  93 Online Social Identity Mapping (oSIM)2 The online version of social identity mapping follows a very similar procedure to the paper-based version, except that it requires no facilitation by a researcher, clinician or team leader, and can be completed remotely – requiring only a computer, tablet or smartphone, and WIFI access. All guidance is provided via the on-screen interface, allowing oSIM to be automated and scalable, and to be embedded via a link in an email or as part of a survey. There are also a couple of additional features that have been built into oSIM. The first is that because the online version does not rely on the four corners of a Post-It notes to capture ratings, and questions can be extended to suit the research topic. For instance, in one recent study, oSIM was used to measure level of identification amongst student groups as they transitioned into university (Dingle et al., 2023). Students were asked to rate their groups in terms of positivity, prototypicality, support and time spent, but they were also asked to rate how aligned each group was with their educational goals, thus capturing a measure of alignment (or lack thereof) between groups and goals. Second, oSIM has the capacity to categorize groups. These categories are pre-populated within the design of the individual activity and allow researchers or practitioners to get a sense not only of what the groups in a person’s life are, but also what types of groups they are (which is sometimes hard to determine from the group name). The map-maker’s choice of category is then represented by the different shadings of the group circle (see Figure 7.2). For instance, a health researcher might be interested in whether groups are sedentary or physical, or an addiction researcher might be interested in the level of substance use in each of the groups (high, low, none). Finally, by virtue of being an automated online platform, oSIM provides real-time data output, both at an individual level and a group level. For instance, if using oSIM in an organizational context to track identity-related issues in new recruits, aggregated data from all new employees could be automatically calculated (e.g., the average number of workgroups on employment start; average levels of positivity for particular categories of group; the proportion of incompatible groups). oSIM can also be used for longitudinal data collection. For example, in the education study referred to above, students completed oSIM at three different timepoints: first, a couple of weeks before they arrived at university; second, a month after starting university; and third, at the end of the first semester. Here a link to oSIM was embedded within a survey, which was then emailed to students, and which they received course credit for completing. Given that an online map takes between five to ten minutes to create, it is recommended that – if embedding in a survey – the mapping task comes before the survey questions, thus ensuring any issues of survey fatigue do not impact on engagement with the mapping process. In this case, once students had created their social identity map, they were redirected back to a survey in which they were asked to respond to survey questions relating to learning attitudes, motivations and general well-being. For a visual example of an online social identity map, refer to Figure 7.2. Validation of Social Identity Mapping The psychometric properties of both the paper and online versions of social identity mapping have been validated in two separate programmes of research (Bentley et al., 2020; Cruwys et al., 2016). Across a range of populations, results from both these programmes have shown that the mapping process is perceived to have high usability, particularly as a means of representing one’s network of social group connections. For example, users indicated that it ‘allowed

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Note: Circle size represents importance, and the differently shaded lines between groups represent different levels of (in)compatibility.

Figure 7.2

Example of a person’s online social identity map, showing a mixture of friendship groups, family groups, work and activity groups (classified by shadings)

me to think about the different groups I belong to and the relationship between them, which in turn gave me a better understanding of my life’ (Bentley, Greenaway et al., 2023, n.p.). Both delivery methods have also been shown to have high internal consistency, such that key social identity variables that were captured by the mapping process (e.g., level of positivity and support) were appropriately interrelated. They also showed good convergent and discriminant validity, such that (1) the mapping variables correlated well with traditional measures of social identity; and (2) there were no systematic associations with age, gender, social desirability or extraversion. In terms of predictive utility, the output variables from both pSIM and oSIM were shown to be significantly associated with outcome measures related to well-being and psychological function. For example, results from five oSIM studies (Bentley et al., 2020) showed that a sense of connection to groups was positively associated with self-reported satisfaction with life, and negatively associated with depression, and its predictive power was further confirmed in a series of longitudinal studies. This was done by creating a higher-order group index from the meta-analytic results of all five studies. This index, which was referred to as a ‘supergroup’, was identified when a group scored above average on measures of positivity, prototypicality, support and compatibility (with other groups).3 This index was then used to

Social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections  95 predict positive outcomes over time. Amongst university students, supergroups were shown to predict greater intentions to study. For new mothers, supergroups predicted a sense of being positively attached to their child. And for retirees, the presence of supergroups predicted successful adjustment to retirement (Bentley et al., 2020). Applications of Social Identity Mapping The validation results described above speak not only to the predictive power of social identity mapping, but also to its ability to address a variety of different research topics. The validation studies themselves were run with a range of populations, from students to retirees to new mothers. Since being published, SIM has been used to examine issues of social identity in an even wider range of populations. For instance, Kyprianides and colleagues (2019) looked at the role of multiple group membership in the trajectory of ex-prisoners; Cascagnette and colleagues (2020) used mapping to measure group dynamics in the Nordic ski team; Conneely and colleagues (2021) examined identity change in psychosis; and Beckwith and colleagues used social identity mapping to explore addiction recovery pathways (Beckwith et al., 2019; Best et al., 2016). More recently still, oSIM has been deployed at scale within organizational contexts. For example, results from data collected with over 200 employees identified positive associations between oSIM variables and job satisfaction, and intention to stay in one’s job, and negative associations with workplace burnout (Bentley, Haslam et al., 2023a). Other research using social identity mapping in the workplace has looked at group dynamics related to leadership (Bentley, Haslam et al., 2023b), age-related stereotyping in the workplace (Von Hippel et al., 2023), career adjustment for elite athletes (Cascagnette et al., 2020), and creative and divergent thinking (Steffens, Gocłowska et al., 2016). Used at scale as a psychometric measurement device, oSIM can furnish researchers with rich and complex data sets. However, used in a more reflective capacity, social identity mapping can serve as an experiential activity for both the map-maker as well as those facilitating the process, whether team leaders, clinicians or other practitioners. This exploratory and reflective process can be highly effective as a stand-alone application, but it can also serve as an engaging and thought-provoking activity when deployed within an intervention context. This is because the mapping process allows map-makers not only to make connections between the quantity and quality of their social connections and various outcomes in their lives, but also to think through changes they might wish to make to their group memberships (e.g., by extending, reducing or adapting their existing group connections; Haslam et al., 2019). Indeed, this more reflective dimension of social identity mapping has formed part of a number of social identity-informed interventions in clinical, educational and organizational settings. Its strength lies in its capacity to allow participants to learn about the importance of social identity, and then to explore this idea and its implications in the context of their own lives. In a clinical setting, for example, pSIM forms a core part of the Groups 4 Health programme (Cruwys et al., 2022; Haslam et al., 2016, 2019), a fully manualized psycho-educational intervention that targets people experiencing loneliness and social isolation. The programme is based around five workshop modules, which are designed to improve outcomes by first explaining the influential role (both positive and negative) that group memberships can have in people’s lives, and then providing participants with the means – through mapping – to reflect on their own group memberships, and to plan ways to build and improve these.

96  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations The reflective nature of social identity mapping can also be harnessed in an online delivery. In this regard, oSIM forms a key part of Groups 4 Education, a preventative intervention designed to give students a social framework for reflecting on issues of learning and well-being (Dingle et al., 2023). Students arriving at university are often undergoing one of the biggest transitions of their lives, and this online programme uses the mapping process to allow them to visualize their groups as they currently are, and to think through how aligned these groups are (or are not) with their educational goals. Finally, and as described above, in the organizational domain, SIM forms an active part of the 5R Leadership programme (Haslam et al., 2017). In this, leaders are taken through a series of mapping activities that they subsequently run with their own team members. This can be done in groups using either the paper mapping process or using oSIM on tablets or laptops. In this way, the mapping process provides would-be leaders with the means to understand the subjective psychological realities of their teams, and then to leverage this understanding to promote team functioning. Practical Issues, Limitations and Advice When considering using social identity mapping, the first question is how best to deploy it – whether as a psychometric tool to collect quantitative data, as a one-on-one activity to gather qualitative data, or as part of an intervention in which both quantitative and qualitative data can be gathered. Answering this question largely depends on the context in which the tool is to be used and the purpose for which it is deployed (e.g., for research or applied purposes, to test a-priori hypotheses or conduct exploratory investigations, to engage with a large population or a small, facilitated sample). The next question is which version of SIM to use – the paper-based version or the online version. The online version can be used a part of any deployment. It is well suited to large-scale research and can be embedded in a survey, but it works equally well as a discussion starter (e.g., in a clinical or consultative context). It can also be used on a laptop or tablet device or a screen large enough to be shared. However, if the SIM context is a facilitated group setting, having people work on paper may be more conducive to a shared experience than having them work on individual screens. More generally, face-to-face facilitation, whether using the online tool or the paper-based version of mapping can be a powerful way of eliciting insight and/or discussion around the presence and impact of different groups in people’s lives, but it does bring with it the inevitability of human influence and potential bias. If this is a concern, the non-facilitated online delivery ensures consistency of participant experience. In terms of who can facilitate or lead a SIM activity, this can be done either by a clinician, a team leader or a consultant. Ultimately, anyone who has an appreciation of social identity processes, and has used SIM themselves, will be well placed to lead a mapping activity. In this regard, the need to have ‘done your own map’ is important. For it is not until someone has gone through the process themselves that they will be able to confidently answer other people’s questions about it. For instance, it is common to have questions such as ‘What is a group?’ and ‘What does it mean to rate my fit within a group?’ A facilitator will not be able to adequately (or authentically) answer these questions (and others) without having had first-hand experience of creating their own map as well as some understanding of the basic research underpinning the tool. Answers to these questions do, of course, vary as a function of context. For example, the question ‘What constitutes a group?’ warrants a different answer in the context of the workplace rather than the community. Ultimately, though, the power of

Social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections  97 the SIM process is precisely that it is a vehicle for capturing these nuances whilst rendering a subjective representation of people’s group-based identities, and for this reason, map-makers should always be encouraged to define groups as they see fit. Ultimately, whether for intervention, reflection or measurement-only purposes, SIM provides researchers and practitioners with a wealth of data. Generally speaking, this is a strength, but it can – under certain circumstances – also be a weakness. For when designing a mapping survey, crafting a mapping experience, or shaping a mapping intervention, it is tempting to assess every – and all – potential social identity dimension. Yet a kitchen-sink approach of this form, even when explicitly intended to be exploratory, can result in a great deal of data. This is particularly true if the mapping activity is deployed in combination with other forms of data collection. In this regard, there is no reason not to combine mapping with say, an interview process, but before deployment, attention should be paid to the wealth of data that will be generated and the need to curate this appropriately. When it comes to research design, to avoid both the pitfall of – at worst – a fishing expedition, or at best an impenetrable data set (Leung, 2011), there are two important stages to deploying social identity mapping. First and foremost, as with all research enquiry, adherence to a theoretically informed a-priori investigative framework is essential, providing evidence of replication within alternative populations, as well as potential to iteratively extend knowledge one question at a time (Haslam & McGarty, 2018; Rips, 1994). Second – and equally important – given the experiential nature of the process, it is often extremely valuable to pilot social identity mapping with target populations before full deployment. Arguably, this second phase should be included in all research endeavours, even the simplest of surveys, but this is particularly important with the mapping process. Here it is imperative to ensure that social identity mapping is properly introduced to participants, and that the concepts and terminology it entails are appropriate (Collins, 2003). For instance, as we have already noted, even the opening instruction ‘Map out the groups in your life’ warrants examination. What is a group? What about groups from my past? What about interpersonal relationships – are these groups? Answers to such questions will vary context by context, and no assumptions should be made. There will undoubtedly be different interpretations of the word ‘group’ in different cultural contexts, as well as for people at different stages of life (Chang et al., 2016; Steffens, Cruwys et al., 2016). And for many participants, navigating this question will not be something they will have had much experience with, so researchers will need to provide not only context-appropriate terminology, but also sign-posting – for instance, by providing examples of groups, or sharing a previously completed map (‘Here’s one I made earlier’; Stewart, 2014). Depending on the population and associated logistics, running mapping with a small, focussed pilot group will also ensure that all these issues are addressed, and that the theoretical question under investigation is targeted as forensically and effectively as possible. But this issue of ‘too much (or too little) information’ can also be problematic for the map-makers themselves. Being asked to think about the different groups in one’s life (or at work, at university, or your local community, etc.) can itself be challenging and sometimes provocative. If a person feels that they do not have that many groups, this activity risks creating a sense of further isolation. When delivered in a clinical intervention context, such as within the Groups 4 Health programme, these issues are dealt with sensitively within the design of the intervention and associated facilitation. But care must be also taken when it comes to online delivery of programmes, including those intended for general populations such as the Groups 4 Education programme. A key goal here is to provide map-makers with prior context about the

98  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations unique nature of maps, the importance of quality and not quantity, the fact that maps are never fixed in time but always changing, thus allowing the map-maker to explore their connections within a psychologically safe environment. Even when using SIM within a measurement-only context, these issues should not be overlooked. The job of good research design is not only to provide participants with the necessary introductions to the task, but also to be respectful of the quantity of information being asked of them. For a participant, thinking through their groups, then positioning them in terms of similarity and difference, answering questions about each of them, and then finally thinking through the issue of how compatible (or not) each group is with all other groups, can require a lot of application. For example, if one’s key research question is about compatibility of group memberships, then it would be wise not to ask the participants a battery of rating questions about each group before they arrive at the compatibility component of the activity. Also, as mentioned earlier, it is important to bear in mind where in a survey the mapping activity is situated. If it sits amidst a traditional survey, does it come first, last, or somewhere in the middle? Issues of survey fatigue are important to bear in mind here, as are demand characteristics (Haslam & McGarty, 2018). For instance, will making group membership salient first via a mapping activity impact on subsequent outcome measures (Adams & Umbach, 2012; Nichols & Maner, 2008)? Again, as already mentioned, the only way to be sure your mapping survey, experiment or intervention is set up correctly is to pilot it with your intended population (Collins, 2003).

CONCLUSION The need to understand the person in ‘their natural habitat’ – examining the self-in-situ – is of paramount importance when trying to understand and explain human behaviour. Ensuring that social contextual factors are accounted for is relevant not only for the validity of research (Jetten et al., 2022), but also for efforts to bridge the gap between theory and application. SIM provides a powerful tool for doing this. Used appropriately, the mapping process can facilitate a rich, in-depth and contextualized exploration of a person’s group-based affiliations and provide researchers and practitioners with an opportunity to explore the intricacies of social identification in ways not hitherto possible. SIM can be deployed as a stand-alone assessment instrument in the context of a survey or an experiment, or it can be integrated as an activity within a broader intervention. In this way, the process is characterized by a high level of adaptability, versatility, and breadth of application. This is especially the case when social identity mapping is deployed both as an investigative tool and as a potential source of solutions – as is increasingly the case in applied social identity research (Bentley et al., 2022; Haslam, 2014; Haslam et al., 2016, 2019).

NOTES 1. Depending on the context, this question may be asked in terms of how many days in the month are spent interacting with this group (scored from 0 through to 30). 2. More information about oSIM and how to access it can be found at https://​sign​.centre​.uq​.edu​.au/​ products​-services/​products/​social​-connection​-tool. Retrieved March 15, 2023.

Social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections  99 3. The authors also commented on the potential future use of an ‘infragroup’ concept – a group with below-average ratings on positivity, prototypicality, support and compatibility.

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Social identity mapping as a way of visualizing and assessing social group connections  101 component) model of in-group identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 144–165. Leung, K. (2011). Presenting post hoc hypotheses as a priori: Ethical and theoretical issues. Management and Organization Review, 7(3), 471–479. Liu, J. H., Wilson, M. S., McClure, J., & Higgins, T. R. (1999). Social identity and the perception of history: Cultural representations of Aotearoa/New Zealand. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29(8), 1021–1047. Miller, K. P., Brewer, M. B., & Arbuckle, N. L. (2009). Social identity complexity: Its correlates and antecedents. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12(1), 79–94. Nichols, A. L., & Maner, J. K. (2008). The good-subject effect: Investigating participant demand characteristics. The Journal of General Psychology, 135(2), 151–166. Norman, G. (2010). Likert scales, levels of measurement and the ‘laws’ of statistics. Advances in Health Sciences Education: Theory and Practice, 15(5), 625–632. Onorato, R. S., & Turner, J. C. (2004). Fluidity in the self-concept: The shift from personal to social identity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34(3), 257–278. Peters, K., Haslam, S. A., Ryan, M. K., & Steffens, N. K. (2014). To lead, ASPIRe: Building organic organizational identity. In S. Otten, K. van der Zee & M. B. Brewer (Eds.), Towards inclusive organizations: Determinants of successful diversity management at work (pp. 87–107). Psychology Press. Postmes, T., Haslam, S. A., & Jans, L. (2013). A single-item measure of social identification: Reliability, validity, and utility. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52(4), 597–617. Rips, L. J. (1994). The psychology of proof: Deductive reasoning in human thinking. MIT Press. Robert, J. S., Elena, L. G., & Donald, A. B. (2001). The predictive value of IQ. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 47(1), 1–41. Roccas, S. (2003). The effects of status on identification with multiple groups. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33(3), 351–366. Spears, R., Jetten, J., & Scheepers, D. (2002). Distinctiveness and the definition of collective self: A tripartite model. American Psychological Association. Steffens, N. K., Cruwys, T., Haslam, C., Jetten, J., & Haslam, S. A. (2016). Social group memberships in retirement are associated with reduced risk of premature death: Evidence from a longitudinal cohort study. BMJ Open, 6(2). Retrieved March 17, 2023 from https://​bmjopen​.bmj​.com/​content/​bmjopen/​ 6/​2/​e010164​.full​.pdf Steffens, N. K., Gocłowska, M. A., Cruwys, T., & Galinsky, A. D. (2016). How multiple social identities are related to creativity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(2), 188–203. Stewart, K. (2014). Here’s one I made earlier: The development and communication of ancient medical scientific theories through analogy and demonstration [Unpublished conference paper]. University of Exeter. Tajfel, H. (1972). Social categorization. In S. Moscovici (Ed.), Introduction à la psychologie sociale (Vol. 1, pp. 272–302). Larousse. Tajfel, H. (1978). Differentiation between social groups: Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations (Vol. 14). Academic Press. Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1(2), 149–178. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole Pub. Co. Turner, J. C. (2010). Towards a cognitive definition of the social group. In J. C. Tajfel (Ed.), Social identity and intergroup relations (pp. 15–40). Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison de Sciences de l’Homme (Original work published 1982). Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Blackwell. Turner, J. C., & Oakes, P. J. (1989). Self-categorisation theory and social influence. In P. B. Paulus (Ed.), Psychology of group influence (2nd ed., pp. 233–278). Lawrence Erlbaum. Turner, J. C., Oakes, P. J., Haslam, S. A., & McGarty, C. (1994). Self and collective: Cognition and social context. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(5), 454–463.

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PART III ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS

8. Netnography: a route to explore identity evolution as online videogames develop Alexandra Samper-Martínez and Ercilia García-Álvarez

INTRODUCTION From the rise of social media platforms and co-created online social spaces – such as social network sites (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), wikis, blogging, forums, fan pages, podcasts and videocasts, streaming sites (YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo, etc.), virtual worlds and gaming – ‘the presentation of self’ (Goffman, 1959) and its construction have resulted in a central academic debate beyond other utilitarian views of the online social infrastructure such as the search for information, knowledge co-creation and community building (Costello et al., 2017). Hence, the formation of online social identities and their development have received continuous attention from scholars dedicated to qualitative empirical research (e.g., Lewis & Fabos, 2005) and specifically from ethnographic researchers of online communities, understood as social groups actively participating in a shared online experience diasporically organized in the physical realm (Kozinets & Kedzior, 2009; Domingo, 2016; Robertson, 2017; Udenze & Ugoala, 2019). The digitalization of offline contexts, as well as the materialization of online ones (García-Álvarez et al., 2012), gave rise to new social spaces enabling the virtualizing and de-virtualizing of social identities (Baycroft, 2004; Kaplánová, 2017) – that is, (1) turning identities into something expressed through digital media, opening up the possibility of ‘disembodying’ the offline self (identity based on the individual’s physical and natural traits, such as race or gender); and (2) revealing to the offline social environment traits developed in online settings to finally transform social identities into a continuum based on roles, behaviours, performances or pleasures expressed in online and offline spaces (Miller & Slater, 2002). In this chapter, we introduce netnography, a methodology originally conceived of for the ethnographic study of online communities and cultures, which has gradually been configured as a methodology especially suitable to studying social identities on the Internet (e.g., Costello, 2009; Zhao et al., 2015) and in intertwined (both online and offline) experiential contexts (e.g., Aldred, 2010; Gretzel, 2017). We also provide an example to illustrate its application and, finally, we offer a critical assessment.

NETNOGRAPHY Netnography (Kozinets, 2010) is ‘a new qualitative research methodology that adapts ethnographic research techniques to the study of cultures and communities emerging through electronic networks’ (Kozinets, 2002, p. 62) and ‘a specific set of related data collection, analysis, ethical, and research practices’ (Kozinets, 2015, p. 79). It has many names and sometimes there are differences regarding the approach, among which are: virtual ethnography (Hine, 104

Netnography: a route to explore identity evolution as online videogames develop  105 2000); online ethnography (Markham, 2005); cyber-ethnography (Ward, 1999); and connective ethnography (Dirksen et al., 2010). Netnography has been a substantially used methodology in different fields for the last two decades, such as marketing (e.g., Abutaleb et al., 2021; Kozinets & Handelman, 1998), business (e.g., Chan & Li, 2010; Nelson & Otnes, 2005), psychology (Schuman et al., 2019; Wang, 2019) and even game studies (e.g., Lindtner & Dourish, 2011; Wang et al., 2017). The method has also been a tool for researchers in the study of social self-presentation, both in contexts where the physical space deployed identity could be fully anonymized (like in certain multiplayer online games), as well as in those contexts where the presentation of the social self is blurred between the online and offline space (e.g., Gretzel, 2017; Rybas & Gajjala, 2007). Although the methodology has derived from ethnography, the specific data-collection strategies are not necessarily a direct adaptation of those generally used in classical ethnography, as the media enable, for example, the gathering of textual data from conversations where the researcher has not necessarily been synchronously co-located (Ardèvol et al., 2003). However, the result of the methodological design resonates perfectly. Field definition (spaces to gather data), research scope (number of communities investigated, size or even research duration), data-gathering techniques (whether it involves visual, audible or textual data) and analysis procedures (thematic analysis, discourse analysis, colour analysis, etc.) depend on the data-collection strategies (see below) and the research object (Costello et al., 2017). Nevertheless, Kozinets (2002) set out some research steps as follows: research planning, entrée, data collection, data analysis, ethical standards and research representation. As a rule of thumb, netnography involves prolonged immersion in an online community until the fieldwork begins to reveal a reality known to the participants but unknown to someone else (Miller & Slater, 2002). The emphasis is on the interpretation and dense description of the social world or the object of study instead of universal truths (Emerson et al., 1995). Thus, immersion should be maintained until the researcher reports data saturation (Fusch & Ness, 2015), which is when the researcher identifies themselves as a researcher – the covert identity (Calvey, 2017). This is an ethical requirement in order to meet the quality standards of netnography (Kurikko & Touminen, 2012). Community immersion, or entrée, implies the netnographer gaining access to the field (Garcia et al., 2009) and forging links with individuals in the community (Ardèvol et al., 2003; Casanovas-Romeu, 1998). This process in the study of social identities usually leads to choosing between two main data-collection strategies: (1) a discourse-centred strategy where the field of study is defined as a specific online context (suitable when semiotics or a particular trait of the social identity is the object of study); or (2) a multimodal, and usually multisited (Marcus, 1995), approach focused on the co-construction of the social self through online and/ or offline interactions (Georgalou, 2014). The latter would imply combining data-gathering methods that involve (a) autoethnographic documentation to evaluate subjectivity; and (b) generating textual and visual data, collected as a result of the observation of other individuals’ subjectivities (Rybas & Gajjala, 2007). With regard to the latter, it is also essential to (3) establish a dialogue through, for example, personal interviews or focus groups to facilitate the explicit expression of meanings, previous experiences or emotions that are not directly expressed through in-context interactions (Emerson, 2009). Discussion around what netnography should include is continuously taking place in the academic realm, and thus some substantial consideration has been given to principles of netnography. On the one hand, in 2015, Kozinets pointed to two significant principles applying

106  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations to netnographies (1) netnographies involve a substantial amount of online-originated data; and (2) netnographies address specific ethical issues derived from the application of online media research methods (e.g., related to privacy, permissions, revealing the researcher’s identity, etc.). On the other hand, researchers reviewing the progress of its use suggest the participatory nature of the method, although passive data-gathering techniques (as observation) might be used (Costello et al., 2017).

ILLUSTRATION/APPLICATION In our case study (García-Álvarez et al., 2017), netnography was configured to analyse a community of videogame players of Restaurant City through Facebook, as it was the first game genre of its kind played online with others from the offline space. The game was about managing your restaurant in a street comprising your Facebook acquaintances also playing the same game, and the more you collaborated through interactions with other players, the better your restaurant was. Player interactions and the configuration and evolution of their identities in and around the gameplay experience featured in the key results of our research. Thus, this research analyses the development of online social identities against the background of their own identity construction in the offline environment, when interacting with a key group of players, and the reinforcement of the superfan identity when interacting with the international gaming community enrolled in other online shared social spaces related to the gaming experience (e.g., forums, blogs, wikis, fan pages, etc.). Following a constructionist approach, we adopt a micro-social perspective that focuses on the ability of the person to negotiate subject positioning within interactions. However, the nature of the social and cultural interaction is altered by the specific characteristic and rules of the technology adopted. In this vein, netnography is better suited than ethnography due to the relevance of dealing with a technological culture and additional identities – that is, pseudonymous and anonymous ones. At the same time, access to relevant social forums is easy and the nature and quantity of data gathered in this online social world transforms data collection and analysis. These differences in culture, communications and researchers’ interactions would hinder a conventional ethnographic approach. With regard to our study, as it was part of a broader research academic project on technology and culture cross-fertilization and its impacts, the main objective was to describe the co-creation (between users, and between users and companies) of the social experience of playing a social network game from the players’ point of view (e.g., Järvinen, 2009; Lee & Wohn, 2012). Therefore, that netnography was a key option was also due to the nature of the players’ interaction space (which occurred both online and offline). Although our approach focused on the object of study rather than the subject (Hine, 1998), the management of the combined individuals’ social identities (both online and offline) was undoubtedly one of the most relevant issues that emerged from the data. Thus, primary and secondary data were obtained where the interaction took place – that is, both in online and offline contexts (Garcia et al., 2009; Isabella, 2007). The study was conducted over a three-year period and involved two stages (see Table 8.1). The longitudinal character of the study, the variety of sources and the subsequent data comparison and contrast, allowed us to fully understand the context and observed behaviours. During the first stage, we studied the social and cultural mechanisms at play in the interactions

Netnography: a route to explore identity evolution as online videogames develop  107 of a small community of 38 participants in the Facebook game (e.g., we found that what was of value for the participants in order to be highly regarded and to climb the social hierarchy was to be well-ranked in the game rankings but also generous in their exchanges and gifting activities). During the second stage, we covered the players’ reactions to a larger company (Electronic Arts) acquiring the small game development studio (Playfish), and the sudden and unexpected closure of the online game after a period of struggle for the gaming community, where company’s internal changes affected the gameplay experience and the social dynamics in the official forum and fan page. Collecting user–user and user–company interactions in moments of conflict was relevant as this is when social orders, relationships and identities are challenged (Emerson, 2009). Therefore, the first stage involved studying the evolution of a specific gaming community. To do so, we had to assign a researcher (in-house researcher, part of the research team, the netnographer), to be immersed in the gaming community. She already had mutual connections made through Facebook. The process of the so-called entrée involved creating a virtual restaurant to be managed in the game simulator. The main social activity implied her interaction within the small world (Kirman, 2010) of Facebook connections she built in different offline contexts by exchanging in-game ingredients, tips and mutual care. Her social bonds were reinforced by sharing a social leisure activity, likes and generosity. After the entrée, she collected data through an intense participant-observation process and an online focus group with players. For the observation and participation data-gathering phase, to track interactions and changes in the players’ social identities, we decided to use different data-collection instruments: (1) a daily record of interactions between the players online and offline (although most of the online/offline interactions were textually recorded – that is, date, hour, description of the interaction – the online ones were accompanied by in-game screenshots); (2) an autoethnographic field notebook (where the netnographer textually explained her own perceptions on the whys and hows of the registered interactions) (Atkinson and Hammersley, 1994); and (3) an asynchronous online focus group comprising six more experienced players of the game community, and taking place during 14 days intermittently participated in by all the informants and our netnographer in a private group in Facebook (Morgan, 1996). Before the focus group took place, we reached data saturation from the participant observation from the other two data-gathering methods. At this point, the netnographer revealed her researcher identity, covert until then, to the community of players and we subsequently asked permissions for data usage. In the second stage, we recorded the general gaming community reactions to the Playfish acquisition and subsequent closure of the game, until data saturation. In this stage, we focused on the online field and a total of 5692 comments were collected from the official fan page and 9109 from the official forum (made available by the company), as well as from other sites created by users (forums, blogs, wikis and a tribute game). In this phase, the researcher’s identity was also covert and subsequently revealed to ask for permission to use data once they were collected. Other secondary textual data, such as activity reports, specialized press news, blogs, online events and offline participation in conferences of the videogame industry, were essential to follow the evolution of the case. Results were achieved through a content analysis of the gathered qualitative data and managed using the open-access computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software EdEt (Editor for Ethnographers,1 designed for ethnographic research). For the triangulation and the qualitative content analysis2 (Mayring, 2000), we adopted a hybrid inductive-deductive coding

108  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Table 8.1

Stages, data set, methods and research outcome

Stages

Media

Method

Length

Participants

Output

First

Game, Facebook

Entrée

A year and

38 players

Immersion

13 days

38 players

Daily record

a half

Second

Game, Facebook and

Observation

offline

Participation

Facebook private group

Focus group

14 days

6 key informants

Interview

Game, Facebook and

Change registering and

3 years

6 key informants and

Weekly record and

offline

mailing

game community

field notebook

Official forum, fan page

Observation

A month and

N/A.a 9109 comments Daily record

and blog

Participation

a half

from official forum,

Field notebook

Field notebook

5692 comments from fan page and blog changes Unofficial sites created by

Observation

N/A. Participant users Field notebook

users (forums, blogs, wikis) First and

Specialized press

second

News and reviews

5 years

N/A. Authors

News compilation

N/A. Developers and

Field notebook

gathering Industry fairs

Physical and digital presence in fairs, informal

4 years

publishers

conversations

Note: a. N/A = not applicable, that is, those specific parts of the methodology where the number of comments, participants, authors, and so on, are not qualitatively relevant.

strategy, allowing data categories to emerge but coding from a first codebook based on the research questions themselves and the theoretical insights on virtual communities (Kozinets, 2002, 2010). Some categories and codes were directly related to identity development – for example, ‘creation of social identities’, ‘social roles’ and ‘loss of social identities’. Other categories and codes were transversally related to identities, such as meanings attributed to participation or offline bonding – for example, ‘generous’, ‘competitive’, ‘unexpected’. Continuous thematic content comparison, interpretation of code interrelations and overlapping of the themes (Guest et al., 2012) and the possibility to assign quotes to informants, allowed us to track certain challenges and changes in gamers’ identities. The verification strategy followed to ensure both reliability and validity of data rigour in data collection and analysis phases considered (1) data saturation; (2) data triangulation; and (3) the continuous process review by an expert researcher in qualitative data analysis (in-house researcher, part of the research team) (Flick, 2007; Morse et al., 2002). This procedure ensured the abstraction and decontextualization of the netnographer’s memory. Results The results revealed that the relationship between social spaces and the expression of the players’ social identities were developed where the leisure experience of playing social network games was lived (both in online and offline contexts). Social network games were the first genre of their kind that provided new social spaces allowing one to de-virtualize stigmatized traits of oneself and having a direct impact on the way people relate to each other and the way they present themselves in the day-to-day social arena. It means that, by opting for

Netnography: a route to explore identity evolution as online videogames develop  109 a multi-sited approach (Hine, 1998; Marcus, 1998), it has been possible for us to observe the construction of a changeable identity (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2002). In our case, the player’s social identity is observed and projected in the offline world, the game itself (in-game communication) and in any other place in the network where social interaction related to the leisure experience took place (off-game) (Isabella, 2007). Robert Kozinets, the father of contemporary netnography (1998), applauded our work (Kozinets, 2017). The starting leisure experience was a social game played with ‘friends’ who had previously been added to Facebook. Thus, the non-anonymous character or, as Zhao et al. (2008, p. 1818) called it, the ‘nonymous’ character of the gaming space, played a crucial role in the development of identities within the game. To date, since games enabled perfect anonymity, digital games served as a working artefact for the construction from scratch of a virtual identity based on the anonymous ‘ideal self’. For example, ‘gender-switching’ among men has been observed to be common in games such as the well-known World of Warcraft as a matter of ‘strategic selection of available multi-modal codes’ (Martey et al., 2014, p. 286). However, when social network games appeared, they were produced for the mass audience, a ‘nonymous’ space where the ‘hoped-for possible self’ (the ‘self’ that wants to be shown in society) was displayed, but due to contextual or personal conditioning, it is difficult to display this in the day-to-day social arena (Grasmuck et al., 2009, p. 158). In-game players’ social identities were expressed through the restaurants’ chosen aesthetics, the ranking of the players’ restaurants’ performance and the way players managed social interactions (García-Álvarez et al., 2017). For example, as one informant stated during the focus group: ‘The [restaurant’s] decor is a reflection of your own personality, when you set up the premises according to your own tastes’. This revealed, through players’ creations and social interactions, certain identity traits or interests hidden by their real-life selves, and until then stigmatized, to friends, acquaintances and relatives. Thus, the social game space became a context where the player could deploy the configuration of an identity to its maximum, without some of the social barriers established by the offline world, but also playing with the fact that the social community comprised players meeting in the offline realm (Evans et al., 2013; Goffman, 1959). Off-game communication also reinforced social ties, as long as players could share their love for a videogame and shared the experience with day-to-day acquaintances who were aware of the in-game identity traits. As mentioned in this field note, our netnographer observed that some relationships in the offline world were reinforced: ‘the personal relationship we have, Claudia and I, has been enriched by the social interaction encouraged by this game, since we share leisure time online and we have something more to talk about, something in common, when we meet in our offline life’. Even more, during the first stage of the research, we focused on the online identity configured in relation to the interactions in the game and the previous relationships in the offline context but, in the second stage of our research, we discovered that the identity linked to the game itself was increased by the players’ construction and interactions in other parts of the Internet. That is, players also interacted through forums, fan pages and other digital spaces created by the fanbase where they could expose their in-game identities and connect and develop their ‘superfan side’. For example, players usually shared key information to progress in the game in order to help out newbies and climb the social hierarchy in the forums by showing their expert side, posting pictures of game recipes they tried to cook in the offline world to display other abilities before the gaming community, creating fan art contests and participating in them to become recognized as good artists, and

110  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations so on. Online and offline social networks were developed that configured relevant support of the in-game identity. The business decision to close the game and the insufficient compensation mechanisms offered to the player base caused conflicts with the company, as the latter was not able to identify the relevance of the constructed identities’ sense of loss and also the loss of the specific audiences before whom they had been built. As it was expressed in a forum: ‘I will sadly miss this game, its [sic] the only reason I came to facebook [sic], and for my friends, now what???? Restaurant City loose [sic] all my friends…’. This would later be proportional to the sense of personal loss when the company closed the game, tangible, for example, as some players proposed boycotting other Electronic Art games to halt the process of shutting the researched game down. The company did not ignore the community and offered some in-game compensation in other games of the Playfish brand, but did not identify that it was not only a game to some but there was personal investment in the construction of concrete identities tailored to specific contexts, in addition to representing a space within which to develop strongly consolidated relationships.

CRITICAL ASSESSMENT Netnography, in contrast with other more rigid methods, allows researchers some flexibility, yet adaptations should be carefully chosen. On the one hand, netnography allows freely managing the relationship between the field of study and the method (Hine, 2000; Ruhleder, 2000). Nevertheless, the identification of new and varied sources of data specific to each context could be challenging. For example, we decided to arrange the asynchronous focus group in a private group on Facebook, as the idea is to take advantage of the sociotechnical possibilities offered by the environment where the interaction takes place (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994; Morgan, 1996). However, informants’ reaction times were varied and it took a call to action by mentioning specific people in the posts, so they receive a notification and returned to the conversation. Netnography thus requires adapting and using adequate tools and techniques to guarantee accurate data management, including the analysis of a huge volume of diverse and complex information. On the other hand, the flexible nature of the netnographic design was revealed as key to our study. In terms of our research, it produced hidden social identity construction/de-construction results that were not obvious on first sight, as individuals chose to show certain traits of their social identities depending on the context and situation. However, as online communities do not offer stable conditions, as the physical restraints of some natural social contexts do, they are transformed and mixed. It implies a continuous adaptation of the time necessary for data collection, the description of the field or even the research questions until theoretical saturation is reached (Kozinets, 2010). Finally, the adaptation and questioning of the role of the ethnographer, even relating to its ethical aspect, during observation and interaction with the online community, is also required. For example, when the epistemological approach involves collecting data generated or created by the online user, as the digital environment is a changing context in terms of adapting disciplinary expectations and depending on institutional agreements (Beaulieu & Estalella, 2012), there is room for continuous adaptation and updating of this debate when planning

Netnography: a route to explore identity evolution as online videogames develop  111 the approach to the field. Even so, junior researchers might benefit from reflecting on the unforeseen. Some other considerations related to appropriate researcher’s identity practices deserve critical attention. For example, to obtain the informed consent for the data from the participant observation, the covert netnographer’s researcher identity is usually revealed. Informed consent is then requested, and anonymity is guaranteed. In our case, during the first wave of data collection and before organizing the asynchronous focus group with key players from the gaming community, the investigative identity was revealed and the purpose of the study was reported, guaranteeing the anonymity of the social gaming group and obtaining consent from all informants. However, during the second data-collection wave, involving collecting the comments available on the fan pages, forums and other websites (before revealing the researcher’s identity and, therefore, the phase of obtaining permissions), we used open-source software for the web content downloading. An official forum user noticed that the netnographer’s profile had become exceptionally active, warning community managers and other users of this anomaly. This situation meant that the phase in which the netnographer’s identity is revealed had to be brought forward, as well as revealing the purpose of the study and the request for informed consent. Although forums, fan pages, and so on are places of public meeting and discussion, the explicit use of data can be regulated either (1) formally and explicitly, such as through ‘Terms of Use’; or (2) informally or implicitly, such as through ‘netiquette’3 rules or tacit social norms of the community itself. In this way, the methodological planning that precedes the collection of data must go through a process of disambiguation of the space privacy (Markham & Buchanan, 2012), which can mean adapting to formal and informal rules of the agents who not only hold tenure of the online space but also of those that inhabit it. Regarding anonymity in online social spaces, when research results are being exposed or published, it should be considered that although nicknames are created by users to protect offline identities, online identities exist through those nicknames (Zhou et al., 2021), and so they should be also preserved. Furthermore, the relationship between privacy and data collection, processing and use has been recognized by the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) as specific ethical points of tension in research conducted mainly on the Internet (Cilliers & Viljoen, 2021; Markham & Buchanan, 2012). For example, even when consent is obtained, researchers should take decisions on preserving intimacy when it could somehow be harmful to informants (Calvey, 2017). This question is, without any doubt, useful to establish before initiating data collection and we encourage previewing, researching and correctly planning the ethical aspects in the application of the method. All ethnographic and netnographic research processes should not lack participation (Beaulieu, 2004), and in doing so, the researcher should reflect on the background, histories and social identities that the participants of the community or culture would bring to the field (Driscoll & Gregg, 2010). This could be of critical importance to those netnographies exploring the intersection of offline/online identities, as long as one has full or partial correspondence with the other. In anonymous online contexts, where the researcher can play with character creation, the investment by the netnographer in becoming immersed can be fully planned and decided. The researcher’s profile to become immersed in communities built at the offline/ online intersection should be just appropriate to warrant a functional engagement. Moreover, researchers should take decisions on when a more unobtrusive vs an ‘effective ethnographic presence’ is required (Hine, 2008, p. 265).

112  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Limits Although it is not always openly recognized, many ethnographic approaches are ‘defined largely by symbolic interactionist principles’ (Pawluch et al., 2005, p. 3). From a symbolic interactionist perspective, as well as from a social constructionist perspective, identity is not solely a matter of cognition but also a product of our relationship with society (Kaplánová, 2017). This suggests that individuals should take specific actions to create and maintain identities in relation to others. We used the netnographic method from a symbolic interactionist perspective, while creating, developing and trying to maintain an identity through interaction with the social community of play, and it made perfect sense to look at identity from the standpoint of social identity theory. However, ethnography’s flexible nature would include the need to look at the researched phenomena from an etic and/or emic perspective, and so, other theoretical perspectives of identity (like identity theory, functionalist/conflict approaches, etc.) might be considered as applicable approaches for future research to test it in this regard (Boellstorff et al., 2012; Horst et al., 2012). To carry out a netnography, even when researchers try to plan a research strategy, the time needed until completion is unknown. On the one hand, while observation and non-participatory data-gathering methods are part of the nature of netnography, as previously mentioned, netnographers’ immersion and participation are claimed to be a necessary part of the methodology to call it as such, as a growing standard for scholars (Kozinets, 2015). Therefore, it requires the active engagement of at least one researcher, which is time-consuming if they have not already gained access to the field. On the other hand, the qualitative data-gathering phase should also take as much time as needed until data saturation or until new data gathered do not report any new information. The aim of this is to ensure content validity (Fusch & Ness, 2015). Finally, content gathering implies informed consent by potential informants, who might choose not to be included, except in contexts of fleeting participation and which imply a low risk for informants (Hine, 2008). Generally, as the use of netnography involves qualitative data gathering from different sources for its subsequent triangulation or data comparison (as a matter of rigour), a large corpus of data should be managed for analysis and the use of software for data handling is highly recommended. Even though computer-assisted qualitative data analysis systems have evolved, both in terms of their technical and economic conditions, software features should be considered by researchers to fulfil the specific requirements during analysis.

CONCLUSIONS As online social sites begin to grow and as long as they keep doing so, there will be a need for qualitative social scientists to observe, analyse and share descriptive or analytical outputs on how individuals behave in new online contexts. The netnographic approach has been revealed to be especially useful when the objects of study are social identities constructed through social interactions in the online context. Accordingly, netnography would be a methodology especially suited for constructivist or interactionist perspectives on identities. Even more so, the theoretical approach to identities, whether they are explored from a cognitive or a social perspective, could lead to success of the methodological application.

Netnography: a route to explore identity evolution as online videogames develop  113 The method is flexible in its nature, and thus it allows the gathering of data where the interaction takes place. The latter made the method particularly useful for our research due to the fact that social identities were constructed for the observed community of play where the interaction related to the gaming experience took place, so they were not tied to a single online/ offline space. However, a rigorous approach to the method has its demands. Thus, it requires detailed planning, taking into special consideration the researcher’s role. In this regard, the method implies planning, to carry out the researcher’s entrée, to decide data-gathering procedures, to consider choices concerning the field, scope, types of data needed, and which ethical issues should be considered (e.g., issues about privacy, permissions, and adequate presentation of the researcher’s role). In the end, depending on the latter, it would be necessary to take decisions on the analysis techniques and software to handle data. For a full, engaged and embedded understanding of the context and object of study, at least one researcher should participate as it is a key element to ensure they have an active role. Usually, a reasonable amount of time for immersion, data-gathering and reaching saturation, as well as for the analysis, should be considered. In relation to the amount of time to be scheduled, the methodology, as with other methodologies, requires exploration from different fields of study and perspectives; therefore, methodological considerations could arise as its use progresses, and time for contingencies should also be considered. All the above is of special relevance due to the fact that an uncertain amount of time needed to apply the method might not match research agendas. Finally, netnography should be considered among other methodologies as a tool to achieve a research aim or objective. In our case, we opted for netnography because of its flexible nature, and it allowed us to study the co-creative social experience of play and the evolution of social identities of participants as the videogame life cycle evolved. Therefore, netnography has been a route for us to achieve our research objective.

NOTES 1. 32-bit version. Available at: http://​www​.etnologia​.uw​.edu​.pl/​edet. Retrieved January 20, 2015. 2. Qualitative content analysis allows the division of textual and visual content into analytical units (categories and codes). The codification process allows the codification of explicit and implicit (or latent) content to identify central topics. Categories and codes are revised in a constant loop. The inter-code reliability is estimated by trained members of the project team (Mayring, 2000). 3. General rules of behaviour on the Internet.

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9. Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research Elham Moonesirust

INTRODUCTION Identity is the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ and by implication ‘How should I behave in this specific situation?’. It is the ‘dialectic of question and answer, self and context’ (Murphy, 2007, p. 42) and has been referred to as ‘the meanings that individuals reflexively attach to themselves’ (Brown, 2015, p. 23). These meanings and meaning-makings are shaped within a historical, social and spatial context, as Giddens underlines: ‘self-identity is continuity (across time and space) as interpreted reflexively by the agent’ (1991, p. 53). Hence, in line with what Berger and Luckmann (1967, p. 195) once said, identity ‘remains unintelligible unless it is located in a world’. To understand how this ‘location in the world’ occurs in the process of identity construction, this chapter introduces and examines mobile interviewing as a qualitative research method that helps evaluate how individuals comprehend and engage with their social and material environments in everyday life and how this influences their identity formation. Mobile interviewing is a qualitative research method in which the researcher embarks on a tour, either on foot or using a vehicle together with one or more participants while conducting an interview. The tour, being participant-guided, is conducted in local spaces, making this method of data collection highly sensitive to the local context of participants (Block et al., 2019; Garcia et al., 2012). As a relatively new research method in social sciences, mobile interviewing is an innovative data collection approach that helps create a ‘situated’ form of talking about the matter under investigation (Brown & Durrheim, 2009). As such, this type of interviewing ‘brings to the foreground some of the…reflexive aspects of [individuals’] lived experience as grounded in place’ (Kusenbach, 2003, p. 456), and how they make sense of the self by drawing on physical and social aspects of place (Carpiano, 2009). The advancement of mobile methodologies is a result of increasing attention to the place-relevant contexts (which, borrowing from scholars, such as Anderson (2004), I refer to as ‘platial’ contexts in this chapter) and their significance in the forming of people’s understandings, emotions, values and sense of who they are. Such emphasis on the importance of place is reminiscent of Aristotle’s remark that ‘“everything is somewhere and in place”, and if this is true “the power of place will be a remarkable one”’ (Casey, 2000, p. 184). Hence, these methodologies, and in particular mobile interviewing, are argued to be most beneficial for the type of research that highlights the role of place in the fluid interdependence of life experiences, society and individuals’ meaning-making (Anderson, 2004; Sheller & Urry, 2006). Various forms of mobile interviewing have been already used in social sciences, humanist geography and health sciences. Despite this, interviews, as one of the most common qualitative data collection methods in organization studies (Atkinson & Silverman, 1997; Silverman, 2001, 2013), and in particular in identity research, are still largely regarded as static. The importance of the context in which individuals live and make sense of the self in studies of 117

118  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations identity highlights the benefits of attention to the methodological merit of place or the specific ‘world’ (Berger & Luckmann, 1967) where research participants form their identities. Given the emphasis of mobile interviewing on the significance of place and the possibilities that it presents to unveil various aspects of place and their influence on individuals’ identity construction, this chapter calls for a greater appreciation of mobile interviewing as a research method for identity studies. In what follows immediately after this introductory section, the chapter provides the background to mobile interviewing and explores the key issues in the development and design of such interviews. It then moves on to discuss the advantages and relevance of mobile interviewing for studies of identity as a data collection method and provides empirical data to illustrate how this has been applied in different cases. The chapter concludes with a critical evaluation of the method.

THE BACKGROUND TO MOBILE INTERVIEWING Mobile interviewing is a relatively new research method originating in ethnography, anthropology and the humanistic tradition of geography. It has been developed at the intersection of the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller & Urry, 2006) and the ‘spatial turn’ in social sciences (Anderson & Jones, 2009). It is the result of increasing attention to the site of data collection as political and meaning-laden as well as mobilities of life in the contemporary era. As such, scholars have underlined the importance of the place of data collection and have tried to harness its potentials in generating knowledge that is produced in the interview (see Evans & Jones, 2011; Hyams, 2000). For example, Anderson and Jones (2009), interviewed young people in different places, such as their classrooms, school store-cupboards, and teenage ‘hang-outs’, to highlight the role of the place of data collection on the different types of knowledge produced at the site of interview. In other instances, feminist academics have chosen the space of domestic homes as the field in which to interview women. By doing so, on the one hand, they have challenged the masculinist assumption that the household is an exclusively private sphere. On the other, they have undermined the traditional power dynamics between the researcher and the researched in that the ‘home’ as the territory of the researched brings into play relations of power rooted in the platiality of the subject, influencing the knowledge generated in the interview (Oberhauser, 1997). Moreover, theories, such as Bauman’s (2000) ‘liquid modernity’ have been developed that highlight the socioeconomic, political and cultural context of contemporary life as being characterized by rapid movement of people, ideas, objects, money, images and information (Büscher & Urry, 2009; Sheller & Urry, 2006). Such theories have led to the advancement of research methodologies, including mobile interviewing, that take the fluidity of the modern world into account. Mobile interviewing has been referred to in extant literature in various ways. Two of the most commonly used labels are ‘walking interviews’ (Evans & Jones, 2011; King & Woodroffe, 2019), and ‘go-alongs’ (Garcia et al., 2012; Kusenbach, 2003). The latter includes conducting the interview as a ‘walk-along’ (i.e., walking alongside the participant), or a ‘ride-along’ (i.e., riding alongside them on wheels) (Kusenbach, 2003; also see Brown & Durrheim, 2009). However, referring to it as ‘walking interview’ differentiates between walking-based interviews and other forms of mobile interviewing, such as conducting interviews while driving

Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research  119 (Edensor, 2010; Evans & Jones, 2011; King & Woodroffe, 2019). This differentiation has been largely underlined by scholars in fields such as health studies. Putting a greater emphasis on the act of walking and its benefits for the type of data produced in the field, they argue that conducting a ‘ride-along’ interview is another form of sedentary interviewing, in which participants are still required to ‘sit down’ while being interviewed. However, scholars from other fields of enquiry have seen the difference between the two forms of mobile interviewing only in terms of practicalities of conducting interviews, which will be detailed later in this chapter. Referred to as ‘emplaced methodology’ (Anderson & Jones, 2009), both of these forms of mobile interviewing are understood to lead to the production of a ‘contextualized perspective’ on the subject matter. As such, moving through local spaces helps participants to remember the experiences attached to those places while providing immediate ‘rich and varied perspectives’ of the environment (Garcia et al., 2012, p. 1395). The production of such contextualized knowledge, those scholars argue, can occur both while walking and driving, and thus they dismiss the existence of any analytical differences between the two types of mobile interviewing (Brown & Durrheim, 2009). Following the latter perspective, this chapter refers to mobile interviewing to indicate both types of interviews – namely, interviewing participants while walking or while moving through places in a vehicle. Hence, the key differentiating element between sedentary interviews and mobile interviewing is understood here as the element of mobility, which is always involved in mobile interviewing. This mobility can be accomplished on foot or in a vehicle, as the participant ‘moves while being seated’.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND DESIGN OF A MOBILE INTERVIEW The content of a mobile interview is primarily formed ‘on the move’ in a tour that is largely guided by the participants. The decision to conduct a walking interview or a ‘ride-along’ (Kusenbach, 2003) should be based on various elements, such as the focus of the research (is the research focused on how identities are shaped in a relatively small place, such as a neighbourhood, or in a bigger one, such as an entire city?), the safety of the area where the mobile interviewing would take place, and the mobility capacities of the interviewee and the interviewer. I discuss the two latter points further in the final section of this chapter. The dynamic nature of mobile interviews means that they do not strictly follow methodological instructions in terms of the duration, pace and even the questions. The latter are mainly shaped in response to the changing landscape, or unexpected events encountered on the way, or in the case of a mobile interview being conducted on foot, perhaps even in response to encountering other people (King & Woodroffe, 2019). For the most part, it is an ‘unrehearsed conversation’ (Brown & Durrheim, 2009, p. 911) because moving through an environment that is potentially constantly changing (caused by the movement of people, changes in light and weather conditions, etc.) and is sensorily demanding (visually, aurally and olfactorily) is very likely to stimulate erratic conversations and makes sticking to a Q&A interview format irrelevant. Mobile interviewing, compared to more traditional sedentary interviews, provides a greater opportunity for the co-construction of knowledge because participants play a decisive role in shaping the interview questions (Garcia et al., 2012). There are two main approaches to the designing of interview questions for mobile interviews. In one approach, a few questions are asked at the beginning of the interview to collect some basic information and make the partic-

120  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations ipant familiar with the format and focus of the interview. This is then followed by open-ended questions that invite the participant to talk further about and reflect upon the topic of the interview in relation to the places through which the researcher and the participant move. In the other approach, the interview can be fully co-created at the site of the interview. The participant is given information about the topic and purpose of the research and is asked to guide a tour with the interviewer in the local area on which the research focuses. During the tour, the participant is encouraged to comment on what they think about the research question in relation to the various places through which the mobile interview is conducted. A pertinent example of this is the research that Brown and Durrheim (2009) conducted in their studies of perpetuated racism and prejudice that individuals experience in their city. In a less structured approach, Anderson (2004) used a strategy for mobile interviewing that he, borrowing from Evans (1998), called ‘bimbling’, meaning aimlessly walking or wandering around. In his research with environmental activists on their protest site, he asked them if they wished to ‘go for a bimble’ as a way of encouraging activists to simply ‘talk about the protest and their feelings surrounding it’ without imposing any specific structure on how they elaborate on such matters (Anderson, 2004, p. 258). I provide an analysis of this study in the empirical section below. In another instance of mobile interviewing, Kusenbach (2003) chose an even more ‘radical’ take, intentionally providing ‘as little as possible with regard to what [the author] would like them to talk about’. In response to any participant who adamantly asked for further instructions, the researcher asked them to ‘comment on whatever came to mind while looking at and moving through places and also to [retell] what they usually experienced during routine trips’ (Kusenbach, 2003, p. 465). This approach seems to have been effective only because the research focused precisely on those experiences and the perceptions of the residents about the local problems in the neighbourhood. To examine how identities are constructed within a specific social and platial context, and how individuals make sense of the place in their identity construction, further explanation about the research topic and the reasons behind the type of the chosen methodology might be necessary.

MOBILE INTERVIEWING AND IDENTITY RESEARCH: THE ADVANTAGES AND WHY THEY MATTER Place and Identity There is a growing acknowledgement among scholars of identity research of the role of the place in which people live, their emotions are shaped and where they acquire their lived experiences of the world in individuals’ constitution of their identities. Partly stemming from Heidegger’s (1953) existential accounts of being-in-the-world, this acknowledgement underlines the relationship between the place and the human body, whereby places that bodies physically encounter leave their traces on the body and hence, the self (Casey, 2001). Cities and local spaces have increasingly proved to be interesting and relevant research contexts in various fields of organization studies, including identity research (see, for example, Kozhevnikov, 2021; Moonesirust & Brown, 2021; Tams et al., 2021). Indeed, the significance of cities in the field was further demonstrated when Human Relations, a major journal in organization studies, recently allocated a special issue to the studies of careers in cities. The

Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research  121 appreciation of the role of place in individuals’ identity formation has, however, never greatly influenced the choice of the place of data collection in identity studies. Notable exceptions here include a few studies mainly in fields such as humanist geography, arguing that the place in which the interview is conducted can yield important information about the different ways interviewees construct their identities. Calling for further attention to be paid to the importance of the place of interview, they maintain that respondents might choose to present different aspects of their identities in particular platial contexts (Anderson & Jones, 2009; Sin, 2003). Despite such exhortations, writings on the theory and practice of interviewing in identity research ‘have largely neglected the specifics of settings’ (Sin, 2003, p. 306). Consequently, traditional sedentary interviews have continued to represent the main method of data collection in studies of identity (Brown & Durrheim, 2009), specifically in organization and management studies, with the significance of the place of data collection rarely appreciated. Mobile vs Sit-down Interviewing in Identity Research As a data collection method that combines walking and talking, mobile interviewing is helpful in harnessing the place of data collection to elicit information on how individuals make sense of the self within and in relation to their socio-platial context (see, for example, Anderson, 2004). In doing so, it provides the researchers with the chance of ‘investigating interactions between people and their social and physical environments’ (Block et al., 2019, p. 1292). While more traditional sedentary interviews arguably separate people form their ‘natural’ contexts for the duration of the interview, mobile interviewing is conducted in situ and can enable the researcher to engage with social and platial environments that have meanings in individuals’ lives (Carpiano, 2009; Evans & Jones, 2011). Hence, mobile interviewing is helpful when investigating individuals’ identity construction relies on knowing how people perceive their social and physical environment (Garcia et al., 2012). The place of data collection in this method is thus not separate from the place where the research participants live, work, study, or in any way spend a significant portion of their day. It is the place that plays an important role in how their life experiences and emotions are shaped and the sense of who they are is constructed. Sometimes the territories of this place are as small as the participant’s own garden (King & Woodroffe, 2019), or a university campus on which the research question focuses (Garcia et al., 2012), while sometimes it covers a larger area, such as a neighbourhood (Kusenbach, 2003) or a city (Brown & Durrheim, 2009). Put briefly by Kusenbach (2003, p. 463), mobile interviewing is about accompanying the participants in their ‘“natural” outings’. As this approach puts the interviewee in the position of an ‘informant’ who guides the tour in their ‘territory’, mobile interviewing has been attributed with disrupting the traditional power structure between the interviewee and the interviewer, consequently encouraging a more collaborative approach to the creation of knowledge (Brown & Durrheim, 2009; Garcia et al., 2012; King & Woodroffe, 2019). Moreover, it has been argued that turning the context where individuals perform into the place of data collection provides the researcher with an opportunity to not only explain this context but also to offer insights into the locational elements and platial influence that can impact individuals’ perceptions and lived experiences, because such elements can be encountered during the interview (Block et al., 2019; Garcia et al., 2012). By moving alongside the participant in mobile interviewing, the interviewer can observe and reflect upon various elements in the environment, while simultaneously collecting interview and observational

122  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations data (King & Woodroffe, 2019; Kusenbach, 2003). This is the unique characteristic of mobile interviewing that provides for a natural combination of interview and participant observation, enabling the researcher to observe their informants’ ‘spatial practices in situ while accessing their experiences and interpretations at the same time’ (Kusenbach, 2003, p. 465). This highlights the significance of what mobile interviewing allows the researcher to add to identity research, given the importance of context in the studies of identity. In the following section, I will review some of the areas and aspects of research on identity that can specifically benefit from the application of mobile interviews. Mobile Interviewing and its Benefits for Identity Research Interviewing while moving through spaces (either by walking or in a vehicle) helps the ‘recollection of the place’ (King & Woodroffe, 2019, p. 1273) and can demonstrate ‘an active connection between body, landscape and memory’ (Jones & Evans, 2012, p. 2323). This recollection thus underlines the relations of power rooted in the place within which bodies perform and identities are shaped. Indeed, such potential of mobile interviewing has been exploited in the study of identity-relevant questions. For example, it has been adopted to investigate ‘elusive’ social issues experienced in everyday life, such as discrimination and prejudice (Brown & Durrheim, 2009), as making sense of encounters with such matters is strongly relevant to the perception of the context and place in which one experiences them (Garcia et al., 2012). While mobile interviewing is suitable for addressing questions related to how individuals perceive their contexts, and for understanding the quality of their various engagements with their local environment (Kusenbach, 2003), its relevance for the studies of identity is even greater. Mobile interviewing is specifically beneficial in capturing the emotions, perceptions and interpretations that the research participants would ordinarily keep to themselves (Johnson & Weller, 2001), and can reveal important aspects of identity constitution and the relations of power within which identities are produced. Such elements could remain concealed in traditional sit-down interviews, either because the participants do not remember them, or they might be considered too trivial to be of any value for a research interview. However, walking through places that have evoked specific emotions, influenced perceptions, and shaped interpretations while partaking in the interview increases the chances of such elements being unearthed. This aspect of mobile interviewing is understood to be of significance in studies of individuals’ biography and their web of social relationships (Garcia et al., 2012; Kusenbach, 2003). Even though individuals’ identity construction has been rarely directly addressed in those studies, such topics are relevant to research on identity and the production of a sense of self throughout one’s life history. Kusenbach (2003, p. 472) argues that the environment that individuals encounter on a daily basis becomes ‘a sort of personal biographer as it preserves part of [their] life history’. She compares navigating through familiar environments during a mobile interview with going through a personal photo album, as the former involves passing by several personal landmarks. Mobile interviews can bring out various memories and socio-platial associations within which individuals’ life history and the understanding of who they are have been formed (Kusenbach, 2003; Sin, 2003). Elwood and Martin (2000) refer to these associations as the ‘microgeographies’ of the place of interview, on which individuals draw when constructing their identities. These microgeographies ‘situate a participant with respect to other actors and to his or her own multiple identities’ (p. 652). While mobile

Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research  123 interviewing enables this, it is worth noting that the strong capacity of mobile interviewing to encourage reflections on the immediate place of data collection might also impede the analysis of some aspects of individuals’ identity formation. This can be done by distracting participants from thinking about other social relations as well as other places and their associations that have influenced their identity construction. I elaborate further on this in the section entitled ‘Mobile interviewing: practicalities and critical reflections’, where I discuss possible limitations of mobile interviewing.

MOBILE INTERVIEWING AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN PRACTICE This section exemplifies mobile interviewing in identity research and illustrates how some of the issues introduced earlier in this chapter are encountered in practice. The section comprises two subsections. In the first, I detail the application of mobile interviewing in my fieldwork. In the second, I review Anderson’s (2004) research with environmental activists as one of the few examples of using mobile interviews to study individuals’ identity formation. On the Move in a Company City I conducted a research project in 2014–15 in the city of Wolfsburg, home to Volkswagen’s headquarters in Germany. The research was focused on the construction of employee identity in the context of a city where a major employer dominates various aspects of life. The main data collection method was semi-structured (sit-down) interviews. Upon finishing the interviews, whenever possible, I accompanied my interviewees for a short walk, using it as a chance to talk more with them about my research. In three instances, these walks lasted between 10 to 15 minutes and could be construed as amounting to mobile interviews, in that a collaborative form of knowledge about the research topic was created that was heavily influenced by moving through specific places. What is presented here are the field notes from one of the mobile interviews I conducted with Greg (pseudonym) on the way to the interview site where we did the sit-down semi-structured interview. I knew Greg through a friend. Living in Wolfsburg and working for Volkswagen qualified him for an interview for my research. On the day of his interview, I met with him at one of the exit gates of Volkswagen headquarters, so we could walk together from there to the café where the interview was conducted. I knew the shortest way to access that exit gate from where I lived included walking through a tunnel. The tunnel itself had many exits, including one to reach the Midland Canal and the train station. Many commuter employees used this entrance/ exit on a daily basis. I entered the tunnel from the entrance near the city centre and went towards the very end of the tunnel, using three escalators on my way to reach the point where gates separated the tunnel from the plant area. As Greg came through the gate, we greeted each other and walked towards the other end of the tunnel from which I had entered. I asked him on the way if this was the route he always took. ‘Yes, this is the only way if you exit from gate xx’, he replied. He said that this exit was the closest one to his office and he took this exit and used the tunnel on a daily basis. As we walked further, the tunnel shaped our conversation: Greg:

Is this the first time you’ve used this tunnel?

124  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Me:

No. I had used it a couple of times before to reach the Canal. So, I know the first part of it well. But I have been through the rest of it only once, a couple of years ago on one of Volkswagen’s ‘open days’.

Greg continued to say how ‘gloomy’ he thought the tunnel was and that he felt this in the afternoons on the way back home more often than in mornings because in mornings ‘you are just in a rush’ and want to reach the office. ‘You don’t think about the tunnel’, he said. I said I also thought it was gloomy and that it might be because of the light or the walls or the fact that the tunnel was very old. I added that I thought people would not notice it being gloomy when it is busy. ‘Oh you do’, he replied. He told me that he finished work later on those days specifically because of preparations being made for an upcoming business trip (it was about 5pm at the time and the tunnel was not very busy) and that he left the plant earlier on other days. He explained that the tunnel was at its busiest at around 6am and 2pm when the production line workers changed shifts, and around 3:30pm when many white-collar employees would leave the plant, which was around the time that Greg usually left work. As we were walking and talking about the busy and calm times in the tunnel, closer to the other end of it, he said that one should always take care in this city about what they talk about because ‘someone who knows you might be somewhere close enough to hear you’. He then told me a story about how living in this city had formed some aspects of his behaviour. The excerpt below is my recollection of his remarks after the semi-structured interview was concluded and I had reached home and tried to write down what he had said in my notebook. This quote, hence, very likely does not provide a verbatim account of his remarks even though I tried to keep a record in my notes as close as possible to what he said from my memory: Greg:

This is a serious thing, if you think about it (referring to his last remark mentioned before). You might have heard from [our common friend] that I broke up with [my partner] (his former partner was also an employee of Volkswagen) a [while] ago. It was a painful process… When you are going through such things, you want to talk about it with people… I left work one day with a colleague who is a close friend. I wanted to talk to her about [my ex-partner] and how terrible I was feeling… We were in this tunnel as I started talking. But I kept whispering, every now and then, looking around to see if there was someone who might know me or my ex, or I stopped talking when I felt someone was approaching us from the back. You know? It was quite a strange thing. You feel everyone is hearing you the whole time. So, you should take care about what you say.

Going through the tunnel prompted the recollection of this very telling story about how he felt he should regulate his conduct in the city dominated by his employer. Identities are argued to be ‘performatively constituted’ (Butler, 1990, p. 25). That is, how people behave and how they manage their conduct is not a ‘manipulation of an appearance’ (Grey, 1994, p. 487), but rather constitutive of their identity. As such, the moulding and guiding of individuals’ behaviour can shape their identities (Moonesirust & Brown, 2021). Greg’s account demonstrates the process through which the places in which we live, and that our bodies encounter, shape our conduct and, ultimately, the sense of who we are (Casey, 2001). It is likely that he would not have shared with me this striking story about the role of the city in the constitution of his identity

Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research  125 if we had not been in a place that had such strong emotional connotations for him. Moreover, talking about various aspects of what we were both seeing and experiencing (i.e., a gloomy tunnel) made me ask him situated questions about the context and his feelings there, while sharing with him how I experienced that very context. In other words, mobile interviewing provided an opportunity for what is referred to as ‘inter-active work’ (Brown & Durrheim, 2009) where my research participant and I made comments about what we saw in the tunnel, the emotions this created in us, and the memories that were triggered there. This mobile interview was co-constructed by the interviewee and me. That is, talking while moving through the tunnel led to the creation of a different type of conversation than in the traditional sit-down interview we conducted shortly after, with the former revealing a significant aspect of the interviewee’s identity construction in the city. Place and the Making of a Radical Environmentalist Identity Anderson (2004) in his study involving radical environmentalist activists underlines similar benefits of mobile interviewing. Using a form of this methodology that he labelled as ‘bimbling’ (or walking aimlessly), he argues that this activity can help ‘prompt theretofore unstated or unrecalled knowledge of the life-world’ (2004, p. 259). As he conducted his research in the place where environmental activists were protesting, he noticed that some activists regularly took some time off from the stressful site of the protest, going to alternative cafés, to supporters’ homes, or just taking a walk away from the ‘action camp’. Precisely because of the connection of their activism to this wider environment, ‘bimbling’ with activists became what Anderson (2004, p. 258), citing Alain de Botton (2002), calls ‘the midwife of thoughts’, providing an opportunity to remember various relevant instances of activism as well as other life memories. Accompanying activists in their walks, or ‘bimbling’ together with them, he argues, provided access to a different level of knowledge and understanding about the activists and their activism while distorting the traditional power relations between the interviewee and the interviewer and producing a collaborative form of knowledge. In one of his ‘bimbles’ with an activist, when crossing a meadow and talking about their activism near a quarry, they stopped as the activist reminisced about that particular place. Below is an abridged version of the story retold by Anderson (2004): The interviewee: It reminds me of times like a few weeks ago…we went down to [the] quarry… There was only about 40 of us…we walked in and got on all their machines, jumped on and off their weigh-bridge, and we could even talk to the owner since she was driving up in her car as we were there… And it was like, well okay in the long term it might not have achieved much, but just for that morning they couldn’t blast any more rock out of the earth…people are always saying ‘yeah but you can’t win can you?’ And maybe, maybe, we can’t actually stop them from destroying this meadow, but then I don’t think the council is going to lease off any more of this land, they are not going to be able to extend this quarry any further. I’m sure of that, and that’s a victory. The making of a triumphant identity out of small acts of resistance, which might sound fruitless to others, is evident in this quote. Mobile interviewing, as reflected in the story told by this participant, enabled the recollection of events that the interviewee had used in their identity

126  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations construction. This recollection happened by re-encountering the body with the places where those events had happened as the researcher and the research participant moved through them. Anderson’s ‘bimbling’ can be seen as undermining the interviewer’s traditional power position in sit-down interviews in two ways. First, becoming the ‘tour guide’ and directing the interviewer through places with which the participant was more familiar than the interviewer, arguably put the former in the position of power. Second, rather than a ‘conventional interrogative encounter’, the mobile interview formed an ‘unstructured dialogue where all actors participated’ (p. 260) in the creation of the interview. Consequently, this ‘collage of collaboration’ (ibid.), Anderson argues, led to the production of knowledge that facilitated a deeper analysis of events and emotions significant for individuals’ identity constitution. The memory and the recollection of such events and feelings were triggered by the ‘interconnection between the individuals and the place’ (p. 258), which were harnessed through mobile interviewing.

MOBILE INTERVIEWING: PRACTICALITIES AND CRITICAL REFLECTIONS Mobile interviewing is compatible with other research approaches and can be combined with other methods, such as documentary research and sit-down interviews. Indeed, due to this method having some limitations, the combination of mobile interviewing with other methods can serve as a safe back-up to ensure the collection of enough data. One such limitation is the potential difficulty with accurately capturing spoken words when outside and on the move. Wind or other sources of disruptive background noise, such as loud traffic, should be taken into consideration when conducting mobile interviews. Some researchers have suggested the use of lapel microphones or a lightweight recording device with a sensitive microphone that can be held near the participant to overcome this problem (King & Woodroffe, 2019). Moreover, decisions need to be made about the most suitable method to record information regarding the places that the interviewee and the interviewer go through, or information about the places that the interviewee might refer to without verbally naming them when talking (for example, by pointing at them). It is more complicated to capture such information while on the move, than when seated. Ensuring that the places are expressly mentioned during the conversation can be helpful here. For walking interviews, using a small notebook to make notes would be another possible solution. Otherwise, making notes as quickly as possible after the interview is over is good practice for recording such information. Another limitation pertains to the risk to which the researcher and the research participant are exposed, specifically in walking interviews, depending on the level of safety in the neighbourhood where the interview is conducted (Garcia et al., 2012). As per any form of research involving human subjects, a close assessment of such risks must be conducted during the application for ethical approval at the researcher’s affiliated institution. This should also be communicated with the participant and, depending on the risks, the researcher needs to plan for a certain level of flexibility and the possibility of having to replace some mobile interviews with sit-down ones. Furthermore, when moving through local spaces and possibly encountering other people during the interview, the confidentiality of the interviewee’s participation in the research could be compromised (King & Woodroffe, 2019). To overcome this limitation and depending on how concerned the research participants are about this issue, similar to the previous consider-

Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research  127 ations, the researcher must be prepared to replace mobile interviewing with traditional sedentary interviews. Alternatively, and where possible, the mobile interview could be conducted as a ‘ride-along’, which arguably lowers the risk of a confidentiality breach. In addition, it should be taken into account that the mobile nature of this methodology could possibly lead to some potential participants excluding themselves from the research due to their mobility limitations (Garcia et al., 2012). It is thus important that the researcher remains sensitive to this and underlines possible alternatives, such as the use of ‘ride-along’ or sedentary interviews during the recruitment process. This can ensure the capture of different voices as individuals’ mobility limitations do not lead to their exclusion from the research project. Another limitation associated with mobile interviewing refers to the type of data it produces. As explained earlier in this chapter, a mobile interview provides an opportunity for a combination of interview and participant observation (Kusenbach, 2003). However, the participant observation data that are collected are crucially different from those gained from traditional participant observation: as mobile interviewing is conducted while being on a largely participant-guided tour, it is mostly the interviewee who decides what is shown to the researcher, to where their attention is to be directed, and thus, what they do not see (Block et al., 2019). This specific limitation demands further attention when reflecting on and analysing the participant observation data. Finally, mobile interviewing is not necessary for all types of identity studies. While it is useful for studies of identity where the role of place in the construction of identity is (part of) the focus of research, lack of mobility does not result in missing out on significant knowledge about individuals’ identity formation in other types of identity studies. Indeed, moving through specific places for some research topics can potentially harm the quality of the data, as the interviewee’s memory could be restricted to what they see or whom they encounter while talking. This can consequently hinder the recollection of other places and other significant encounters in their life history that might have left their traces on individuals’ sense of the self. Take, for instance, research on individuals’ biographies and the investigation of individuals’ identity formation throughout their life history. While as mentioned before, mobile interviewing can serve as a good research method here, a specific research focus might not benefit from mobile interviewing in this type of research. In particular, if the focus of research is individuals’ life history rather than the role of a specific place in their identity construction (for instance, when the research question is ‘How has individuals’ life history shaped their sense of who they are?’ rather than ‘How has a specific socio-platial context within residents’/ commuters’ life history played a role in their formation of identity?’), mobile interviewing might diminish the quality of the collected data. Similarly, Kusenbach (2003) argues that while mobile interviews are effective when investigating less significant or largely functional social networks that people rarely tend to think about, sedentary interviews are more useful when knowledge about individuals’ stronger social ties is sought. Consequently, it is important that the decision to use mobile interviews in identity studies is made based on, first, the research question and the merit that mobile interviewing can add to the production of knowledge that is relevant to the research, and second, the limitations mentioned above.

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REFERENCES Anderson, J. (2004). Talking whilst walking: A geographical archaeology of knowledge. Area, 36(3), 254–261. Anderson, J., & Jones, K. (2009). The difference that place makes to methodology: Uncovering the ‘lived space’ of young people’s spatial practices. Children’s Geographies, 7(3), 291–303. Atkinson, P., & Silverman, D. (1997). Kundera’s immortality: The interview society and the invention of the self. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 304–325. Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid modernity. Policy Press. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Penguin Books. Block, K., Gibbs, L., & MacDougall, C. (2019). Participant-guided mobile methods. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in health social sciences (pp. 1291–1302). Springer. Brown, A. D. (2015). Identities and identity work in organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(1), 20–40. Brown, L., & Durrheim, K. (2009). Different kinds of knowing. Qualitative Inquiry, 15(5), 911–930. Büscher, M., & Urry, J. (2009). Mobile methods and the empirical. European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1), 99–116. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. Routledge. Carpiano, R. M. (2009). Come take a walk with me: The ‘go-along’ interview as a novel method for studying the implications of place for health and well-being. Health & Place, 15(1), 263–272. Casey, E. S. (2000). Remembering: A phenomenological study (2nd ed.). Indiana University Press. Casey, E. S. (2001). Between geography and philosophy: What does it mean to be in the place-world? Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91(4), 683–693. de Botton, A. (2002). The art of travel. Pantheon. Edensor, T. (2010). Walking in rhythms: Place, regulation, style and the flow of experience. Visual Studies, 25(1), 69–79. Elwood, S. A., & Martin, D. G. (2000). ‘Placing’ interviews: Location and scales of power in qualitative research. The Professional Geographer, 52(4), 649–657. Evans, J., & Jones, P. (2011). The walking interview: Methodology, mobility and place. Applied Geography, 31(2), 849–858. Evans, K. (1998). Copse: Cartoon book of tree protesting. Orange Dog Publications. Garcia, C. M., Eisenberg, M. E., Frerich, E. A., Lechner, K. E., & Lust, K. (2012). Conducting go-along interviews to understand context and promote health. Qualitative Health Research, 22(10), 1395–1403. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford University Press. Grey, C. (1994). Career as a project of the self and labour process discipline. Sociology, 28(2), 479–497. Heidegger, M. (1953). Being and time. State University of New York Press. Hyams, M. S. (2000). Pay attention in class… [and] don’t get pregnant: A discourse of academic success among adolescent Latinas. Environment and Planning, 32(4), 635–654. Johnson, J., & Weller, S. (2001). Elicitation techniques for interviewing. In J. Gubrium & J. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research (pp. 491–514). SAGE. Jones, P., & Evans, J. (2012). Rescue geography: Place making, affect and regeneration. Urban Studies, 49(11), 2315–2330. King, A. C., & Woodroffe, J. (2019). Walking interviews. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in health social sciences (pp. 1269–1290). Springer. Kozhevnikov, A. (2021). Career capital in global versus second-order cities: Skilled migrants in London and Newcastle, Human Relations, 74(5), 705–728. Kusenbach, M. (2003). Street phenomenology: The go-along as ethnographic research tool. Ethnography, 4(3), 455–485. Moonesirust, E., & Brown, A. D. (2021). Company towns and the governmentality of desired identities. Human Relations, 74(4), 502–526. Murphy, T. (2007). Representing religion: Essays in history, theory, crisis. Routledge.

Mobile interviewing: harnessing the significance of place in identity research  129 Oberhauser, A. (1997). The home as ‘field’: Households and homework in rural Appalachia. In J. P. Jones III, H. J. Nast & S. M. Roberts (Eds.), Thresholds in feminist geography (pp. 165–183). Rowman & Littlefield. Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning A, 38(2), 207–226. Silverman, D. (2001). Interpreting qualitative data: Methods for studying talk, text and interaction (2nd ed.). SAGE. Silverman, D. (2013). Doing qualitative research. SAGE. Sin, C. H. (2003). Interviewing ‘in place’: The socio-spatial construction of interview data. The Royal Geographical Society, 35(3), 305–312. Tams, S., Kennedy, J. C., Arthur, M. B., & Chan, K. Y. (2021). Careers in cities: An interdisciplinary space for advancing the contextual turn in career studies. Human Relations, 74(5), 635–655.

10. The other: posing questions I am supposed to love – autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work Henning Grosse

INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I explore minor conversations and how subsequent identity work (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003) forms and constantly (re-)forms my identities. I think the importance of these little encounters come across very vividly in one of Rilke’s letters: If you will cling to…the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect perhaps, which lags marvelling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognisance. (Rilke, 1929/1954, p. 34)

These little things – in my case conversations – are encounters with the culture of which I am part. Therefore, I start with a vignette of a conversation I had during a long hike: February 2021. I had a couple of days off from my job (I run my own construction company of 30 employees). To enjoy nature and to exercise, I went with my partner Nadja on a hike near Potsdam. We walked along the shore of a lake, crossed it using a small ferry, and hiked further into the forest. There was no snow at the time; the way was lined by bare trees and brown leaves on the ground. We did not see many people, although the weather was fine for hiking. We talked the whole time about almost ‘everything’. At some point, we discussed my business, and she suddenly asked what it would take to double my turnover and hence double my profits. This question hit me off-guard. As she’s a business consultant, for her, the question was almost natural to ask, but not for me. It did not naturally fit my concept of doing business. The question hit a weak spot in me. Although I had been thinking of growing my business a bit larger, I actually didn’t know what to answer. Doubling turnover and profit indeed appears to me as a way of maximizing profits. As an entrepreneur, I have certain sympathies for getting the most out of a business deal. The provocative questions, however, clarified that it is not my first concern. My approach to doing business is concerned with making profits – of course – but once profitability is safeguarded, it steps somewhat into the background.

I am often caught up in similarly casual conversations. I am confronted with random questions that have not occurred to me before. Such conversations take place all the time and may seem insignificant. Nevertheless, over time, they have an immense impact on me. The small exchanges with others shape and reshape who I am. In the example above, one begins to see the influence others have on me – how culture shapes my identity and vice versa. In this chapter, I seek to demonstrate how this random question, the ensuing discussion, and the internal struggles, made me aware of what is important to me. I explore autoethnography’s opportunities 130

Autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work  131 and challenges to understand my personal and professional identity and inform research on identity through my personal account. I explore my identity struggles autoethnographically. First, I introduce autoethnography and its different applications. I then show how I use it and what techniques I utilize. Exploring the initial example and drawing on my own construction business experiences, I demonstrate how observation and reflection lead to insights otherwise difficult to access. To foster reflection, I use Levinas’s thoughts as a lens. I highlight objections to and limits of the method as well as the obstacles and difficulties I faced. Finally, I emphasize autoethnography’s benefits.

DESCRIPTION OF AUTOETHNOGRAPHY Ethnographers immerse themselves in cultural settings. Early on, this was often a foreign culture (Geertz, 1972), but nowadays it might be a policing unit (Rowe et al., 2016) or any other setting. They write fieldnotes about their experiences and observations to produce a picture (graph) of the studied culture (ethno). Fieldnotes are similar to diary or journal entries but specifically aim to explore and understand the researched culture. The ‘auto’ prefix indicates that autoethnographers write about their own natural environment. The term autoethnography goes back to Sir Raymond Firth’s seminar at the London School of Economics in 1966, which Hayano (1979) attended, but it is nowadays widely used and has many related meanings and labels (Ellis & Bochner, 2000 offer an extensive list). Autoethnography is also used collaboratively (Chang, 2016b; Ellis & Rawicki, 2013; Emerald & Carpenter, 2014). To portray the area that autoethnography inhabits, I prefer Reed-Danahay’s (1997, p. 2) triangle: ‘Autoethnography stands at the intersection of three genres of writing…native anthropology[,] ethnic autobiography[, and] autobiographical ethnography’. The emphasis on the three aspects varies from researcher to researcher (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). Still, autoethnographies allow for understanding the connection between the ‘auto’ and ‘ethno’ (Holman Jones, 2005) through autoethnographers’ use of ‘their personal experience as primary data’ (Chang, 2016a, p. 49). Autoethnographic writing moves along a continuum from analytic to evocative ethnographies (Anderson, 2006; Ellis & Bochner, 2006). The analytic autoethnographies theorize about their observations in the field. In contrast, the evocative induces feelings and emotional connections in the reader through, sometimes artful, language. One may find some similarities to Van Maanen’s (2011) distinction between realist, confessional and impressionist tales. However, most ethnographies contain elements of all three. Whatever one’s preference, focussing on the implied readership is essential. Writing for a specific audience requires the author to balance different aspects of autoethnography (Richardson, 1990). One must inevitably connect to the reference system of the audience because the text ‘addresses the problems inherent in the systems referred to’ and henceforth ‘must implicitly contain the basic framework of the respective systems, for these are what cause the problems that [my text] reacts to’ (Iser, 2000a, p. 312). Among the problems researched, identity is central in ethnography, especially in autoethnography. To Coffey (1999), therefore, ethnographies are identity work. Identity exploration is either a reflexive requirement or occupies the central stage. Ethnographers subjectively collect data or even create the fieldnotes. Hence, understanding the position of the researcher is essential to evaluate ethnographies. Autoethnographies, however, frequently problematize

132  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations identities and identity work. Indeed, identity claimed prominence in the earliest autoethnographies (Hayano, 1979) and has continued to ever since (cf. editions of Boylorn & Orbe, 2021; Ellis et al., 2022; Herrmann, 2017, 2020). Even if it is not their primary research problem, autoethnographers engage with their identities. Conventional ethnographies and autoethnographies deal with research problems rather than narrow research questions. Therefore, engaging with texts on ethnography helps autoethnographers, particularly in the early stages (e.g., Emerson et al., 2011; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007; Wolcott, 1999, 2009). Using these texts, I began exploring business negotiations. Initially, I just observed my business environment and myself within it. However, I soon shifted focus to the subject of trust and the relation between the self and the other. Inevitably, I had to contemplate who I am. The range of applications is too broad to cover them exhaustively here. At the same time, ‘[d]escribing autoethnography in the abstract cannot really capture its distinctiveness’ (Allen Collinson & Hockey, 2004, p. 182). Therefore, I showcase my approach. This inevitably limits the broadness of the chapter but offers a more practice-oriented account. For a more comprehensive view of autoethnography, I suggest the books by Adams et al. (2015), Bochner and Ellis (2016) and Chang (2016a), as well as the editions by Boylorn and Orbe (2021), Ellis et al. (2022) and Herrmann (2017, 2020). Observation and writing notes are the very basis of ethnography. Writing fieldnotes often begins during the event when I take mental notes. Soon after the event, I write a short note in a notebook or on my phone or talk to my voice recorder. These jottings help me to recall the event when I write longer fieldnotes. But I may also sit down later, think about the day and write what comes to mind. It helps me to have a target of writing more than 500 words. Once I start, the writing often flows. Yet, there are evenings when I am simply not in the mood and only write two or three sentences. The writing often covers the day’s events. I write about what has happened, recording my feelings and thoughts. I try to recollect everything in minute detail. There is no such thing as writing too much. When I start to delve into my feelings and emotions, I often drift away from the recent experiences to reflections, literature and recollections of earlier days. My writing meanders. It is not as straightforward as some might expect. I call it nomadic writing (St. Pierre, 1997) because my thoughts drift, and I connect many different things. I write about seemingly mundane events, recording my everyday interaction with others – especially, but not exclusively, in business. The example above is one of these. It is a random exploration that becomes increasingly focused along the way. But I am not saying that everything flows easily when one sits down and writes, especially in the beginning. I seldom start writing fieldnotes with a straightforward question in mind (and if so, I try to abandon it, at least for a while). Hence, I explore the field with a wide gaze, taking in a lot of impressions, almost like a sponge. Often my fieldnotes are only loosely connected or seem entirely unrelated. Yet after a while – sometimes weeks or months – I begin to spot emerging patterns. When the material starts to talk to me, I call it ‘emergence’ (Kelle, 2005). At this point, one tends to put things into existing conceptual boxes (Kabat-Zinn, 2002), but swallowing this bait too fast risks forcing concepts onto the material (Kelle, 2005). One actually risks losing the chance to ‘generate a world not previously thought of’ (Weick, 2006, p. 1731). So, one has to zoom in and out. Through repeated writing, I have learned to zoom in on a particular aspect. And through zooming out, I can understand the significance of a single, small, and apparently unimpor-

Autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work  133 tant event in its broader context. I view autoethnographic writing very similarly to Iser’s hermeneutics (2000b). Understanding a single word requires its context, and subsequently, understanding the single word requires a reinterpretation of the context. Similarly, I interpret a single event with my contextual frame, and inevitably the new understanding feeds back into the knowledge of my environment. Likewise, other sources, first and foremost research literature, feed into this process of hermeneutically understanding my experiences. Thus, I begin a conversation with the literature I read and implicitly connect it to the research frameworks I address (Iser, 2000a; Richardson, 1990). The above shows that autoethnography is not well suited to a narrow hypothesis or conceptual framework to test. On the contrary, the researcher should have a hunger for exploration and surprises. They should start with a ‘don’t know mind’ (Kabat-Zinn, 2002, p. 70). However, that does not exclude contemplating a particular problem or having it in the back of your mind. When Nadja and I went hiking, I did not think about this chapter or any research I would connect to. The significance I attributed to her question may have just been a gut feeling, something Emerson et al. (2011) call a sense of significance. I thought the story belonged in the fieldnotes but it was only later that I realized its meaning and importance. At first, it may be more a case of reporting on the events. It felt as if I had just described events without more profound reflection, an observation shared by Wolcott (2009). Autoethnography offers me different ways to collect material – fieldnotes, recollection, memory and reflections. I use it very freely: I collect material in many ways. There are no absolute dogmas except the need to reflect and clarify what I have done. I must reach the necessary reflective depth. This involves some theoretical knowledge about reflection, but, most importantly, it requires practice. Critical reflection or reflexivity is challenging to teach (Moon, 2006). I sat down and wrote from the very beginning, but I wondered how to question myself. Playing your own devil’s advocate is an option to start, but deliberately arguing from another person’s perspective also helps. As Pillow (2003) argues, reflection is sparked by exposure to the other. Insights emerge, particularly if I arrive at the point where reflection becomes ‘uncomfortable’ (ibid.), since ‘happy people may be inaccurate’ (Weick, 1995, p. 192). I think we are always aware when our espoused theories do not match our theories-in-use (Argyris & Schön, 1974). This incoherence makes us uncomfortable. Subsequently, reflection starts to develop almost naturally. One reflects deeper, makes connections to other events, and builds mental links. This is where it gets exciting and the point at which autoethnographies have their most significant advantage. One readily accesses these thoughts – one’s own – more easily than pursuing other qualitative inquiry forms, such as ethnography or interview research. However, one must still grapple with the ‘problem problem’ (Wolcott, 2009, p. 35). Frequently, one explores one’s environment with no clear idea of what one is searching for. It is good because, with an objective that is too prescriptive, one may only reaffirm existing beliefs. Yet, maintaining a sort of naivety while slowly zooming in on a problem and not forcing concepts (Kelle, 2005) on the material in front of me is a tricky balancing act that needs sufficient reflection. Performing this balancing act remains a challenge. One may relate this approach to Pirsig’s (2014) notion of quality beyond rational grasp. The significance of Nadja’s question was not initially clear but developed when I began working on this text, forming another hermeneutic circle. My autoethnography does not suit a realist perspective and an all-encompassing rationality. I write from my personal perspective, yet

134  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations I try to clarify the way I proceed. Indeed, my raw fieldnotes are seldom publishable and very few make it into my publications, yet they form the basis for my research. Before publication, I revise fieldnotes several times to tell an accessible and lively story and properly convey my interpretation. Revising also addresses ethical considerations, which I deal with in the third section. Again, there is much value in minute descriptions. Often a good description of events is the basis for a contribution. Autoethnography poses a potential avalanche of questions for researchers due to such descriptions. It is both a blessing and a curse. Observing and writing are no longer that difficult when there are enough questions. Instead, one needs ‘to get rid of data’ (Wolcott, 2009, p. 61). But a good description is not enough because ‘no one will let you get away [without a] theoretical implication’ of your research (ibid., p. 70). However, theoretical implications can emerge almost naturally. Once you write and read long enough, the hermeneutics start to work in your favour, even if your thoughts need time to mature. One might improve their writing, but not all writing is good. I find numerous repetitions in my fieldnotes. Although, when this happens, it shows that the theme is important, and indicates its significance (Emerson et al., 2011). Slight differences and nuances in the repetition are often very revealing. However, most of my fieldnotes mature idly in my note-taking app. So, I am stuck with an abundance of material I will probably never use. Yet even these seemingly failed attempts may be published, as Smith and Delamont’s The Lost Ethnographies (2019) shows. When I prepared this chapter, I skimmed through my fieldnotes and memory to find the story I have used.

ILLUSTRATION/APPLICATION To explore the conversation with Nadja and the ensuing identity work, I use autoethnography as research approach. I give prominence to the researcher’s voice. I deliberately choose the inward gaze, distinct from other examples where the researcher’s culture is central. I will use Levinas’s thoughts on self, other and the ‘third’ (see below) to demonstrate how different narratives and identities wrestle with each other. Levinas’s thought predominantly resembles our preconscious (and ethical) encounter with the other and how we assemble this into rational thought. We meet the other’s face (a metaphor for the other’s humanness) and afterwards assemble the encounter into rationality and being (ontology). Levinas calls facing the other, ‘saying’, which is momentarily elusive. This saying leaves its traces in our concepts and categories – which he calls ‘the said’ (Levinas, 1974/1998). Here I explore these repeated, preconscious encounters with others that constantly shape our self-narratives and identities. To Levinas, one is urged to respond to the other while being disinterested. It sounds paradoxical, but one answers to the other preconsciously and interest arises only later. I am immediately called to respond before thinking about it (Levinas, 1974/1998). Here Levinas situates the ethical encounter with the other. Only this first moment, this calling to respond, is ethics. Levinas identifies it as: ‘the proximity of one to the other…the one for the other’ (1974/1998, p. 5). As soon as I start to think – that is, to rationalize the impression – the illusiveness of the saying becomes apparent. I do compare, and the very response becomes secondary. ‘[S]aying is subordinated to its theme [the said]’ (ibid., p. 6). Caputo (2000, p. 111) offers a lively illustration of an accident as an example. As a bystander to an accident, one can imagine the urge to help one feels and how one subsequently retreats to rational explanations of our subsequent

Autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work  135 actions. Yet, such ‘accidents…strike us down’. In varying severity, they strike ‘at us in daily life’. In my vignette, I explore one such ‘accident’, but one must keep in mind their repetitious nature. These accidents let ‘identity accounts appear, disappear and reappear’ (Winkler, 2014, p. 303), hence I am exploring a micro-process beneath Winkler’s bigger picture: Reflection after the hike: The question caught me off guard. I felt immediately challenged. It almost felt like an accusation. As though Nadja had asked, ‘Why don’t you?’ but she didn’t; it just felt like that. It was probably the direct way Nadja asked or the implicit message or interpretation I assigned to the question. I felt as if I had to defend myself. The feeling grew. Why don’t I? Am I focussing too much on other things when I should be growing my business? Am I squandering chances? Am I losing out on opportunities? I sensed how my arguments were built on weak ground. I felt some inconsistencies in my rationale without being able to identify them.

The ‘Why don’t you?’ felt like an ‘accusation’ (Levinas, 1974/1998). It was not meant that way, but it felt so, creating an urge for me to respond. The other expelled me from my comfort zone. Afterwards, the first thoughts also show similarity to Levinas’s and Caputo’s ideas. First, the other faces me – directly, ‘naked’, as Levinas would call it – and subsequently, I begin to contextualize and make sense of it. ‘What would it take to double my turnover?’ I asked myself. Nadja’s straightforward question – maybe deliberately naïve or provocative – resonated so strongly with me that I can still recall the exact place in the forest. I still see the trees, the brown and yellowish leaves on the ground, and the lake in the distance. It ignited a response, and – viewed methodologically – it appeared important enough to merit a fieldnote (Emerson et al., 2011). To Rilke (1929/1954), the intellect ‘lags marvelling behind’. Levinas, Caputo and Rilke see rationality as a successor – coming only after sensing the other. My entrepreneurial identity is shaped and reshaped in this process of assembling what I experience into concepts and categories. But for it to happen, I need to disturb this intimate relation to the other. This breakup is the entry of the third: It is not that the entry of a third party would be an empirical fact… In the proximity of the Other, all the Others than the Other obsess me, and already this obsession cries out for justice, demands measure and knowing, is consciousness. (Levinas, 1974/1998, p. 158)

Nadja’s question ignited a reflection that suddenly became uncomfortable (Pillow, 2003). The discomfort stemmed from conversations and experiences I had had with staff years before. Around ten years ago, my company almost doubled its size within only a few months. But this growth did not pay off, rather the opposite. We ran into a challenging situation, almost to the brink of going bankrupt: I recall entering the office. I greeted everybody and instantly felt that they were in a bad – I may call it pessimistic – mood. As the conversation unfolded, one staff member showed me the invoices due or overdue to be paid, and I knew there was not enough money in the bank account. The prospect for the company at that time was very gloomy. Soon after, I had to lay off staff workers and announce other measures to stay in business. I knew I had to brighten the mood in the office and beyond. Otherwise, I did not see a chance to overcome this crisis. Yet knowing in the morning that I faced this uphill battle, day-in-day-out, I found very exhausting.

During this period, much of the business’s problems resulted from a huge project that had performed exceptionally poorly. As a result, losses accumulated and left the company tilting

136  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations on the edge of going bust. Somehow, we managed to survive this crisis. However, the senior staff members still recall this time and associate the difficulties with the company’s rapid growth. Hence, every time I talk about growing, substantially adding staff, and taking on more business, I face resistance. I hear, ‘You know where growing too fast led us!’ One of my first thoughts was of this rapid growth and later crisis during this conversation with Nadja. I could almost hear the voices of my staff members arguing against growing the business substantially. I heard them raising their legitimate concerns. But it was not only their rational arguments but also the way they talked to me, how I felt their resistance and how they looked when we talked about the events from ten years ago. I could recall the atmosphere of the discussions about whom to lay off and which bill was more important to pay. I had the feeling that we even recollected the fear of going bankrupt – an event many in the company had directly or indirectly experienced. Imagining the close co-workers, their concerns and their vulnerabilities is what Levinas calls ‘the advent of the third’. The economic situation for construction businesses has been excellent for some years. Hence, I had already discussed expanding the company with senior staff members. However, given the crisis ten years ago and the predominantly smooth sailing afterwards, there is no large appetite within the staff for rapid growth and possible turbulences. They are somewhat conservative – I hear them saying, ‘Look, we earn enough money. Why should we embark on unnecessary adventures?’ My identity is trapped between the appeal of growing the company and my staff members’ and my hesitance resulting from our shared history. The business had done well during the previous couple of years and I earned a decent salary. Furthermore, I had enough time to run marathons and do some teaching and researching. Yet, the appeal of growth was very tempting for the entrepreneur in me, even though it would have its downsides. For example, I would have to spend far less time teaching and researching, I would also have to cut down on family time, and my running training would undoubtedly suffer. So, I wondered whether growing the business is worth it. I instantly knew that rapidly inflating the company would cut deeply into these activities. This dilemma highlights the junction between personal and professional identity. In my case, I am reluctant to divide the two into entirely different identities because they are heavily interwoven. Although I find aspects that predominantly surface in one role, these aspects also appear in other roles. For example, I recall a weekend away with friends when one of them reminded me that I was not the boss in this situation. He asked me not to take the lead. I may have acted like the boss, but my friends did not expect it from me. Since my professional and personal identities’ margins are very blurred, I prefer not to separate them. But there is also a second junction – my personal identity and my firm’s organizational identity. I say ‘we’ and refer to the company. ‘We do concrete and brickwork, and we are not a general contractor. And we went through the crisis ten years ago, and therefore we don’t want to grow that fast again’. I turned my argument from the cultural to the self – from ethno to auto – yet I could have maintained an outward gaze. I could have asked what this conversation revealed about my firm’s identity. What identity do we share as a company? What do we think we are, and how does doubling turnover resonate with that self-image? The vignettes and reflections above show the influence of my company’s culture on me in a personal and private situation. But one could also explore how I impact the company’s identity. Yet, this is merely a focus reflected in writing – the mutual influence and dependence

Autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work  137 remain. Therefore, an autoethnographic approach can explore this junction of the cultural (‘ethno’) and the personal (‘auto’) gazing in both directions. Maintaining the inward perspective and using the culture around me as a mirror shows that the self depends on the other. We only come into being in connection and contrast to the other (Levinas, 1961/1969). Hence, we form our conceptual scaffolding only in relation to others. To Levinas, we translate the other into our concepts and theories. Therefore, our very identity is dependent on others as mirrors. The conversation with Nadja was such a mirror, and it took the minor ‘accident’ to disturb me. She questioned the status quo and my ambiguous attitude toward growing my business by asking a question. Yet, there was a bit more to the questioning. It is the others that shape the frame of reference for us. What appear to be more significant events, like the company’s crisis ten years ago and the small events like Nadja’s question or the friend’s comment on my bossiness, all shape my frame of reference differently. Similarly, I exert a minor influence on the reference system of the people around me. We share names for things, so we constitute a ‘community of speakers’ without which our shared frame of reference would dissolve (Large, 2015). The other addresses me and questions my concepts, categories and conceptual scaffolding (Levinas, 1961/1969, 1974/1998). This little encounter with the other pressured me to rearrange my thought and concepts. Or, at least, the question put the possibility of growing my business back on the table again. The economic situation for construction companies in Germany has been comparatively good in recent years and growth was already being considered. But the extent of the expansion made some difference to me. I would not think of doubling the size of the company. Yet, at that moment, I felt the urge to consider what she said and to think about substantial growth. However, something in me still resisted. I saw her as challenging my self-image by raising such a simple question – a simple question for a business consultant. It is the essential otherness I am facing that disturbs my self-image. It reshapes my thoughts (Levinas, 1961/1969, 1974/1998). Since this is a minor incident and the ‘accidents’ occur daily, one may draw an analogy to Derrida’s (1967/1978) characterization of Levinas’s thoughts as small, almost unrecognizable, but constant waves at the beach trickling through the pebbles. This trickling through every little gap between the pebbles on a beach – over and over again, almost unwittingly but incessantly influencing me is the others’ impact on my identities. Derrida characterizes the repetition of accidents very neatly: ‘It proceeds with the infinite insistence of waves on a beach: return and repetition, always of the same wave against the same shore, in which, however, as each return recapitulates itself, it also infinitely renews and enriches itself’ (1967/1978, p. 398) Subsequently, it leads to the more significant changes in our identities, which Winkler (2014) observes. One may wonder whether I am forcing the theory on the example. I deliberately chose Levinas’s thought as the axis to reflect on because it helped me explain my observations (Wolcott, 2009). I could have picked another framework. It was not pure emergence or forcing a concept on the material (Kelle, 2005). I do not seek to fool anybody. I have subjectively asked only a particular set of questions (Pirsig, 2014). Hence, Levinas’s thoughts have guided my interpretation of an entrepreneur’s identity work.

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CRITICAL EVALUATION Qualitative research has its advantages and limitations, which I do not discuss here. Instead, I focus on objections and challenges specific to autoethnography. Again, I will draw on my own experiences to illustrate this. Most criticism of autoethnography revolves around the researcher’s centrality. Delamont (2009, p. 59) argues that ‘autoethnography cannot meet core social science objectives’. She laments the researcher’s missing distance to the research, a mere experiential account, problems with positionality and a lack of interesting settings. Atkinson (2006, p. 403) claims that ‘others remain infinitely more interesting and sociologically significant than the majority of [researchers documenting] their own experiences’. Most of all, Delamont objects to autoethnographers’ inward gaze, which is ‘not an appropriate substitute for data collection’ (2009, p. 60). Similarly, autoethnographers are accused of self-indulgence, narcissism, self-absorption or naval-gazing (Allen Collinson, 2013; Madison, 2006; Mykhalovskiy, 1996; Sparkes, 2002). This discussion is as old as autoethnography. Even Hayano (1979, p. 103) wondered whether he should call his study ‘fieldwork and research’. Although the criticism sounds harsh, addressing it leads to worthwhile research. As Czarniawska (1997, p. 49) suggests, ‘to treat identity as a narrative or…the continuous process of narration’ autoethnographers’ stories are well-equipped to offer deep insights into identity and identity work. They can indeed reveal insights and aspects that are very difficult to discuss in interviews or to observe in others. However, these narratives must have significance to a broader audience (Richardson, 1990). In this case, the missing distance (Delamont, 2009), or better their vested interest in the subject, can become an advantage. Coffey (1999, p. 20) argues that ‘involvement is to some extent inevitable and even desirable’ because ‘the pursuit of cultural understanding and the process of personal development are intimately rather than tangentially related’ (ibid., p. 23). Hence, the autoethnographer may educate through their ‘action research for the individual’ (Ellis, 1999, p. 677). I have often read objections similar to those mentioned above in reviews or have heard such remarks on conference presentations. In turn, I wrote defensive justifications for using autoethnography that was also criticized. Hence, one needs to find a balance between justifying one’s approach and avoiding over-defensiveness – which bores readers who are familiar and sympathetic with autoethnography. It takes some time to develop a good argument and some justified confidence. The challenge I still wrestle with the most is the different roles I ought to fulfil. For example, I have been running my own business for over two decades, but I have also been a researcher since 2012. If I want to talk about something interesting to a wider audience, I need managerial experience, such as running my business. I must be present there – fulfilling duties and caring for employees. Moreover, I need the whole experience and immersion to reveal something worthy of the ‘auto’ prefix. If I am not there, I have little vested interest; I slowly but inevitably become an increasingly detached observer instead of an immersed autoethnographer. The personal attachment makes the difference, as one sees in Jago’s (2002) and Rambo Ronai’s (1995) stories. Therefore, I must be a full member of the group I study. I must work in construction management. It is less the rigorous data collection and more the credibility and closeness to the field that makes autoethnographies worthwhile to read.

Autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work  139 Furthermore, I must also keep up to date with research and scholarship. It is time-consuming, and, therefore, I must compromise. In addition, I need to balance my roles so that I am a good enough manager and researcher. So, I chose to pursue ‘opportunistic research’ (Riemer, 1977) in my ‘backyard’ (Wolcott, 1999); I could hardly have done any other research because I could not leave my company behind. But the vested interest in running my own business poses another opportunity and challenge. Autoethnography is ‘action research for the individual’ (Ellis, 1999, p. 677). Again, I investigate what appears significant to me; I explore my professional problems. Indeed, I apply my findings almost immediately to my professional practice. This may lead to more practice-relevant research because I switch back and forth between a practitioner and researcher mindset (Bartunek, 2007). However, I have a unique, subjective and limited view of things because my livelihood depends on my business. My positionality requires reflection and inevitably leads to a good deal of identity work. Contemplating identity issues did lead to raised awareness first and then to a ‘consequential transformation’ (Hernandez et al., 2022), predominantly in my thinking but inevitably also in my acting. This is the case for both – the researcher but also for the business owner. How I do business and enact my role of business owner transformed immensely during the time of my autoethnographic research. The dependence on the business and my deep involvement makes my perspective distinct. My values, opportunities and constraints, fears and chances determine which questions I ask about my identity and my field. Pirsig (2014) demonstrated that we only ask subjective questions. However rigorous and scientific our methods of inquiry might be, we only end up with subjectively framed answers because the very questions that determine the direction of the investigation and specific routes are excluded. Being a business owner is a curse and blessing at the same time. I may only ask specific questions, but I can demonstrate that these questions have significance for people in a similar situation to mine. Researching in my business backyard renders it very difficult to gain informed consent. First, it is seldom feasible to approach a potential client upfront with a consent form. It would be irritating at the least. So, instead, once some familiarity is established and some trust built, I often talk about research and how I do it. This can amount to a ‘handshake agreement’ as Calvey (2019) describes, although this is risky because there is no right to publish involved. Informed consent can range from saying that research is underway to checking every written word; hence complete informed consent is almost impossible in ethnographies, and some covert elements remain (Spicker, 2011). I record events that vary widely, with many people involved. The wide range of observations poses an essential dilemma if I research all my environment autoethnographically; all my encounters are potentially fruitful material to be explored. That, in turn, renders gaining consent for material produced from memory particularly difficult and gaining informed consent before collecting material virtually impossible. The events I recollect took place more than ten years ago – that is, before I started my research project. Furthermore, I never know whether the note I take will turn out to be as informative as I hoped when I wrote it. Therefore, my guiding principle is to cause no harm to informants or myself (Spicker, 2011; Tullis, 2013). In my fieldnotes, I write about everything, which offers me some freedom, yet I carry more responsibility not to harm in the same measure. That, of course, involves disguising their identities and falsifying or fictionalizing (Poulos, 2008) details. Making participants unrecognizable mitigates Calvey’s concerns. This ‘dishonesty’ is justified to safeguard participants (Ellis, 2009; Tullis, 2013) and also me.

140  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations In practice, this involves countless revisions of fieldnotes and interpretation to avoid harming anyone and to convey a credible, honest, valuable and complete description of events. It is a balancing act that is difficult to perform. Any consent form would not relieve me from this task because we are always responsible beyond anything written in documents and contracts (Levinas, 1974/1998). My example offers an idea of what autoethnography could produce. It is a qualitative method in which the researcher draws a picture of the self and culture that originates in their subjective perspective. It offers insider understanding and highlights complexities. However, the researcher must be careful to expose themselves only to the extent with which they are comfortable. It is laborious and time-consuming yet immensely rewarding for the researcher. Through the hermeneutic interpretation, the research can reveal perspectives otherwise tricky to access. Using it, one focuses on tiny details in interactions with others that form, reform and maintain our different identities. Therefore, I conclude with a quote from Rilke (1929/1954, p. 35), which Edward Trezise – a friend and mentor – introduced me to, and Jago (2002) reminded me of: [T]ry to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

It is a balancing act between searching and waiting for answers to arrive. Pursuing autoethnography takes time, and from the outset, it is difficult to predict which question one might be able to answer in the end.

REFERENCES Adams, T. E., Holman Jones, S. L., & Ellis, C. (2015). Autoethnography. Oxford University Press. Allen Collinson, J. (2013). Autoethnography as engagement of self/other, self/culture, self/politics, and selves/futures. In S. L. Holman Jones, T. E. Adams & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 281–299). Left Coast Press. Allen Collinson, J., & Hockey, J. (2004). Autoethnography: Self-indulgence or rigorous methodology? In M. McNamee (Ed.), Philosophy and the sciences of exercise, health and sport: Critical perspectives on research methods (pp. 177–191). Routledge. Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 373–395. Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. Jossey-Bass. Atkinson, P. (2006). Rescuing autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 400–404. Bartunek, J. M. (2007). Academic-practitioner collaboration need not require joint or relevant research: Toward a relational scholarship of integration. The Academy of Management Journal, 50(6), 1323–1333. Bochner, A., & Ellis, C. (2016). Evocative autoethnography: Writing lives and telling stories. Routledge. Boylorn, R. M., & Orbe, M. P. (Eds.). (2021). Critical autoethnography: Intersecting cultural identities in everyday life. Routledge. Calvey, D. (2019). A sociological case of stand-up comedy: Censorship, offensiveness and opportunism. In R. J. Smith & S. Delamont (Eds.), The lost ethnographies: Methodological insights from projects that never were (pp. 65–78). Emerald Publishing. Caputo, J. D. (2000). The end of ethics. In H. LaFollettte (Ed.), The Blackwell guide to ethical theory (pp. 111–128). Blackwell. Chang, H. (2016a). Autoethnography as method. Routledge.

Autoethnographically exploring identities and identity work  141 Chang, H. (2016b). Collaborative autoethnography. Routledge. Coffey, A. (1999). The ethnographic self: Fieldwork and the representation of identity. SAGE. Czarniawska, B. (1997). Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity. University of Chicago Press. Delamont, S. (2009). The only honest thing: Autoethnography, reflexivity and small crises in fieldwork. Ethnography and Education, 4(1), 51–63. Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and difference (A. Bass, Trans.). Routledge (Original work published 1967). Ellis, C. (1999). Heartful autoethnography. Qualitative Health Research, 9(5), 669–683. Ellis, C. (2009). Revisions: Autoethnographic reflections on life and work. Left Coast Press. Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 733–768). SAGE. Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2006). Analyzing analytic autoethnography: An autopsy. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 429–449. Ellis, C., Holman Jones, S. L., & Adams, T. E. (Eds.). (2022). Handbook of autoethnography (2nd ed.). Routledge. Ellis, C., & Rawicki, J. (2013). Collaborative witnessing of survival during the Holocaust. Qualitative Inquiry, 19(5), 366–380. Emerald, E., & Carpenter, L. (2014). The scholar retires: An embodied identity journey. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(10), 1141–1147. Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Geertz, C. (1972). Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight. Daedalus, 101(1), 1–37. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice (3rd ed.). Routledge. Hayano, D. M. (1979). Auto-ethnography: paradigms, problems, and prospects. Human Organization, 38(1), 99–104. Hernandez, K.-A. C., Chang, H., & Bilgen, W. A. (2022). Transformative autoethnography for practitioners: Change processes and practices for individuals and groups. Meyers Education Press. Herrmann, A. F. (Ed.). (2017). Organizational autoethnographies: Power and identity in our working lives. Routledge. Herrmann, A. F. (Ed.). (2020). The Routledge international handbook of organizational autoethnography. Routledge. Holman Jones, S. L. (2005). Autoethnography: Making the personal political. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 763–791). SAGE. Iser, W. (2000a). Do I write for an audience? PMLA, 115(3), 310–314. Iser, W. (2000b). The range of interpretation. Columbia University Press. Jago, B. J. (2002). Chronicling an academic depression. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 31(6), 729–757. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2002). Meditation is about paying attention [Interview]. Reflection, The Society for Organizational Learning Journal, 3, 68–71. Kelle, U. (2005). ‘Emergence’ vs ‘forcing’ of empirical data? A crucial problem of ‘grounded theory’ reconsidered. Qualitative Social Research, 6(2), Article 27. Large, W. (2015). Levinas’ ‘Totality and Infinity’. Bloomsbury. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press (Original work published 1961). Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise than being, or, beyond essence (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press (Original work published 1974). Madison, D. S. (2006). The dialogic performative in critical ethnography. Text & Performance Quarterly, 26(4), 320–324. Moon, J. A. (2006). Learning journals: A handbook for academics, students and professional development (2nd ed.). Routledge. Mykhalovskiy, E. (1996). Reconsidering table talk: Critical thoughts on the relationship between sociology, autobiography and self-indulgence. Qualitative Sociology, 19(1), 131–151.

142  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Pillow, W. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(2), 175–196. Pirsig, R. M. (2014). Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance: An inquiry into values (40th anniversary ed.). Vintage Books. Poulos, C. N. (2008). Narrative conscience and the autoethnographic adventure: Probing memories, secrets, shadows, and possibilities. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(1), 46–66. Rambo, Ronai, C. (1995). Multiple reflections of child sex abuse: An argument for a layered account. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 23(4), 395–426. Reed-Danahay, D. (Ed.). (1997). Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the self and the social. Berg. Richardson, L. (1990). Writing strategies: Reaching diverse audiences. SAGE. Riemer, J. W. (1977). Varieties of opportunistic research. Urban Life, 5(4), 467–477. Rilke, R. M. (1954). Letters to a young poet (M. D. Herter Norton, Trans.; F. X. Kappus, (Ed.); revised ed.). W. W. Norton (Original work published 1929). Rowe, M., Turner, E., & Pearson, G. (2016). Learning and practicing police craft. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 5(3), 276–286. Smith, R. J., & Delamont, S. (Eds.). (2019). The lost ethnographies: Methodological insights from projects that never were. Emerald Publishing. Sparkes, A. C. (2002). Autoethnography: Self-indulgence or something more? In A. P. Bochner & C. Ellis (Eds.), Ethnographically speaking: Autoethnography, literature, and aesthetics (pp. 209–232). AltaMira Press. Spicker, P. (2011). Ethical covert research. Sociology, 45(1), 118–133. St. Pierre, E. A. (1997). Circling the text: Nomadic writing practices. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(4), 403–417. Sveningsson, S., & Alvesson, M. (2003). Managing managerial identities: Organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle. Human Relations, 56(10), 1163–1193. Tullis, J. A. (2013). Self and others: Ethics in autoethnographic research. In S. L. Holman Jones, T. E. Adams & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 244–261). Left Coast Press. Van Maanen, J. (2011). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. SAGE. Weick, K. E. (2006). Faith, evidence, and action: Better guesses in an unknowable world. Organization Studies, 27(11), 1723–1736. Winkler, I. (2014). Being me whilst learning Danish. A story of narrative identity work during the process of learning a foreign language. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 9(4), 290–307. Wolcott, H. F. (1999). Ethnography: A way of seeing. AltaMira Press. Wolcott, H. F. (2009). Writing up qualitative research (3rd ed.). SAGE.

11. Who am I when I am in flow? An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity Ulrike Eva Posselt

INTRODUCTION This chapter sets out to introduce autoethnography as a method for studying identity. It provides a brief definition of its different strands, its use for studying identity, how it can be put into practice and offers a critical evaluation. The chapter offers an application of the method with the title, ‘Who am I when I am in flow?’ to describe an individual level of identity. The illustration and application of the method shows the relations between self, ego and identity seen from the personal perspective of the autoethnographer. This person is the writer of this chapter. The method of autoethnography applies a first-person view. This research applies the method of autoethnography while practising and reflecting on calligraphy: an artful way of interpreting a text and a writing tradition practised for hundreds of years in different social contexts. Calligraphy was chosen because the researcher is used to the activity. Csikszentmihalyi (1975, p. 90) introduced and defined the term ‘flow’ as an optimal human experience where a person is immersed in an activity and it could be attained through various activities such as rock-climbing, running or writing. The concept of flow (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002) relates to ‘peak experience’ by Maslow (1959, 1962/2017) and the ‘oceanic feelings’ that French writer Romain Rolland pointed out to Freud (Parsons, 1998; Saarinen, 2015). Flow has been connected to ‘autotelic personalities’ (Asakawa, 2010; Baumann, 2021; Steels, 2004; Tse et al., 2018). Brown and Leary (2016) introduced the concept of ‘hypo-egoic functioning’ (p. 3). This chapter builds on the conceptualization that hypo-egoic phenomena reflect ‘a low degree of identification with the self-as-object model […] and, thus, with lower self-preoccupation, ego-centrism, egoism, and heteronomy’ (p. 9). This research applies the view that the self-as-subject concept means that the stable and seemingly ‘selfless’, which seems to be paradoxical, self of a human might be accompanied by a changing self-as-object, a ‘selfish’ ego. To ‘be’ in flow means being beyond ego-centrism and egoism. Nakamura and Roberts (2016) describe the hypo-egoic components of flow as ‘a hypo-egoic state’ (p. 134). They argue that ‘[t]he flow construct emerged from a project of descriptive phenomenology rooted in the philosophical works of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’ (p. 133). An autoethnographer takes a first-person perspective in a qualitatively oriented research methodology. The methodological traditions span naturalist and constructivist ends but weigh heavier on the constructivist side because of this method’s emphasis on the social. Applying the method can be a challenge for any researcher, but can tell a powerful narrative and contribute to knowledge and understanding. As an academic scholar, you describe a witnessed experience and testify from your scholarly heart, knowledge and integrity. You focus on your study of identity while you are embedded in a social environment. You are in resonant, 143

144  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations empathic interaction with others and describe your experiences. Additionally, you can do it anywhere because you only need yourself, your social context related to your study of identity and knowledge regarding practising the method. So, why not contribute the most valuable local knowledge and experience you have – your own? You are the writer of autoethnographic research, shining through the text as a tangible presence. As the researcher takes the first-person perspective in autoethnography, I will continue using the pronoun ‘I’ to provide an impression of the method. In empathically crafting this chapter, like weaving, carving and puzzling, I have a person in front of my inner eye who searches for the ‘right’ method of studying a specific topic of identity. Perhaps it is you.

DESCRIPTION OF AUTOETHNOGRAPHY Autoethnography builds on the heritage of ethnography. Ethnographer Geertz (1983/2016, p. 4) stated that ‘[t]o an ethnographer, sorting through the machinery of distant ideas, the shapes of knowledge are always ineluctably local, indivisible from their instruments and their encasements’. However, ‘[o]ne cannot judge solely on the basis of physical appearance or residence to determine whether one is or is not doing auto-ethnography’ (Hayano, 1979, p. 100). Conversely, ‘[t]here is no one definitive form or containing category of autoethnography owned by individual scholars regarding how it should be done, or how it should be represented’ (Sparkes, 2020, p. 292). However, ‘people feel that writing an autoethnography is an easy option. It most certainly is not’ (ibid.). It requires effort, time and knowledge. Autoethnography is ‘part ethnography and part autobiography’ (Ellis et al., 2011, p. 283), ‘defined as a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context. It is both a method and a text, as in the case of ethnography’ (Reed-Danahay, 1997, p. 9). Autoethnography invites interdisciplinarity and creativity. Bartleet (2013) described artful examples of autoethnography. Different Strands of Autoethnography Methodologically, there are several strands, from evocative (Bochner & Ellis, 2016) to analytic (Anderson, 2006, 2011; Smith, 2021). Sparkes (2020) indicated several variations, such as Anderson’s analytic, Bochner and Ellis’s evocative and Denzin’s performance autoethnography, to explore whether scholars feel appropriate judging an autoethnographic text. Denzin (2006, p. 420) reflected: Apples and oranges – are we dealing with two different things? Leon [Anderson] wants to use analytic reflexivity to improve theoretical understandings. Stacy [Holman Jones] wants to change the world. Carolyn [Ellis] wants to embed the personal in the social. Tami Spry’s self-narratives critique the social situatedness of identity. Mark [Neumann] wants to ‘democratize the representational sphere of culture’ by writing outward from the self to the social. Are we in parallel or separate universes? Who is talking to whom? It’s déjà vu all over again.

It is this variety that makes autoethnography so interesting to read. Even though Denzin refers to different research paradigms and intentions for writing an autoethnographic narrative, I suggest seeing the person’s needs. The authors write about belonging, change, reflection and health; these needs and aims are life-enriching and life-supportive. I invite you to see this as a continuum, like a horizontal line consisting of apples, peaches, plums, strawberries, oranges

An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity  145 and more. All are fruit. Autoethnographers are researchers whose writings enrich and influence their own life and the life of others. Pitard (2019, p. 1829) ‘conducted a phenomenological study using autoethnography to portray the existential shifts in my cultural understanding’. Regarding autoethnography and phenomenology, Esping (2010) describes ‘theoretical ideas and perceptual metaphors derived from Frankl’s scholarship that make it useful as a philosophical and historical underpinning for the practice of autoethnography’ (p. 201). Frankl (1969/2014) might be helpful, as ‘Frankl accepted Husserl’s contention that individuals do not actually see the whole of the objects in front of them, but rather see objects by means of limited perspectives’ (Esping, 2010, p. 208). Husserl (1913/2014) was the founder of ‘phenomenology’ and a former student of Brentano, who was the founder of ‘descriptive psychology’. Additionally, Husserl was the predecessor of Heidegger in Freiburg. Both Brentano and Husserl, were read by Bertrand Russell, one of the founders of ‘analytic philosophy’ (Milkov, 2018). Nevertheless, it seemed that Frankl drew on Husserl’s phenomenology. Additionally, Esping (2010, p. 213) points from Frankl to Richardson’s ‘notion of crystalline validity’ (Richardson, 1997). Ellingson (2009) developed Richardson’s ‘concept of qualitative crystallization’ (pp. xii, original emphasis) further as ‘a framework in which to balance claims of truth with recognition of the intersubjective nature of all knowledge claims’ (p. 14) and presented it as a concept well-suited for autoethnography (p. 63). To summarize, there might be a line of thoughts from Brentano, Husserl, Frankl, Richardson to Ellingson, while it might be interesting – if it would even be possible – to listen to a conversation between mathematician Husserl and the qualitative researchers Richardson or Ellingson. Autoethnography as a Method for Studying Identity In fact, ‘autoethnographies are about identity’ (Tienari, 2019, p. 577). ‘Autoethnography helps us see that everything changes and that identity is something one lives, not something one has’ (Hoppes, 2014, p. 70). Examples are pieces on organizational autoethnography (Doloriert & Sambrook, 2012) or identity change (Preston, 2011). You could study particular aspects of identity, such as queer (Holman Jones et al., 2016), academic (Learmonth & Humphreys, 2011), professional (Grosse, 2019), athletic (Zavattaro, 2014), running (Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2007), or bullying (Vickers, 2007). Autoethnography celebrates an enormous variety of approaches. Practising Autoethnography Guidance on practising autoethnography includes writing fieldnotes and creative ways to collect artefacts and materials as memory fades away over time. ‘The “field” is a state of mind’ (Anderson & Glass-Coffin, 2022, p. 68). An autoethnographer takes notes, personal documents and artefacts from the field. Anything you would like to recollect might be appropriate if you can store it safely, including pictures, drawings, sketches, notes, videos, or artwork such as performances, music and poems. However, it is important to acknowledge rights – for example, regarding intellectual property and publishing. Anderson and Glass-Coffin (2022) contribute that ‘[t]hree types of “data” stand front-and-center as the most common in the autoethnographic writings we have read: fieldnotes, personal documents, and interviews’ (p. 65). Fieldnotes are material or digital notes

146  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations you collect to remind you when you analyse, synthesize and interpret what you have observed and may have a reflective and reflexive character. Giorgio (2022) identifies more ‘potential memory-data’ such as stories, secrets, artefacts, transcripts, observations, journals and conversations. He writes, ‘[a]s the building blocks (or bricks) of autoethnography, memory becomes our primary data, yet memory as data is more than recall’ (p. 409). Most fieldnotes are written recollections of experiences and events collected in pads or digital documents. The boundaries between fieldnotes and personal documents, such as letters, diaries, emails and artefacts such as sticky notes, leaves, textiles, drawings and sketches, might be blurred and depend on the habits of the researcher since ‘[m]ost autoethnographers would make little distinction between fieldnotes and diaries; all such materials provide valuable data for autoethnographic inquiry’ (Anderson & Glass-Coffin, 2022, p. 68). Interviews can add another perspective. ‘Seldom, if ever, have we read about autoethnographers approaching themselves orally with interview guides and probes’, reported Anderson and Glass-Coffin (2022, p. 69) and referred to Ellis and Berger (2001) with regard to reflexive dyadic interviews, interactive interviews, and co-constructed narratives. To summarize, awareness and reflexivity are necessary for applying the method of autoethnography: The minimum requirement is that autoethnographers must be willing to dig deeper into their memories, excavate rich details, bring them onto examination tables to sort, label, interconnect, and contextualize them in the sociocultural environment. (Chang, 2016, p. 51)

The next part of the chapter introduces the method applied to the level of an individual’s identity. The chosen activity – calligraphy – to reach flow could different for someone else. Flow experience was described, for example, by rock climbers, runners and writers. It is an experience that is perceived while being immersed in an activity.

ILLUSTRATION AND APPLICATION OF AUTOETHNOGRAPHY This illustration and application of the method of autoethnography are based on my experience of autoethnography through calligraphy: a contemplative, interpretative art related to writing a text whose letters may or may not be readable. Doing calligraphy helps me to get into a flow experience. If you have lost track of time while doing something, such as a hobby or your job, you might have experienced ‘flow’. However, humans might enjoy and experience the phenomenon without ever knowing the term. This autoethnography is an example of phenomenological autoethnography because it is both directed to the phenomenon of flow and the experience of flow while corporally embedded in time and space. This autoethnography aims to understand the relation of identity, self-as-subject and self-as-object while getting into flow. Why Study Identity Through Calligraphy? In my experience, doing calligraphy is the fastest road into flow. Since I have experienced flow from childhood, I decided to be the subject of this research. I wanted to ‘dig’ for my tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 2013), experience the phenomenon and reflect on it as closely as possible. My ‘road’ to getting into flow through calligraphy is influenced by its particular traditions. I simply love doing calligraphy and this might be the key because it seems to be

An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity  147 that people who ‘love’ doing an activity could immerse into flow. Calligraphy, an artwork, is highly individual – unique – because anyone else would take a different perspective and have different knowledge, abilities and writing style. An Overview of Doing Calligraphy Calligraphy builds on historically grown and shared traditions of hundreds of years of hand lettering, and Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Western calligraphy is considered an art. ‘As the entire life of an artist is present in every stroke of the brush, so the entire reality of the self is present in every contingent determination’, admits Nishida (1987, p. 146). This resonates with me. I focus on the Western, specifically European, tradition as I perceive this to be my socio-historical heritage (all quotations in italics are from my fieldnotes): I am used to Western calligraphy, and it makes no sense to me to use another calligraphy style because I have no feeling for this tradition. It would be an incredible mess if I tried to do Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese calligraphy, and I would hesitate to try it. I am grounded and rooted in Western calligraphy and its tradition. Perhaps if I had lived for some years in one of these countries, could speak and write the language and had trained in the way of doing calligraphy daily for five to ten years, it could work. However, I would even question this. This tradition is a lived one. I cannot leave it behind like a backpack. This tradition is integrated into my social heritage, and I have a sense of it. However, I recognize virtuosity because, of course, I see whether there is a trained craftsperson, and I also see the artistry which is in the space of aesthetics. There is ease and playfulness in high-quality artwork, and it is not only a good idea. There is freedom, creativity, fluency, and virtuosity, which are beyond mastery.

There is social embeddedness in practising calligraphy as I am rooted and embedded while building on European hand lettering and Western calligraphy traditions and humanistic heritage: I like to write an italic script from the Renaissance developed in Italy. The humanistic cursive was written in the fifteenth century, and developed from the new ideas spreading at the end of the Middle Ages. A later variant, the Cancellaresca, was written by Michelangelo. I like the script because it is elegant and allows fast, fluid writing.

Doing calligraphy means being centred and in alignment. It also integrates relationships with others. Doing Autoethnography While Getting Into Flow It would not be autoethnography if I did not integrate the social context, and my body is embedded in a particular Western, European and German environment. Hence, there are time and space because I communicate asynchronously with others through the artwork: the author of the text, teachers of the art, and eventually synchronously or asynchronously with the recipients of the finished work. Usually, a calligrapher writes and interprets someone else’s text. There is a contemplative reflection regarding the author in trying to understand and interpret the meaning of the text. The calligrapher delves into the world of the author, like a dialogue, interpreting and transforming the text into artwork. Doing calligraphy is like an invisible dialogue with the author of the text. I always like to know about the author’s life.

148  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations It is a humble-minded, contemplative process. I sense how the text needs to be written, and an appropriate layout emerges. If it works well, I might sense artistry. If I do, I feel at ease and sense virtuosity. It is then that I am in flow. I have learned from a wide range of books, exhibitions and teachers. There seems to be an invisible thread through time, like passing rich knowledge through experience, which then becomes a tradition. I am embedded in a tradition and social heritage, depending on my location, socialization, orientation, choice and decision. To sense virtuosity means that practising is fluent and easy, but it does not mean perfection: that depends on the level of practice. I might think I am fluent and do something with ease, but when I return to the work, I realize its limitations, ‘mistakes’ and imperfections. It is important to have some distance and to return to the work to improve it. Calligraphy is unique, as once it is done, you cannot change it but only your ability to practise. This means beginning a new calligraphy. I use the German term üben (verb) and Übung (noun) rather than ‘practise’ to describe the process. Brinkmann (2012) writes about Übung and performing Chinese calligraphy. Übung means that you are most certainly learning to do something rather than just practising. The difference is that you reach a higher level in Übung, while practising could mean just performing an activity, action or matter of habit. However, there is still the capacity, ability, willingness and confidence to move forward. This includes accepting that there is no perfection, only a striving for perfection. There are the recipients of the calligraphy. There could be dialogue, interaction and (a) synchronous communication after the work is completed with recipients – for example, at a vernissage, that is, the opening of an art exhibition: I aim to inspire a recipient. The artwork could be the token for an encounter between one and more recipients and me, e.g., at a vernissage. In a vernissage, I am in conversation with others, and there is a synchronous conversation, where people come together simultaneously and celebrate, get to know each other or even know each other before coming to the vernissage.

However, the dialogue with the recipient at a vernissage is optional. The calligrapher can become the interpreter of the work, but not all artists like to interpret their work or even be visible. For example, the street artist Banksy prefers to stay anonymous and plays with identity. Once the originator has let go, the outcome could make sense and give meaning to a recipient. It means communicating through a medium, such as contributing a painting or a text, such as writing autoethnography. The researcher, author or artist gives it away, such as Ellis et al. (2018), who ‘provide a form of collective consciousness. “Coming unhinged” is not my story or Art’s story, or any one person’s story; it’s our story. And now it is yours’ (p. 131). This is asynchronous communication and relationship. The author takes the first step into a relationship and eventually into dialogue. Artistic work means to transcend time and space. An author, artist, or researcher uses a medium, such as a text, to communicate to a recipient. Communication might not always become a dialogue, for example, if the artist is dead. However, a recipient can still perceive an artwork after the life of the author, artist or researcher has ended, and the artistic legacy can still inspire people. I am talking to you as an author and researcher, giving this text away to you as the recipient, hoping you find it helpful.

An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity  149 The Flow Experience While Doing Calligraphy This study has a vertical alignment of deep contemplation and reflection and a horizontal alignment that I perceive as embeddedness in my social context and socio-historical heritage. Bernard of Clairvaux (ca. 1090–1153) expresses the process to immerse into flow well, although he might have meant something else by his analogy: The reservoir resembles the fountain that runs to form a stream or spreads to form a pool only when its own waters are brimming over. The reservoir is not ashamed to be no more lavish than the spring that fills it… First be filled, and then control the outpouring. (Bernard, 2013, p. 100)

To interpret the excerpt, I describe an example from my fieldnotes: at one point, on a more intense level of the process, I had the impression that my mind was not jumping high enough and had not quite reached a flow state. Before the water pours out, there is tension on the surface. This tension is critical. I reach momentum and balance myself, like being in buoyancy. However, from there, I can then enter flow to thrive. Flow is like surfing on a wave: balanced thriving.

There might be a sense of kinetic energy, like speed, velocity, acceleration, momentum. I also connect flow to genuine creativity, as if something comes into being: Even the preparation means to focus more and more on what I will be doing. It is a focusing phase of contemplation, concentration and aligning perception. Contemplation is like being in the eye of a tornado. It is calm there as I gear up to come into my power. It is like aligning a ray of light through a lens like a laser beam or an inner calibration mode to come into inner balance. It is a kind of adjusting my inner gyroscope or gyrocompass. I am also a scuba diver. In diving, there is the process of pivoting which is gaining vertical balance in the sea underwater to neither get up to the surface nor sink too fast. It is like being in equilibrium in the ocean floating with current (and avoiding too much of a current). It is like jumping on a wave, surfing in momentum and finding horizontal balance. The experience of time in flow is very different from linear time. I seem to transcend time and space. By starting to write, draw, or paint, I am highly present and even seem to perceive differently. I am ready, focused and apply my knowledge. I seem to direct and even play with (control) the tornado. It is the immediate action, reaction to what happens. It is an anticipation and thriving mode.

In flow, there is the element of thriving that I do not have while meditating. Sweeny et al. (2020) researched flow during COVID-19 in China and contributed the following: [F]low – but not mindfulness – moderated the link between quarantine length and well-being, such that people who experienced high levels [sic] flow showed little or no association between quarantine length and poorer well-being. (p. 1)

I contribute an analogy of flow experience and have termed it ‘descriptive definition of flow experience’ as there seems to be a lack of words to describe it. First there is the intrapersonal, followed by the interpersonal experience: Imagine yourself being a ship perceiving and experiencing the ocean of meaning alone. You are safe. You trust your body, experience and knowledge. Flow is a free, peaceful, loving momentum of the

150  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations highest focus and presence in which your ship surfs with ease and joy on a wave. It is immersion and openness. It means to thrive. Now you are one ship among others. You are thriving together in synchrony and harmony. It means to dance on the waves together.

The Identity of Being in Flow While Doing Calligraphy Brown and Leary (2016) described ‘self-as-subject and self-as-object’ self-processing (pp.  4–7), the ‘self as a model’ (pp. 7–9) and the ‘hypo-egoic turn’ (pp. 9–11). The self-as-subject ‘is’ in flow state. I imagine the self as something like a picture puzzle (Vexierbild in German). One might ‘surf’ on an edge while being partially connected but not fully on the other side. The self-as-object might hold back to be ‘fully’ on the other side. I also sense that what is beyond the edge might not be in alignment with life. The self-as-subject ‘knows’, and there is a sense of oneness and another – eventually no(t much) – sense of time which might be there because my body is in spatiotemporality. Eventually, the self-as-subject ‘asymptotically approaches truth’, to use an expression from Christensen (2006, p. 43), and it might be related to the sense of surfing on an edge. I sense something as disruption, like a jump or leap. Therefore, this expression by Christensen, founder of disruption theory, is appropriate, even though he referred to disruptive innovations. The self-as-object is my ego, and it will never be in a flow state. My ego constructs and negotiates an identity in the outside world. Unfortunately, the ego is fast and ‘good’ in overturning the ‘self-as-subject’. Before and after I immerse myself in flow, identity is perceivable: I have never ‘seen’ my ego or my ‘self’, although I can see myself in the mirror and see my body there. I perceive – or imagine – something like an ego and would always equate it with fear. My ego is nothing but fear and must take place in the backseat of an imagined car when I am about to enter flow. As it is like dust, I need to recognize it, so that it dissolves like fog in the sun’s light. Unfortunately, it always comes back. My ego ‘acts’ like a child and claims to protect me. This is an illusion. My self is mature and never needs protection. The ego is quite clever and quick in trying to enter the driver’s seat. I sometimes imagine my ego like a little monster. My ‘self’ does not allow my ego to hijack the driver’s seat, though, when it gets there, I always regret this later since my ego could be really, really egoistic, and this always involves other humans, e.g., my ego compares destructively. However, in flow, there is no place for any ego, whether alone in flow or while being with others. Egos have no place in flow. You must leave your ego behind at the entrance door if you want to experience flow.

During flow, I just ‘am’ in the sense of being ‘self-identical’. It seems that needs are met. There is a sense of oneness. The self-as-subject might be oriented toward oneness as a sense- and meaningful quality. Being in flow means being beyond egoism. Rather, it means being self-centred and in alignment with one’s self (the self-as-subject), which means to be self-identical, self-same, authentic. The self-as-subject might be oriented toward virtues and it might be able to thrive. The self-as-object might be ‘earthbound’ as it seems to be materially, bodily oriented trying to survive. To me, it seems that the self-as-subject and the self-as-object might be incommensurable. Nakamura and Roberts (2016) recommended that ‘[r]esearch attention is also needed to determine to what extent, and under what conditions, optimal (i.e., flow) experiences are self-transcendent’. In German, there are two terms for the body: Körper as a quantitative ‘one’, a material human object and Leib as the living Körper. The Leib might

An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity  151 contain the self-as-subject. The Körper might need an identity as a conceptual category, identity might expose salience, relevance, complexity, distinction and difference. The self-as-subject might be stable, while the self-as-object identity might change over time. There are tensions. Identity might point to logical issues. As it might be a paradoxical both/and phenomenon (Bednarek et al., 2021; Schad et al., 2016; Smith & Lewis, 2011; Smith et al., 2016), the self-as-subject might be perceived on a different – somewhat higher – level as it is revealed. The self-as-object might be perceived on a quantitative, dual, relational, spatiotemporal, socioecological level as it seems to be unveiled: observed, sensed, constructed, interpreted, described, ascribed, prescribed, subscribed, such as information on my ID card (name, place and date of birth), and negotiated as a social, dynamic process: My analogy would be that identity is a sticky note saying, ‘I am so and so’ and ‘you are so and so’. Since we are walking in the world, people see a body and ascribe imaginary sticky notes. This is something I cannot avoid. I can decide whether to keep the sticky note, try to remove it, or even play with it. I can choose to take them and make them visible or not. At least, you will always see what you want to see in me.

My answer to the question: ‘Who am I when I am in flow?’ is that I just ‘am’ when I am in flow: I can only contribute what I sense while being in flow: I am. It is like being on edge with the mind, dipping, jumping and being in flow. I sense nothingness and oneness simultaneously, calling it a ‘zero’ state. Though, nothingness relates to Heidegger and Sartre. Their glasses were half empty, and they saw nothingness, while my glass is half full, and I sense abundance.

My entrance to flow is through calligraphy and writing. You might experience flow while performing your work or hobby. So, who are you when you are in flow?

CRITICAL EVALUATION OF AUTOETHNOGRAPHY The main advantage of autoethnography is that a single autoethnographer is enough to describe an experience. However, this is also its main weakness. Autoethnographers might take more risks of being blamed and criticized than other researchers – both before being published and after (e.g., Siggelkow, 2007). Although Siggelkow’s story is applied to single case studies, it has equal pertinence to the issues surrounding autoethnography. Harder et al. (2020) investigated researchers’ experiences and perspectives after publishing research using autobiographical materials that also apply to autoethnography. Autoethnography is a descriptive method and could provide insight into something not previously noticed. You might need to face unexpected issues. Autoethnographers might feel vulnerable and not want to exploit themselves. I sense tension and can choose whether to speak what is true to me or keep silent. I am not vulnerable when I do autoethnography. A human strength might be the ability, decision and courage to share what is true to oneself publicly, and this could be powerful. I relate this strength to maturity: self-centred while neither egocentric nor fearful. Researchers working with their own experiences might sense a tension between vulnerability and exaggeration. Sparkes (2000, p. 30) was troubled by ‘namings’ that ‘function as regulatory charges against certain forms of sociology and act to reinscribe ethnographic

152  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations orthodoxy’. Deckers (2021) sketches the value and pitfalls of autoethnography in leadership studies. You might need to practise radical honesty with yourself. You could get thrown back to experiences that might hurt. For example, you might recognize your own ‘bias’ instead of the ‘bias’ of ‘others’. You could understand autoethnography as examining bias, beliefs, judgements or behaviour during the research process. Autoethnography could sharpen awareness and, therefore, to reflect on identity, such as entanglements with roles, perceptual limitations or thinking in silos. You could use personal experiences as being embedded in a social context and include your expertise and experience, such as internal knowledge of an organization. You could find yourself in the trap of perceiving yourself as a victim. If this happens, ask peers to read your work and be willing to reflect on their feedback. Your integrity and dignity might become entangled with your writings and even be questioned. Doing autoethnography could change the way you think and transform you and your work. It is not a sort of therapy. If you sense issues, seek out professional support. Nevertheless, there might be healing and life-supporting elements in such a reflective method for studying identity. Autoethnography stems from ethnography; an (auto)ethnographer might bring in a worldview, such as describing social groups, and the root of ethnography could be in question. A member of the Kogi people from Colombia might see the world differently from you. Whose lens is the ‘better’ one? Perhaps you are an autoethnographer who is academically socialized, a faculty member or have a scholarly background. You tell your truth and not the Truth. I see this as the main advantage of autoethnography because you make ‘bias’ visible. You might have a sense of belonging (‘we’, ‘our identity of being…’) or alienation (‘they’; ‘their identity of being…’) to a social group. Autoethnography is about inclusion and exclusion, sameness and otherness. As a mature researcher, you are highly conscious of perceiving and eventually taking prescriptions, ascriptions – or not. And even if you do not take them, they may affect you. Perhaps, you might want to subscribe somewhere or reject someone or something, possibly stemming from a sense of belonging – or alienation. You might recognize differences, tensions, conflicts and problems and make them visible. You could celebrate the discovery of differences before you decide what to do with them. Writing has constitutional character as it transforms the writer. It is also a valuable reflection process. Hence, you could increase your writing by reflection and reflexivity. Richardson sees writing as ‘a method of inquiry’ (Richardson & Adams St. Pierre, 2005). ‘Writing was a method through which I constituted the world and reconstituted myself’, contributed Richardson (1999, p. 89). In writing, you might sense what resonates (Rosa, 2016/2019), and you could raise empathy. Denzin (2006, p. 423) stated, ‘[i]n writing from the heart, we learn how to love, to forgive, to heal, and to move forward’. There might be no better advice than to practise writing from the heart – while being advised by the mind. You might want to distinguish the researcher from the research. Your message could become entangled with you as the carrier and have unwanted consequences. Writing an autoethnographic piece could be the time to reflect on your self-understanding of your position as a researcher and author as the researcher explores, reflects and interprets the ‘inner’ experience and what happens ‘outside’. A witness describes what happens ‘outside’ based on perceptions and interpretations. In autoethnography, there is an additional notion of the researcher’s testimony in describing and reflecting. An autoethnographer builds on integrity as a researcher, scholar and member of the academe.

An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity  153 Producing autoethnography could be seen as an act of courage as you are tangible as the author and cannot hide as the researcher. Autoethnography is time-consuming. It seems simple, though it is not at all easy. As autoethnography is a method based on reflection, you might want to take time to write your experiences and even more time to reflect on them – before publishing. As a human researcher and author of autoethnographic inquiry, you embody knowledge and are responsible for writing a narrative. A reader might read anything that makes sense but does this mean you should write autoethnographic fairy-tales – or fiction? Tullis (2022) provides thoughts on such ethics. Ultimately, the decision is yours, but you could consider possible lawsuits. Researchers will critique your work. A judge might criticize your work while you bear the consequences because, as the author, you are responsible. It needs confidence, courage, awareness and the commitment to take responsibility for any consequences – even those you might not anticipate. A reader and recipient will interpret your narrative – even years later. Winkler (2018) reminds and encourages us that: [t]he numerous practical and ethical issues, problems, obstacles, or pitfalls that are raised in the literature should not be regarded as reflecting negatively on autoethnography but simply as necessary aspects that autoethnographers have to address during their journey. (Winkler, 2018, p. 244)

As an autoethnographer, you are aware of your authority – namely, your right and power to determine and name issues, while you see your responsibility in treating others respectfully. You could be highly aware of your writing, your authorship, and the ethics of the research community in conducting your autoethnographic research on identity. Autoethnography supports writing on power and conflict, negotiation, and reconciliation, in a personal, resonant, empathic, dialogic interaction with others. I find autoethnography valuable – especially for studying identity – because the method focuses on social embeddedness, connections, relations and dialogue in a personal and tangible way. What I Would Have Liked to Know Before Using the Method I completely underestimated the onto-epistemological anthropocentric heritage of ethnography and its inherited power in doing autoethnography. The ethnographic heritage focuses on the experience in relation to the spatiotemporally related embeddedness of the autoethnographer. You might stay in an ethnographically oriented context and way of thinking. You could transform the ethnographic heritage because any researcher worldwide could apply the method. Autoethnography could contribute a variety of perspectives and a mixed chorus of voices pointing to relevant issues related to identity and beyond. Autoethnography might reach its limits if you are primarily interested in phenomena. I perceived tension between exploring a phenomenon by introspection while being aware of my social embeddedness. As the autoethnographer, you observe and describe what you perceive, which means interpreting; you focus on your embeddedness and social relations, which is very well suited to exploring socially related phenomena – especially identity.

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154  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 373–395. Anderson, L. (2011). Time is of the essence: An analytic autoethnography of family, work, and serious leisure. Symbolic Interaction, 34(2), 133–157. Anderson, L., & Glass-Coffin, B. (2022). Learn by going autoethnographic modes of inquiry. In T. E. Adams, S. L. Holman Jones, & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (2nd ed., pp. 57–83). Routledge. Asakawa, K. (2010). Flow experience, culture, and well-being: How do autotelic Japanese college students feel, behave, and think in their daily lives? Journal of Happiness Studies, 11(2), 205–223. Bartleet, B.-L. (2013). Artful and embodied methods, modes of inquiry, and forms of representation. In T. E. Adams, S. Holman Jones & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 443–464). Routledge. Baumann, N. (2021). Autotelic personality. In C. Pfeifer & S. Engeser (Eds.), Advances in flow research (2nd ed., pp. 373–431). Springer. Bednarek, R., Lewis, M. W., & Schad, J. (2021). Conversations and inspirations for organizational paradox scholarship. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 73B, 175–200. Bernard, of Clairvaux, Saint. (2013). Sermons on the song of songs. Fig-Books. Bochner, A. P., & Ellis, C. (2016). Evocative autoethnography: Writing lives and telling stories. Routledge. Brinkmann, M. (2012). Pädagogische Übung. Schöningh. Brown, K. W., & Leary, M. R. (2016). The emergence of scholarship and science on hypo-egoic phenomena. In K. W. Brown & M. R. Leary (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of hypo-egoic phenomena (pp. 3–13). Oxford University Press. Chang, H. (2016). Autoethnography as method (2nd ed.). Routledge. Christensen, C. M. (2006). The ongoing process of building a theory of disruption. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 23(1), 39–55. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety: The experience of play in work and games. Jossey-Bass. Deckers, J. (2021). The value of autoethnography in leadership studies, and its pitfalls. Philosophy of Management, 20(1), 75–91. Denzin, N. K. (2006). Analytic autoethnography, or déjà vu all over again. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 419–428. Doloriert, C., & Sambrook, S. (2012). Organisational autoethnography. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 1(1), 83–95. Ellingson, L. L. (2009). Engaging crystallization in qualitative research: An introduction. SAGE. Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research, 36(4), 273–290. Ellis, C., & Berger, L. (2001). Their story/my story/our story: Including the researcher's experience in interview research. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research (pp. 157–186). SAGE. Ellis, C., Bochner, A. P., Rambo, C., Berry, K., Shakespeare, H., Gingrich-Philbrook, C., Adams, T. E., Rinehart, R. E., & Bolen, D. M. (2018). Coming unhinged: A twice-told multivoiced autoethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(2), 119–133. Esping, A. (2010). Autoethnography and existentialism: The conceptual contributions of Viktor Frankl. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 41(2), 201–215. Frankl, V. E. (2014). The will to meaning. Beacon (Original work published 1969). Geertz, C. (2016). Local knowledge. HarperCollins (Original work published 1983). Giorgio, G. A. (2022). Reflections on writing through memory in autoethnography. In T. E. Adams, S. L. Holman Jones & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (2nd ed., pp. 406–424). Routledge. Grosse, H. (2019). An insider’s point of view: Autoethnography in the construction industry. Construction Management and Economics, 37(9), 481–498. Harder, R., Nicol, J. J., & Martin, S. L. (2020). ‘The power of personal experiences’: Post-publication experiences of researchers using autobiographical data. The Qualitative Report, 25(1), 238–254. Hayano, D. M. (1979). Auto-ethnography: Paradigms, problems, and prospects. Human Organization, 38(1), 99–104. Holman Jones, S. L., Adams, T. E., & Ellis, C. (2016). Handbook of autoethnography. Routledge.

An introduction to autoethnography as a method for studying identity  155 Hoppes, S. (2014). Autoethnography: Inquiry into identity. New Directions for Higher Education, 2014(166), 63–71. Husserl, E. (2014). Ideas for a pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. First book: General introduction to pure phenomenology (D. O. Dahlstrom, Trans.). Hackett (Original work published 1913). Learmonth, M., & Humphreys, M. (2011). Autoethnography and academic identity: Glimpsing business school doppelgängers. Organization, 19(1), 99–117. Maslow, A. H. (1959). Cognition of being in the peak experiences. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 94(1), 43–66. Maslow, A. H. (2017). Toward a psychology of being. Dancing Unicorn Books (Original work published 1962). Milkov, N. (2018). Edmund Husserl and Bertrand Russell, 1905–1918: The not-so-odd couple. In P. Stone (Ed.), Bertrand Russell’s life and legacy (pp. 73–98). Vernon Press. Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002). The concept of flow. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 89–105). Oxford University Press. Nakamura, J., & Roberts, S. (2016). The hypo-egoic component of flow. In K. W. Brown & M. R. Leary (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of hypo-egoic phenomena (pp. 133–146). Oxford University Press. Nishida, K. (1987). Intuition and reflection in self-consciousness (V. H. Viglielmo, Y. Takeuchi & J. S. O’Leary, Trans.). State University of New York. Parsons, W. B. (1998). The oceanic feeling revisited. The Journal of Religion, 78(4), 501–523. Pitard, J. (2019). Autoethnography as a phenomenological tool: Connecting the personal to the cultural. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in health social sciences (pp. 1829–1845). Springer. Polanyi, M. (2013). The tacit dimension (5th ed.). University of Chicago Press. Preston, A. J. (2011). Using autoethnography to explore and critically reflect upon changing identity. Adult Learner: The Irish Journal of Adult and Community Education, 2011, 110–125. Reed-Danahay, D. (1997). Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the self and the social. Berg. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of play: Constructing an academic life. Rutgers University Press. Richardson, L. (1999). Paradigms lost. Symbolic Interaction, 22(1), 79–91. Richardson, L., & Adams St. Pierre, E. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978). SAGE. Rosa, H. (2019). Resonance: A sociology of our relationship to the world (J. C. Wagner, Trans.). Polity (Original work published 2016). Saarinen, J. A. (2015). The concept of the oceanic feeling in artistic creativity and in the analysis of visual artworks. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 49(3), 15–31. Schad, J., Lewis, M. W., Raisch, S., & Smith, W. K. (2016). Paradox research in management science: Looking back to move forward. Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 5–64. Siggelkow, N. (2007). Persuasion with case studies. The Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), 20–24. Smith, R. C. (2021). Analytic autoethnography of familial and institutional social identity construction of My Dad with Alzheimer’s: In the emergency room with Erving Goffman and Oliver Sacks. Social Science & Medicine, 277, Article 113894. Smith, W. K., & Lewis, M. W. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. The Academy of Management Review, 36, 381–403. Smith, W. K., Lewis, M. W., & Tushman, M. L. (2016, May). ‘Both/and’ leadership. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved February 15, 2021 from https://​hbr​.org/​2016/​05/​both​-and​-leadership. Sparkes, A. C. (2000). Autoethnography and narratives of self: Reflections on criteria in action. Sociology of Sport Journal, 17(1), 21–43. Sparkes, A. C. (2020). Autoethnography: Accept, revise, reject? An evaluative self reflects. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 12(2), 289–302. Steels, L. (2004). The autotelic principle. In F. Iida, R. Pfeifer, L. Steels & Y. Kuniyoshi (Eds.), Embodied artificial intelligence: Lecture notes in computer science (Vol. 3139, pp. 231–242). Springer. Sweeny, K., Rankin, K., Cheng, X., Hou, L., Long, F., Meng, Y., Azer, L., Zhou, R., & Zhang, W. (2020). Flow in the time of COVID-19: Findings from China. PLoS One, 15(11), Article e0242043. Tienari, J. (2019). One flew over the duck pond: Autoethnography, academic identity, and language. Management Learning, 50(5), 576–590.

156  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Tse, D., Lau, V., Perlman, R., & McLaughlin, M. (2018). The development and validation of the autotelic personality questionnaire. Journal of Personality Assessment, 102, 1–14. Tullis, J. A. (2022). Self and others: Ethics in autoethnographic research. In T. E. Adams, S. L. Holman Jones & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (2nd ed., pp. 244–261). Routledge. Vickers, M. H. (2007). Autoethnography as sensemaking: A story of bullying. Culture and Organization, 13(3), 223–237. Winkler, I. (2018). Doing autoethnography: Facing challenges, taking choices, accepting responsibilities. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(4), 236–247. Zavattaro, S. (2014). Athletic identity – or an autoethnography of almost losing a leg. Qualitative Research Journal, 14(3), 272–288.

PART IV EMBODIED METHODS

12. Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance: body-centred narrative inquiry Cheryl K. Baldwin and Alyssa E. Motter

INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we present body, movement and dance methods for studying somatic identity, as a type of narrative identity. Drawn from our ongoing research collaboration as an educational researcher and dance artist educator, respectively, these methods have arisen in pursuit of interdisciplinary questioning that bridges our respective fields. We are interested in identity change as a type of narrative transformation that occurs through movement and dance (Baldwin & Motter, 2021). Somatic identity centres on a non-Cartesian conceptualization, one in which the mind and body are fundamentally intertwined and embodied knowing and somatic experience are intrinsic to self-understanding (Clark, 2012; Freeman, 2018; Leavy, 2020; Snowber, 2012). While others have examined somatic identity as part of group and community work studying collective insights (Foster, 2011), our focus is grounded in individual somatic identity made conscious and narratively told through autobiographic, self-reflexive movement and dance. We begin by introducing the conceptualization of somatic identity informed by transformative learning, dance studies and narrative identity. This discussion sets the foundation for the description and illustration of three methods rooted in constructivism (Guba & Lincoln, 1994) and informed by an action research orientation to inquiry as the methods require active facilitation and engagement with participants (Reason & Bradbury, 2008). The first two methods, guided visualization and body mapping, focus on the embodied character of identity and involve increasing participants awareness of the somatic qualities of past experiences relevant to their identities. These two methods can be employed by any researcher with prior experience fostering creative expression. The third method focuses on assessing a movement-based performance as a representation of participants’ somatic identity. It involves instructing participants on choreographic tools so that they can tell an identity narrative/story in a performance, and this method requires the guidance of a teaching artist both in instruction and data analysis. In terms of context, the methods presented were developed in an open-level creative dance course at an urban community college where no prior dance experience was required, and identity development was an intentional goal. The three methods are drawn from Alyssa’s teaching, where the awareness raising methods have been used as a precursor to the movement-based (i.e., dance) performance (Motter & Baldwin, 2018). However, these methods may be applicable to many personal and professional realms where narrative identity development is of interest. For example, professional and workplace learning, leadership development, community youth programmes, and therapeutic interventions.

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Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance  159

BACKGROUND AND CONCEPTUALIZATION OF SOMATIC IDENTITY In our work, identity is: (1) the total essence of being, a holistic sense of self that can qualitatively transform in developmental learning settings (Illeris, 2014); (2) a mind–body phenomenon inclusive of embodied experiences and knowing (Snowber, 2012); and (3) a type of narrative identity (Freeman, 2018). Drawing on transformative adult learning, identity refers to the ontological holistic sense of self that can substantively change in well-designed learning settings. Identity change is an outcome of deep and meaningful self-reflection and learning that ‘encompasses the social, emotional, cognitive, and bodily dimensions of selfhood’ (Tennant, 2012, p. viii). Learning as identity transformation is more than instrumental or additive; it is a special type of accommodative and developmental process affecting learners’ narratives about who they are and what they are capable of (Illeris, 2014). From this perspective, identity change is a qualitative shift in one’s narrative self-understanding in terms of functionality, sensitivity and sociality (ibid.). Building on Illeris, we use somatic identity to move the bodily dimension of learning and identity to the foreground. We draw on scholarship from dance and movement studies to explain this body dimension and further elaborate the embodied character of life experiences that comprise narrative identity (Leavy, 2020; Snowber, 2018). Dance scholars conceptualize embodiment as an inner experiential quality that encompasses physiological sensations and impulses of the lived body (Green, 2002; Hanna, 1988). As Rouhiainen (2008) asserts, ‘our sense of self is based upon the functions of a motional and self-sensing body-subject’ (p. 246). However, this subjective embodied sense of self is often preconscious and tacit; a pre-reflective type of perception (Rouhiainen, 2008). Embodiment is also experienced and known intersubjectively as a physical representation of culture. Individuals construct a sense of how their bodies, or the bodies of others, hold and render meaning in society (Albright, 1997). Here too, intersubjective meaning may be tacit and culturally inscribed whereby embodied experiences are shaped by social interactions, socialization and dominant cultural meanings and discourses (Leavy, 2020; Snowber, 2018). Dance scholar Ann Cooper Albright (1997) introduced the concept of somatic identity to study these subjective and intersubjective qualities of embodied self-understanding in autobiographical/narrative dance performances. She conceptualized somatic identity as comprising both the lived and inscribed body. That is, personal/subjective experiential knowledge and social/intersubjective knowledge of societal and cultural norms and meanings. Her work established somatic identity as one’s personal narrative story of the embodied self-in-social context told in movement and dance. Extending the holistic quality of identity in learning previously introduced and drawing on Albright (1997) and narrative identity in psychology and human development, our conceptualization of somatic identity is in the narrative tradition. From this perspective, individuals construct their understanding of themselves as distinctive beings through retrospective reflection on experiences linked together in a personal story (Freeman, 2015; Schwartz et al., 2014). Retrospective reflection involves discerning the meaning of one’s life experiences big and small (Freeman, 2015, 2018). And from a learning perspective, we know that this type of self-reflection, which involves constructing and reconstructing one’s sense of self as narrative identity, is substantive work (Illeris, 2014). It involves recognizing and overcoming identity defences, unpacking, and transforming assumptions and filters that affect the interpretation of

160  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations experience, and confronting and re-storying the effects of social and cultural structures, social statuses, and oppressive forces that affect a sense of personal worth (Hammack, 2014; Illeris, 2014; Mezirow, 1991). Thus, somatic identity as narrative addresses retrospective reflection on life experiences that reside in the lived and inscribed body. Studying somatic identity as an embodied and narrative phenomenon presents challenges because it requires that participants first get in touch retrospectively with their preconscious self-sensing bodies and experiences. As will be described, guided visualization and body mapping are retrospective awareness and elicitation methods that help participants access, make conscious and describe embodied dimensions of experiences that inform somatic identity. Second, and going a step further, somatic identity is a narrative that can be told through movement and dance. It requires instructing participants on movement and choreography as a means of both retrospective reflection and storytelling. In this case, dance practices of motif development, dialogic reflection and space/time mapping are tools that participants employ to both reflect on their embodied experience and tell others who they are in the form of a short autobiographical movement-based performance. Finally, these performances of somatic identity can be assessed like narrative identity. A more developed and cohesive story conveys a more mature and coherent narrative identity (Schwartz et al., 2014). As will be explained, in our work in a learning context, we assessed somatic identity performance as narrative for qualities of expressivity, ambiguity, confusion, discord, tension, coherence and resolution. A more coherent and resolved movement performance is indicative of identity change and development. A performance that lacks narrative structure and expressivity and/or conveys discord and tension without resolution is a less coherent and developed identity.

DESCRIPTION OF SOMATIC IDENTITY METHODS The first two methods presented below, guided visualization and body mapping, foster retrospective reflection and elicit somatic qualities of experiences associated with identity. The third method of a movement-based performance requires guidance from a teaching artist and includes instruction and practise of somatic narrative compositional tools that the participants use for reflection and construction of an autobiographical movement-based performance. All methods require the establishment of facilitator/participant trust prior to their use. Guided Visualization Prior to the guided visualization, participants are asked to consider an experience associated with the response to a general prompt of, who are you? Participants are further instructed to select a personal identity topic with both personal and social relevance, and are encouraged to focus on an aspect of their identity with which they are currently dealing. This type of general prompt works when participants are given a choice of topic and in Alyssa’s work common topics are mental health, being an immigrant, and other life transitions such as re-entering college as an adult, overcoming injury from an accident, becoming a parent, and ending a marriage. The prompt can also be modified to correspond to a specific topic of research, recognizing that the focus is on one aspect of identity rather than complex life stories. For example, a narrative identity study of leadership might start with the broad prompt of, who

Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance  161 are you as a leader? Then, it can be clarified to pick one aspect of that identity and to focus on somatic experiences that have shaped that narrative. A study of personal transitions or loss and grief, might start with, how do you understand yourself after this change or loss? In this case, the narrative may focus on more immediate experiences of an identity transition. With this identity topic and associated experiences in mind, participants are guided by the researcher to retrospectively explore the body as a site of self-knowledge (Sheets-Johnstone, 1992, as cited in Cancienne & Snowber, 2003). This process fosters the heightened sense of awareness experienced when inward and outward bodily perception are prioritized and expanded. By methodically cultivating conscious embodiment of their experience as an immigrant or someone with mental health issues, participants engage with the fluid exchange between sensation, contemplation, movement, emotions and expression (Fraleigh, 2015). In the visualization, the researcher guides participants to embody their identity experience, deeply focusing on its interoceptive qualities of stimuli arising in the body, the exteroceptive aspect of what is going on around them externally, and proprioceptive facets that characterize their physical position and movement. At the conclusion of the visualization exercise, participants write down as many descriptors and aspects of their identity experience and sense of identity as possible. These descriptors may be feelings, bodily sensations, characterizations of the physicality of the experience, and other contextually relevant information. Body Mapping Body mapping begins with the same type of prompt as guided visualization, but with this method, participants are asked to create a visual representation of somatic information and the body’s inner messages associated with the experiences of their focal identity. As summarized by Gastaldo et al. (2012), ‘body mapping is a way of telling stories, much like totems that contain symbols with different meanings, but whose significance can only be understood in relation to the creator’s overall story and experience’ (p. 5). Working with an outline of a body, participants are directed to use drawing, painting or collage, to bring forth concepts about both personal and social bodily perceptions associated with the focal identity experience. The creative act fosters a liminal space where participants retrospectively reflect on and work with meanings, tensions and ambiguities in self-understanding. As a result, the map both describes experience and yields narrative qualities such as conflict, agency, atmosphere, theme and context. It may also represent repositioning, reinterpretations, or evolution of understanding. Some researchers may want to ask participants to orally present the map to the researcher or develop a reading key (Gastaldo et al., 2018). Movement-based Performance: Creating and Constructing Somatic Identity Narratives Next, we describe the autobiographical movement-based performance, which requires the guidance of a teaching artist and is used after participants have done some preliminary work (e.g., guided visualization, body mapping) to elicit somatic awareness of their identity topic. This work is framed by the experiential task of creating a movement-based performance telling others about one’s identity. Over the course of several programme/research sessions, the teaching artist works with participants facilitating self-reflexive exploration and the narrative construction and reconstruction of their identity using choreographic tools.

162  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Choreographic Tools The act of constructing an autobiographical performance is ‘one of sorting, sifting, editing, forming, making, and remaking’ (Cancienne & Snowber, 2003, p. 237). The teaching artist guides the participant through a retrospective process that involves the reconsideration of details and meanings related to experiences associated with their identity. There are many choreographic tools, but we describe three common ones that are used both to guide participants in their exploration of identity meanings and in the construction of a somatic identity narrative in the form of a movement-based performance. Choreographic motifs, dialogic feedback and space/time mapping are tools used by participants to unpack and reconstitute their individual somatic identity narrative. By framing the creative narrative process in this manner, participants are prepared for a non-linear path to performance in which the exploratory and self-reflective processes are emphasized more than technical expertise in dance. This emphasis provides conditions for thoughtful work of conveying meaning and identity through movement while de-emphasizing the perfunctory desire to make the performance aesthetically pleasing by dance standards. Motif A motif is a device for communicating messages and participants employ them to construct the story they want to tell. The teaching artist introduces motifs as recurrent or overarching movement-based gestures, themes or imagery that communicate the tone and essential components of one’s identity. When developing motifs, choreographic devices, such as repetition, augmentation, inversion and retrograde, are illustrated by the teaching artist and practised by the participants. During this construction process, participants are also asked to write narrative reflections about the motif-supported concepts conveyed in the performance as a means to help them more deeply understand, structure and tell their identity story. Dialogic feedback Since a performance calls out the subjective and intersubjective, participants need a means for appreciating how their somatic identity narrative is perceived by others. Dialogic practices, such as Lerman’s Critical Response Process (Lerman & Bostel, 2003), allow participants to gain perspective on the thematic and compositional structure of their somatic identity narrative through non-judgemental feedback from others. Participants present a portion of their developing performance and then it is discussed with other participants to garner neutral reactions to it. This feedback is then used by participants to refine their performances and participants often delve into meaningful conversations with others about experiences and their meanings, a key component of narrative identity work. Space/time mapping The experience of being embodied is always mediated by interactions (Springgay & Freedman, 2007), and visual space/time mapping exercises help participants shape the structure and flow of their somatic identity narrative by building rhythmic and spatial elements into their story. By doing so, participants consider the choreographic syntax of their working material or how the order in which it is delivered impacts affective meanings and qualities. Through space/ time mapping, participants begin to consider how external elements and viewer perceptions might interact with their telling of their individual narrative. As will be described, these

Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance  163 aural and/or visual arts-based expressions are interpreted when analysing the participants’ movement-based performance.

ILLUSTRATION In this section, we illustrate guided visualization and body mapping and provide examples of the descriptive data generated and comment on analytic strategies. Then, with the movement-based performance method, we detail how we analysed the narrative structure (e.g., conflict, agency, atmosphere, theme, context) and somatic identity concepts of expressivity, ambiguity, confusion, discord, tension, coherence and resolution. Pseudonyms are used throughout. Guided Visualization Box 12.1 presents an abbreviated guided visualization script designed to first open a stream of consciousness and then to explore the participants’ identity topic and associated experiences in response to the prompt. After the visualization, participants write for a few minutes about what they discovered and what came to mind.

BOX 12.1 GUIDED VISUALIZATION SCRIPT FOR SOMATIC IDENTITY AWARENESS Embodied awareness Let’s rub our hands together. Let the rhythm of that rub get faster and faster. Build more and more energy and heat between your hands. (Pause) Now, stop, close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so, and bring your hands to rest on your chest. Let the warmth and energy flow from your hands into your chest and radiate through your entire body. Release your hands and settle into a comfortable position in which your body feels at ease but still engaged. (Pause) Bring your awareness to the interior architecture of your body. Imagine that interior as an expansive space free and clear of tension. Take a gentle scan of your body, starting at the top of your head and slowly working down to the soles of your feet; breathe into any spots that feel obstructed or tense. With each breath in feel more expansive as if your entire body were filling up with air and with each breath out, let any tension leave with the breath allowing your body to feel more open and clearer. (Pause) Centring experience of identity issue In your mind’s eye, visualize a large book. Begin to flip through the pages of the book and notice that its contents recall events from your life. (Pause) Stop flipping at an event that you feel is a strong memory. Once you’ve arrived at one, hold that memory at the forefront of your mind and place your hands back on your chest to let me know. (Pause) Release your hands to a comfortable position. Recreate that event in your mind. Be your-

164  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations self in that moment. What does it feel like? Where are you? Who is there with you? How do you fit into the scene? What do you hear, see, smell, taste, or feel? How does it feel to be you in that moment in that place? Sense and feel yourself in that moment. While you're there, notice what physical sensations arise inside your body as you recall it. (Pause) When you are ready, go back to the beginning of the experience or event. Imagine that you are watching your memory like a movie or play. See yourself in that moment. How does it seem from the outside looking in? Do you notice anything that you didn’t see before? As you watch yourself, pay particular attention to the movements that your body is making. (Pause) Recreate one of those movements in your body now. Repeat your movement several times until it feels integrated in your body. Now, experiment with your movement. What happens if you make it larger or smaller, faster or slower, sharper or softer? Find a version of that movement that feels true to that memory and repeat it a few times at your own pace. (Pause) Let your body return to stillness. Bring your awareness back into this moment and back into this room. Feel yourself in your body at this moment in this place. Take a deep breath in, letting as much air as you can into your lungs, and then let it rush out with a deep sigh. The descriptors and reflections generated in writing after the visualization are qualitative data that are inductively coded. Analysis is guided by inquiry into the somatic dimensions of the participant’s identity. While we emphasize the bodily dimension, these data also inform the description of the cognitive and affective dimensions of identity. We illustrate the type of data produced by looking at one quote generated after a guided visualization. Lalo, a gender-fluid immigrant to the US wrote after the visualization about their experience of gender in their native South American country. Lalo wrote, ‘my memory is a revelation of society’s pressure on making people what they are really not…the real meaning of identity in cultures that limit free will’. There are two key descriptors of embodied knowing in this short excerpt: pressure and limit. The idea of feeling pressured to be ‘what they are really not’ captures the embodied affective and physical constraint Lalo experienced in their homeland. The expression of ‘real meaning’ indicates that there is a dominant culturally inscribed meaning of gender. This excerpt also provides some initial insight into a tension in Lalo’s identity. While Lalo lives a gender-fluid identity in the US, the retrospective embodied reflection that emerged through guided visualization brought forth tensions around cultural inscriptions of gender that lingered in their body. We will return to Lalo’s somatic identity work in our discussion of the movement-based performance, but in this short excerpt we see signals that immigrating to America removed the immediate pressure of being gender fluid, but tensions around identity were embodied and unresolved. Body Mapping The illustrative example shown in Figure 12.1 shows a body map as a rich description of the embodied experiences of identity. This participant worked with an identity transition of retiring from professional work. She opted to contrast her identity of being a school teacher by reflecting on her embodied experiences of her first day and last day of teaching.

Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance  165

Figure 12.1

Body map of professional identity and the transition to retirement

The map provides data related to the identity question of, who am I upon retirement? As illustrated, this body map produces data on feeling states, personal characteristics, values, and their physicality – including where they reside in the body. In terms of descriptive qualitative data, inductive content coding captures her identity as a new teacher as embodied in a dry throat, rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, and upset stomach. This anxious state is contrasted with the confidence and identity of a seasoned teacher with a strong posture who is centred and self-assured but who is also ageing and sometimes loses her train of thought. As illustrated in being bendable, identified at the knee, we see that the map also has a prompting quality provoking an aspect of identity that might not otherwise be verbalized. That is, participants consider the question: what does the brain or knee represent about my identity? Narrative coding is used to further explore such themes of conflict, agency, atmosphere, theme, context, and questions of continuity over time, which are central to the study of identity (Saldaña, 2016). In this example, we interpret descriptors of purpose, compassion and kindness as referring to both her sense of self in the beginning of career and at the end of her career. This suggests a sense of continuity in her identity over her tenure as a teacher. A topic to explore further in an interview with the participant would be how these central elements of purpose, compassion and kindness relate to who she is in retirement.

166  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Movement-based Performance Coding and Analysis We now turn to illustrating how we coded and analysed the movement-based performances created by the participants. For our purposes, we were interested in assessing identity development focused on expressivity, ambiguity, confusion, discord, tension, coherence and resolution as indicative of learning as identity transformation. Researchers adopting other approaches and research questions can work with the performance data in other ways. For example, researchers working from a phenomenological approach could analyse performance data inductively to richly describe the embodied nature of identity related to a particular topic. Also, those focused more on narrative identity as detailed life stories could add performance to their data collection to further probe and interpret meaning. In this illustration, we focus on analysing the video of the performance and begin with a general overview of coding before presenting detailed examples of performances. Each performance was video-recorded and that is our primary focus. It should be noted that our interpretations were also informed by some background data (e.g., guided visualization written responses) as well as the teaching artist’s observational notes from working with the participants. These field notes aided description and interpretation of participants’ final performance narratives. For example, the artist’s field notes on consultations with participants and other observations of group interactions helped build context about a participant’s story. We began by watching each performance video several times to get a sense of a participant’s overall story. Next, we focused on initial structural and motif coding strategy to label and parse the rich, fluid and dynamic data assessing what the participant did in the dance (Saldaña, 2016). This initial coding was completed by Alyssa, the teaching artist. A participant’s performance video was assessed using categories such as physical elements of dynamics, space and time, and thematic elements of mood/affect, symbolism, movement motif, and form/syntax. Table 12.1 presents the full list of structures and motifs analysed as either present or not. The structural and motif coding framework shown in Table 12.1 was informed by Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) (Laban, 1966), which organizes movement sequences into four categories: body (bodily actions and interrelationships), effort (movement qualities), shape (shape changes and motivations for change), and space (directions of movement). The LMA classification was synthesized into two categories to distil the physical aspects of each performance, space and dynamics, and emphasized a third category, time/aural relationship, to assess how the movement interacted with its accompanying sound/music. This coding provided a systematic descriptive framework of each dance. In the next round of coding, analysis went a step further looking at how particular motifs and movements were employed in the performance to tell a story. We completed this narrative coding together with Alyssa, the teaching artist, verbally telling the story of the dance. We contextualized the visual, aural and symbolic elements that informed what story was being told. Next, as a second round of narrative coding, we then turned to how the story was told in terms of the focal identity and expressivity, ambiguity, confusion, discord, tension, coherence and resolution. Again, Alyssa, the teaching artist assessed these. It is important to note that this was an iterative process going back and forth between elements and narrative meaning. In the examples presented next, we provide a rich description of movement and motifs. However, it is difficult to convey the analytic transition from description to interpretation of the story. Also, we focus on just three qualities: expressivity, coherence and resolution. In terms of identity development, coherence and resolution were indicators of greater development, and we

Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance  167 Table 12.1

Solo performance analysis

Physical Elements Dynamics

Thematic Elements Interpretation of experience

Movement efforts: wringing, pressing, flicking, dabbing,

Symbolic, abstract, representational, sensory

gliding, floating, punching, slashing

Mood/affective qualities

Space

Fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise, trust, anticipation

Shaping qualities: sinking, spreading, retreating, advancing, Development of movement motif enclosing, rising

Repetition, retrograde, inversion, augmentation, instrumentation,

Kinesphere: near-reach, mid-reach, far-reach

embellishment, fragmentation, insertion

Spatial pathway: stationary, curved, straight

Choreographic syntax

Levels: Low, mid, high

Accumulation, binary, ternary, rondo, theme and variation, narrative/

Facings: frontal, side, rear, diagonal

episodic, collage

Time Rhythmic qualities: percussive, arrhythmic, syncopated Tempo: fast, medium, slow Use of music: in sync, contrast, none

emphasize these although not all participants had performances with these qualities. Some participants opted for a more technical and less expressive approach with fewer narrative features. Performance Analysis Example We first present the interpretive analysis of Isabella, and then contrast it with another, Elayah, both of whom worked on similar issues of identity involving mental health and social stigma. While the performances shared similar qualities, they differed notably on the identity assessment of resolution. Isabella’s performance centred around her ongoing struggle with depression. She created a core movement sequence, which was manipulated into a series of variations and set to music with a distinctive rhythmic pulse creating external cohesion and an abstracted sense of affective progression over the course of her performance. The sequence contained movements that employed symbolic and sensorial full-body actions mixed with representational gestures expressing affective aspects of fear, anger, sadness and disgust. The primary motif in the sequence was a gesture in which Isabella grabs her head and sways from side to side. She manipulated this motif in each variation using repetition, retrograde, augmentation, embellishment and fragmentation. Overall, her movements tended to be stationary or move in linear pathways from near to mid-proximity of her body within the low and mid-levels in space. These actions moved in all directions with a particular tendency between advancing and retreating. Her dominant efforts modulated between free and bound flow, direct and indirect focus, and increasing and decreasing weight consistent with a physicalized expression of depression and loss of mental control. Isabella’s dynamic use of weight resisted gravity or surrendered to it in contrasting movements, which served as a physical metaphor for her relaxation into the inevitable. This expression of surrender as vulnerability conveyed identity resolve and perceptive understanding of depression and its effects. Unlike Isabella’s performance, there was no identifiable structure to Elayah’s movements that also primarily consisted of symbolic and sensorial full-bodied gestures portraying a body in conflict and conveyed a mix of emotions linked to depression, including fear, anger, sadness, disgust and anticipation. Her primary motif was a gesture in which she grabs and

168  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations presses her head, resisting gravity within the movement, which suggests held, unrelenting tension unlike the sense of vulnerable resolve communicated in Isabella’s motif. Maintaining this quality, Elayah developed this main motif as well as other sub-motifs using a mix of choreographic devices like Isabella, such as repetition, retrograde and augmentation. In addition to her use of weight, the variance in Elayah’s performance was most notably seen in her use of a spatial motif in which her recurrent pathway trajected across the performance space and returned to a single point on stage to convey the sense of being out of control, yet at the same, time tethered or trapped in the same place conveying a story with less coherence than Isabella and without resolution. In Figure 12.2, a professional dancer illustrates the analytic lens of expressivity, coherence and resolve. Applied to Isabella and Elayah, both moved beyond non-expressive gestures and presented expressive use of weight and gravity to illustrate their experience with depression conveying physical, cognitive and affective aspects of living with mental health conditions. Through this, both displayed narrative elements of coherence; however, Isabella conveyed greater coherence through her structure, vulnerable submission to gravity, as well as a sense of resolve through her ascension through gravity – she accepted her experience as a characteristic of who she is. By telling a story of her personal growth in this manner, she showed a transformed identity.

Figure 12.2

Contrasting expression, tension, coherence and resolve

Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance  169 Next, we show variance in resolution focusing on Isabella and Lalo, who was introduced in the example of guided visualization. Lalo worked on the embodied cultural inscriptions of gender as experienced in their native South American country. Drawing on motifs employed, including the use of a scarf, the first frame in Figure 12.3 again contrasts non-expression with expression of the gender identity tensions motif. The second frame shows similar ideas to Isabella and Eliyah; representing a coherent expression of identity facing forces and constraints. Moving from the second to the third frame, there is a progression from coherence to resolution, with the latter conveying a powerful and full release of embodied tensions of culturally inscribed gender expression. The performance tells a story of a substantive and qualitative shift of letting go as resolution conveying a more mature sense of identity and more powerful than the resolution achieved by Isabella.

Figure 12.3

Narrative somatic identity resolution

To summarize, the analytic strategy of performances focused on reducing the fluid and dynamic elements so that key features were more transparent to those without expertise in choreography and dance interpretation. The strategy then turned to capturing the story or narrative being told, and then with an interpretive lens, the story was assessed for qualities of identity because we were ultimately interested in somatic identity development.

170  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations

CRITICAL EVALUATION The foremost challenge in working with these body-centred methods of somatic identity was integrating dance and educational research methods. In dance scholarship, like other arts-based methods, dance is an inquiry method and we struggled with how to describe that aspect. McNiff (2018) noted that in interdisciplinary approaches that combine art inquiry and traditional social science methods, the latter often dominates over the holistic essence of art. Thus, the aim of co-inquiry represented in this chapter was difficult, and ultimately decisions were driven by the education context and research question of narrative identity development. Our emphasis on guided visualization experiences, body maps and dance performance emphasized the tacit and pre-conscious qualities and presented them as awareness-raising methods. On another level, they are self-reflexive inquiry, and that aspect was harder to convey. Data from these embodied and movement methods were complemented or translated into written text, giving up some of their holistic essence and suggesting that the translation between the two is a straightforward process. Yet, this is not the case, and decisions needed to be made about how to analyse embodied reflection, visual text and dynamic movement. Written text served as our common language. We illustrated written descriptors collected after guided visualization and on a body map, but we have not yet attempted to code other elements such as colour or symbols. Certainly, there are other ways to approach the data. Though we refer to a teaching artist, we could have used the term dance scholar. We opted for teaching artist to encourage other researchers to partner with an artist to incorporate somatic identity in their studies. The artist has an instrumental function in these methods much like an interviewer does in more traditional oral narrative inquiry (Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann, 2000). As described, the teaching artist’s expertise is also central in the coding and interpretation of data, especially in the dance performance method. The movement analysis coding linked the choreographic tools of instruction with the performance, and provided some systematic description of dance components. However, noting that these elements were present provided limited descriptive information, but it added transparency, trustworthiness, and established some sense of base structure for further interpretation of the narrative performance. Cheryl, the educational researcher, pushed for explicitness in how the dance narrative was read, especially qualities of expressivity, tension, coherence and resolution. At times, it felt as though she was asking Alyssa to split and dissect a narrative that Alyssa saw as a more holistic gestalt. Thus, the data-analytic framework presented in this chapter emerged as we worked together to bridge our disciplines. Finally, we continually reckoned with the idea of centring a non-Cartesian conceptualization of identity. Our intent is for somatic identity to be something more than embodied identity and clearly the telling of a narrative in movement and dance has cognitive and affective components. Yet, we are hesitant to have somatic identity understood as the embodied complement to cognitive conceptualizations of narrative identity. We found we had to strike a balance and at times, somatic identity refers to both an embodied story and identity as a global, holistic, integrated mind–body construct.

Researching individual somatic identity through movement and dance  171

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We thank professional dancer Esme Boyce for her contributions to Figures 12.2 and 12.3.

REFERENCES Albright, A. C. (1997). Choreographing difference: The body and identity in contemporary dance. Wesleyan University Press. Baldwin, C. K., & Motter, A. E. (2021). Autoethnographic dance and transformative learning: Exploring self-reflexive identity work and change. Journal of Transformative Education, 19(2), 107–126. Cancienne, M. B., & Snowber, C. (2003). Writing rhythm: Movement as method. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 237–253. Clark, M. C. (2012). Transformation as embodied narrative. In E. W. Taylor & P. Cranton (Eds.), The handbook of transformative learning: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 425–438). Jossey-Bass. Foster, S. L. (2011). Choreographing empathy. Routledge. Fraleigh, S. (2015). Why consciousness matters. In S. Fraleigh (Ed.), Moving consciously: Somatic transformations through dance, yoga, and touch (pp. 3–23). University of Illinois Press. Freeman, M. (2015). Narrative as a mode of understanding: Method, theory, praxis. In A. De Fina & A. Georgakopoulou (Eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 21–37). Wiley. Freeman, M. (2018). Narrative inquiry. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 123–140). Guilford Press. Gastaldo, D., Magalhães, L., Carrasco, C., & Davy, C. (2012). Body-map storytelling as research: Methodological considerations for telling the stories of undocumented workers through body www​ .migrationhealth​ .ca/​ undocumented​ -workers​ mapping. Retrieved January 5, 2022 from http://​ -ontario/​body​-mapping Gastaldo, D., Rivas-Quarneti, N., & Magalhães, L. (2018). Body-map storytelling as a health research methodology: Blurred lines creating clear pictures. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19(2), Article 3. Green, J. (2002). Somatic knowledge: The body as content and methodology in dance education. Journal of Dance Education, 2(4), 114–118. Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 105–117). SAGE. Hammack, P. L. (2014). Theoretical foundations of identity. In K. C. McLean & M. Syed (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of identity development (pp 11–30). Oxford University Press. Hanna, T. (1988). Somatics: Reawakening the mind’s control of movement, flexibility, and health. Addison-Wesley. Illeris, K. (2014). Transformative learning and identity. Routledge. Laban, R. (1966). Choreutics. Macdonald & Evans. Leavy, P. (2020). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Press. Lerman, L., & Bostel, J. (2003). Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process: A method for getting useful feedback on anything you make, from dance to dessert. Dance Exchange Inc. Lucius-Hoene, G., & Deppermann, A. (2000). Narrative identity empiricized: A dialogical and positioning approach to autobiographical research interviews. Narrative Inquiry, 10(1), 199–222. McNiff, S. (2018). Philosophical and practical foundations of artistic inquiry: Creating paradigms, methods, and presentations based in art. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 22–36). Guilford Press. Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey-Bass. Motter, A. E., & Baldwin, C. K. (2018). A model of dialogic embodiment: Transformative autoethnographic dance. In M. Welch, V. Marsick & D. Holt (Eds.), Building transformative community: Enacting possibility in today’s times. Proceedings of the XIII Biennial Transformative Learning Conference (pp. 493–499). Teachers College, Columbia University. Retrieved January 9, 2022 from https://​www​.migrationhealth​.ca/​undocumented​-workers​-ontario/​body​-mapping

172  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (2008). Introduction. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (2nd ed., pp. 1–10). SAGE. Rouhiainen, L. (2008). Somatic dance as a means of cultivating ethically embodied subjects. Research in Dance Education, 9(3), 241–256. Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. SAGE. Schwartz, S. J., Luyckx, K., & Crocetti, E. (2014). What have we learned since Schwartz (2001)? A reappraisal of the field of identity development. In K. C. McClean & M. Syed (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of identity development (pp. 539–561). Oxford University Press. Snowber, C. (2012). Dance as a way of knowing. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 134, 53–60. Snowber, C. (2018). Living, moving, and dancing: Embodied ways of inquiry. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 247–266). Guilford Press. Springgay, S., & Freedman, D. (Eds.). (2007). Curriculum and the cultural body. Peter Lang. Tennant, M. (2012). The learning self: Understanding the potential for transformation. Jossey-Bass.

13. Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making Mark Stephens and Ryan Higgins

INTRODUCTION – MASKS AND IDENTITY The COVID-19 pandemic brought masks to the forefront of public health, popular culture, and political discourse. What was once an artifact reserved for theatres, masquerade balls and hospital wards became for many people an everyday accoutrement. In this chapter, we focus on mask-making as an explicit technique to explore identity. In particular, we discuss the role of mask-making as it relates to the construct of professional identity formation (PIF). Professional Identity Formation (PIF) – Theoretical Frameworks The understanding of PIF as an iterative and explicit process has evolved over time. Starting with the ideas of Eriksson (Hamman & Hendricks, 2005) and progressing through works by Piaget (1971), Kohlberg (1981), and others, many models have been developed to evaluate the developmental process of learning and better understand the concept of ‘self’ (Goldie, 2012). Identity formation is intensely personal, with (potentially unsettling) changes in an individual’s sense of self evolving over time, particularly within the professional environment. Growing into an integrated and holistic understanding of oneself requires a meaningful habit of reflection (Mann et al., 2009). Such reflection is a metacognitive process whereby individuals come to learn more about themselves in certain situations to better inform their future actions (Rhem, 2013). This is particularly salient when it comes to one’s chosen profession. Effective reflection requires critical thinking and the ability to challenge an individual’s (often long-held or incompletely understood) values, beliefs, and assumptions (Dewey, 2007). Historically, this process most often involves some form of reflective writing. Recently, however, the process of self-reflection as a discipline appears to have moved away from its philosophical roots towards an increasingly utilitarian, formulaic, and ultimately reductionist practice in the context of examining identity (Ng et al., 2015). While such reductionist approaches (typically based on written narratives) might be necessary for formal assessment in the educational environment, they may also inadvertently restrict valuable opportunities for more intentional and expansive ways of evaluating and promoting holistic identity formation. Relying primarily on a narrative format potentially limits a person’s ability to convey their thoughts or experiences, particularly when nuances are challenging to communicate through the written word. Therefore, committed to the value of making space for visual artistry within the context of uncertainty, our team of collaborators has intentionally (re) introduced the art of mask-making as a complementary reflective and expressive modality to explore identity formation, particularly within health professions education. Identity is not static; it changes constantly throughout an individual’s professional career (Haslam et al., 2021). In the broadest of terms, the process of education itself forces students 173

174  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations to adapt new ways of thinking and relating (Mavor et al., 2017). From a constructivist perspective, self-transformation as part of an educational experience is deeply dependent on context and circumstance (ibid.). For instance, within the health professions, students undergo a very dynamic change when they are first invited (typically at matriculation) to adopt the role of a health care professional without formally taking on the title of physician, nurse, technician, or other allied health professional (Goldie, 2012). As learners advance within their training, they begin to identify more fully with their chosen field and move towards becoming more self-defined as a developing professional. While our experience is primarily in medical education, similar principles and processes take place across multiple professional fields, including nursing (Joseph et al., 2021), law (Hamilton, 2021), education (Edwards & Edwards, 2017), and the military (Hart & Lancaster, 2019). Taking on a professional identity often challenges individuals to deconstruct portions of their old identity while simultaneously constructing a new identity within a new (and often stressful) environment. When contemplating identity, Jung described the collective unconsciousness as being made up of multiple archetypes that comprise inner and outer realities and the subtle experiences that shape and affect a person’s daily life (Jung, 2012). One archetype, the ‘shadow,’ is an amoral, natural being that is neither good nor bad. A second archetype, the ‘persona,’ is how one presents themself to the world – a type of ‘mask’ individuals take on to accommodate what is seemingly acceptable in certain social situations (ibid.). Viewed through this lens, the process of mask-making represents a literal opportunity for individuals to explore things they may show the world (aspirational self) and things they may keep to themselves (actual self). Shadows and personas are ‘masks’ individuals may have constructed to help them adapt to or accommodate expectations within the prevailing culture. Kegan’s adult development theory is another framework for understanding and examining identity formation (Kegan, 1982). According to Kegan, there are multiple stages of identity formation: (1) impulsive; (2) imperial; (3) socialized; (4) self-authoring; (5) self-transforming. Most adults are somewhere between stages 2 and 4 (ibid.). Cruess and colleagues (2015) have intentionally applied Kegan’s theory to PIF in the context of medical education. In their model, students take on a professional role without incorporating any meaningful sense of professional identity during the imperial stage. They integrate aspects of the profession with their personal identity in the socialized stage, and have their professional and personal identities more fully integrated as part of the self-authoring stage (ibid.). This process of PIF is iterative, progressive, and fluid. Very few students are able to reach an advanced stage of identity formation (the self-authoring stage) during medical school. Learning and identity formation are also complex social processes. According to Vygotsky and Cole (1978), cultural and social factors shape cognitive development through experiences that influence how individuals understand and communicate their perceptions of reality. In this framework of social constructivism, knowledge is a product of human interactions. Knowledge is socially and culturally co-created by relationships and experiences within the communities to which individuals belong (ibid.). Meaningful learning occurs when individuals are engaged in constructive social activities that allow them to participate as a member of a team within a particular community of practice. Other ways to assess PIF include objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs), formal surveys (Holden et al., 2015), and reflective writing activities (Wong & Trollope-Kumar, 2014). One additional framework, the Transformation in Medical Education (TIME) initiative (Holden et al., 2015), describes six primary domains of PIF: (1) attitudes; (2) personal

Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making  175 characteristics; (3) duties and responsibilities; (4) habits; (5) relationships; and (6) perception and recognition. Thirty additional subdomains (e.g., humanism, cultural competence and service orientation as subdomains of ‘attitudes’) detailing various objectives, activities, and assessments facilitate a structural approach to examining PIF over time (ibid.). Using any of these developmental frameworks, we propose that mask-making is an effective technique with which to examine identity over time (Stephens et al., 2019).

DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD Why Masks? Building on the concepts of symbols, tradition, and ceremony, we use mask-making as a form of reflective expression that is markedly different from (yet richly complementary to) narrative expression or formal art therapy. Art and mask-making have a track record of creative expression dating back to prehistoric times (Congdon-Martin & Pieper, 1999). Throughout history, masks have been used across diverse cultures with the common goal of representation and connection. Masks have been used as part of ceremony and ritual to alter identity or to explore new persona. Indeed, the word mask itself comes from the Arabic maskhara, meaning to ‘falsify’ or ‘transform’. Historically, masks and mask-making have occupied central roles in transitional rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations as a distinct form of creative expression. Masks help to make the mysterious concrete and provide order in the midst of chaos or uncertainty (Edson, 2009). Masks also explore sociocultural perspectives of expression and learning. African masks, ceremonially combined with music and dance, foster a link between the present self and the ancestral or animal world, where the spirit of the mask embodies that of the wearer. Wise and respected members of the culture relay messages portrayed by the mask wearer to the community at large (Congdon-Martin & Pieper, 1999). Ancient Egyptian masks were connected to the spiritual world, where masks (usually in the form of an animal) represented certain deities. Masks were created so that spirits could recognize the wearer (self) and, therefore, return to the individual after death (Nunley et al., 1999). In Korean culture, masks are used to theatrically express otherwise unacceptable opinions. This ‘masked’ freedom of expression allows the safe portrayal of what otherwise would be viewed as incorrect or improper behaviors (ibid.). Chinese cultures use masks to express particular emotions in the context of theatrical performance. While masks conceal the face of the wearer, the spiritual or emotional condition is revealed. Masks give credibility to dramatic activities as a vehicle of expression (Congdon-Martin & Pieper, 1999). Masks have also been associated with political unrest. Venetian masks dating from the 13th century were used to hide social class and facilitate participation in unlawful activities (e.g., gambling) (Nunley, 1999). Masking has, at times, been used to generate social understanding and political activism, particularly within lower social classes (Congdon-Martin & Pieper, 1999). In modern times, the use of masks has evolved from creative and cultural purposes to therapeutic application in terms of sterile technique and mitigation of infectious risk. As part of the COVID-19 pandemic, masks were a flashpoint in an ongoing and contentious debate between the delicate balance of personal freedoms versus collective action to protect the health of the public.

176  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations As a distinct process, mask-making allows participants to represent two sides of a conflict or express elements of personal and professional identity using the inside and outside of the mask as distinct ‘sides’ (Landy, 1994). By comparing thematic elements of identity expressed on the inside (actual) and outside (aspirational) of the masks, areas of harmony and/or dissonance can be explicitly identified and explored. Therefore, as students progress through various educational benchmarks, mask-making can be utilized as a complementary tool to promote holistic identity development. Borrowing from principles of art therapy, themes of representation and connection can help the mask-maker to externalize feelings of internal conflict onto the mask itself (Trepal-Wollenzier & Wester, 2002). The creative process and resulting artwork can help to address (and potentially resolve) inner struggle. This artistic exercise allows individuals to explore feelings, decrease feelings of shame or fear of exposure, break through layers of psychological confinement (internalization), and produce extraordinary pieces of art (Howie, 2017). For centuries, masks have been used to visually convey stories and stimulate emotions. Mask-making helps to explore identity boundaries and roles that may be shifting or uncertain. By fostering self-reflection, mask-making can give individuals the opportunity to examine and express elements of self in the context of an emerging identity within a community of practice. Using the front of the mask to express their aspirational self while expressing their current (actual) view of self on the inside of the mask allows the mask-maker to explore incongruities that may exist. Through the process of mask-making, individuals can also project thoughts and emotions onto the mask as a form of self-representation, combining form and content to evoke visual and emotional reactions.

APPLICATION OF THE METHOD Creating the Masks At the beginning of each mask-making session, participants are provided with a blank papier-mâché mask and invited to reflect on their lived experiences. Specifically, we typically ask students to express elements of themselves that they are comfortable sharing with the world on the outside of the mask (aspirational self) and their more private sense of self on the inside of the masks (actual self). As the process begins, it is common for participants not to know where to start. Many will ask ‘What should I do?’ Using the language of aspirational and actual to encourage reflection and expression has been helpful to clarify the normal sense of uncertainty that accompanies the early steps in the mask-making process. Acknowledging the uncertainty and discomfort associated with the creative process helps to create an environment of shared safety. To further address this, students are reassured that their masks remain anonymous and are asked to physically spread out a bit to limit the temptation to ‘peek’ at their colleagues’ work. Participants are given time to struggle with any feelings of discomfort, contemplate their life experiences and plan their mask. Art supplies, including acrylic paints, air-drying clay, permanent markers, colored pencils, glitter, glue, feathers, beads, and other materials are provided to stimulate thought and provide additional artistic substrate for the mask (Joseph et al., 2017; Stephens et al., 2019). Participants are given up to two hours to create their masks. They are also invited to return to the mask at a later time to modify or refine their work should they so desire. Each session typically concludes with

Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making  177 a group processing activity where participants are given the option to share the story of their masks with their peers. As an additional (voluntary) activity, students are also encouraged to write a reflective essay describing their mask. This last step helps to reconcile differences in interpretation of meaning that often arise between individuals who view the mask and the artist creating the mask. Analyzing the Masks – Three Examples Example 1: Visual rhetoric and the listening guide We have used several methods to examine student masks (Joseph et al., 2017). One technique, visual rhetoric (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2020), helps to specifically analyze what is drawn on the masks. Figure 13.1 shows an example of a mask.

Source: Authors’ own photograph, used with mask-maker’s permission.

Figure 13.1

Sample mask

The first step in visual rhetoric describes the motif of the mask. What does the observer specifically see on the mask? For example: This mask appears to have somewhat of a tribal motif. There are linear streaks of paint applied in a regular array across both cheeks, under the right eye and over the forehead. The mouth is covered by a dark color, the eye holes are darkened and there are prominent eyebrows. There is a small heart under the left eye. There is ample open space around the mid-face and chin. There are also small tufts of material that appear over the left eyebrow.

178  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations The second step is to examine the layout and arrangement of visual symbols or motifs on the mask. How are items arranged? How do they visually connect? For example: Most of the linear applications are arranged in a diagonal pattern that seems to radiate from bottom right to upper left. The pattern under the left eye is darker and has a mild curvature almost suggesting a sonar element. The heart appears to be at the end of a particular brushstroke that gets smaller in size as it moves towards the heart. This contrasts with many of the other linear strokes which are mostly uniform in size. The mouth appears to have a slight upturn at each edge and there is a small splash of paint across the front of the chin.

The third step is to ask what the motifs might mean (or represent) from the perspective of the viewer (researcher). What might the motifs mean when viewed individually and what might they mean when viewed in relation to other symbols or motifs on the mask? For example: The overall appearance suggests a windswept exterior. The subtle smile and the emphasis of the brushstroke towards the heart suggest an element of happiness and love despite what are often otherwise chaotic strokes and the darkness of the eyes and mouth. Overall this tells a story of hope and resilience amidst strife and turmoil.

These are only examples of what the observer sees on the mask and interprets. But the beauty of analysis is the multiplicity of perspectives that allows for many different interpretations. The second tool, called the listening guide (Gilligan and Eddy, 2017; Varpio et al., 2017), helps to analyze written narratives that accompany the mask. Figures 13.2 and 13.3 present an example of a mask’s inside and outside and Boxes 13.1 and 13.2 the associated narratives of the student. The overarching goal of the listening guide is to ‘listen’ for layers of voice that are present, being mindful of what is explicitly said and also of what might be rendered silent: 1. Step 1 in the listening guide is paying attention to plot. This involves carefully listening for specific themes. What appears to arise as primary or secondary themes? What might be rendered silent? In this first step, the analyst should be intentionally mindful of their own personal reaction to the mask. What does the analyst think of the mask? Does it appeal to them? What other reactions does it elicit? 2. Step 2 of the listening guide is an exercise to create what are called ‘I poems’. To do this, the analyst highlights every first-person (‘I’) within the narrative, including the associated verb and any other accompanying words of emphasis. These fragments are extracted to create an ‘I poem’ that flows along the same sequence as the narrative. 3. Step 3 of the listening guide involves attending to what are described as ‘contrapuntal’ voices. Contrapuntal voices are subtle layers that emerge from the narrative. At first reading, what voice is most evident? At second reading, are there alternative voices that you notice? Perhaps these are silent (or weaker voices) that challenge the analyst to consider what is not being said. This step involves multiple readings of the narrative with mindful attention to voices that may raise a similar, alternative, or even directly opposing (contrapuntal) item to consider. When analyzing masks and narratives using this interpretivist approach, individuals within the research team analyze each mask independently. Analysts then convene to compare findings and reach consensus using principles of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1994) to ensure saturation.

Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making  179

Source: Authors’ own photograph, used with mask-maker’s permission.

Figure 13.2

Sample aspirational (outside) mask with accompanying narrative for constructing an ‘I poem’ as part of the listening guide

BOX 13.1 NARRATIVE FOR THE OUTSIDE (ASPIRATIONAL) MASK As I contemplated what I am comfortable showing the world and who I want to be as a physician, I started with bright colors on the forehead. The sunny disposition is something that I try to show the world – emphasizing a sense of calm, radiant warmth and positivity. I try to use this attitude as one of inspiration and also gratitude. I am interested in potentially pursuing a career in education and always looking for new and creative ways to think about medical concepts. Towards the bottom of the mask (literally foundational), I try to express the importance of building on the basics. I find that this is something I regularly return to when I get stuck – the concept of control what you can control, you don’t know what you don’t know and trust your training are embodied in the hues and brush strokes around the mouth and chin. Under the sunny forehead, I tried to express confidence (exclamation point) while honoring that doubt, uncertainty and confusion (question mark) are always emerging – this is the ? creeping into the scene on the right side of the mask. Overall, the outside of my mask projects knowledge and confidence trying hard to keep uncertainty and doubt at bay.

180  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations

Source: Authors’ own photograph, used with mask-maker’s permission.

Figure 13.3

Sample actual (inside) mask with accompanying narrative for constructing an ‘I poem’ as part of the listening guide

BOX 13.2 NARRATIVE FOR THE INNER SIDE (ACTUAL) MASK The inside of my mask hides a few foundational elements of my life that I do not share much with others. My mother is struggling in the end of days with breast cancer. There is a tear falling from an eye that is above a heart (love) that has a black dot (death) in the center. This is a daily struggle at this point in my life and one that I keep largely to myself. On the other side is a 4-leaf clover. This represents the logo for 4-H (I pledge my Head to clearer thinking, my Heart to greater loyalty, my Head to clearer thinking and my Health to better living – for my club, my community, my country and my world). Having spent formative years on a farm, these humble roots often leave me feeling ‘outclassed’ or ‘intimidated’ by others from more traditional academic backgrounds – leaving me feeling like an outsider at times. The space above the eyes is occupied by ? and ! – a constant battle between curiosity (wanting to know the answers) and (un)certainty (needing to know the answers).

Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making  181 Example 2: Visual thematic analysis rubric We created a visual thematic analysis rubric to facilitate mask analysis and identify emerging themes in graduating medical students (Stephens et al., 2020), as shown in Table 13.1. The rubric prompts analysts to examine each mask systematically to look for elements of color, organization, and content in addition to their individual reflections and interpretations. This interpretivist approach invites analysts to gather individual impressions, compare findings, and reach consensus using similar principles of grounded theory (Corbin, 1990). Example 3: Codebook development Working from a list of descriptors from the original TIME criteria (Holden et al., 2015), we (i.e., Stephens et al., 2020) expanded words and images expressed on the inside (actual) and outside (aspirational) of a series of masks (ibid.). To analyze visual and narrative themes, we created a qualitative codebook using mixed-methods software (NVivo) (Table 13.2). The use of a specific codebook facilitates analysis of larger cohorts of masks. Pictures and symbols are coded thematically based on the analyst’s interpretation of the expressed theme. Words are recorded directly to the codebook for systematic analysis. Two raters independently analyze the same set of masks to establish an initial interrater reliability coefficient. Once reliability is established, the overall coding process can proceed more efficiently (Higgins et al., 2021). To date, hundreds of student-made masks have been created. Common themes we have identified include identity dissonance, the ‘hero’s journey,’ and the power of masks as a third object for storytelling (Joseph et al., 2017). As professional identity evolves, individuals often struggle with elements of dissonance in situations where their emerging professional identity clashes with elements of previously established identities (Goldie, 2012; Howie, 2017). As an example, dissonance arises if learners are asked to behave in a certain way while observing people in positions of higher authority exhibiting the same behaviors they have been counseled to avoid (Lawrence et al., 2018). As such, identity dissonance can have disproportionate impact on PIF depending upon the individual’s level of training and the degree of incongruence between their sense of personal identity and developing professional identity (Costello, 2006). Ultimately, identity dissonance can result in them questioning their self-worth and future professional success (Costello, 2006), leading to feelings of shame, guilt, or impostorism. To cope with this discordance between their personal and professional identities, learners develop various coping mechanisms (Monrouxe, 2010), including rejection of their professional role, displaying conflicting aspects of their personal and professional identities, avoiding professional interactions, and role playing or acting (‘fake it until you make it’).

CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE METHOD Before recommending broad application of mask-making as a tool to examine identity formation across multiple institutions, it is important to consider the feasibility of the process in terms of administration and logistics. Potentially barriers included material costs, space, the availability of facilitators and participant buy-in. In terms of expenses, the total cost of each mask ranges from $3–10. The precise cost per mask depends on the type of mask used (papier-mâché vs plastic), the type of paint used (craft vs professional), and the cost of any additional materials students choose to use in creating their mask (modeling clay, feathers, beads, etc.). Items are much cheaper when purchased in bulk.

Compositional interpretation

other colors less so. On the inside of the mask, there is a clear separation of color at the mid-face with a light blue tone appearing above an aqua tone. The punctuation marks are bold and in black. The heart and four-leaf clover are subdued red and subdued green Color appears to be emphasizing an element of disorder and uncertainty on the outside of the mask with coarse brush strokes and mixing. A yellow sun provides a sense of warmth from the upper right side of the mask. The interior of the mask uses cooler colors to suggest a sense of

Hue: the actual colors

Saturation: purity of the color

Value: lightness or darkness of a color

Other things to contemplate

How, if at all, is color being used to stress a particular element on the mask?

How, if at all, is the color selection harmonious?

light on what appears to be a sense of uncertainty rising from the lower right portion of the mask. The words are all applied to the left side of the mask with generally warm colors on the top. The front of the mask appears to be more dynamic than the inside of the mask, which has a simple

How, if any, are forms connected while others are isolated?

How do elements within the mask connect? Describe the connection (fluid, jagged, patterned)

How is the rhythm of the elements organized on the mask (static or dynamic)?

is showing

one and/or nature)

mask, suggesting a specific link to someone or something (heart, clover would suggest a loved

a similar struggle with uncertainty is unfolding. The symbols are crisper on the inside of the

a growing sense of uncertainty. The inside of the mask is suggesting a calmer place where

What does the mask actually show? Take a few minutes to reflect about what you feel the mask The outside of the mask appears to be showing a feeling of hope and gratitude that is battling

 

outside of the mask

emphasize starting with the basics (as a literally applied word at the bottom of both the inside and

How are the focalizers – specific elements that draw your eye – used if at all?

Part #3 Content

outside of the mask that suggest hope, gratitude, and creativity, and both sides of the mask seem to

mask

Consider the width, depth, interval, and distance in the relationship between the elements of the have both ? and ! literally stand out from the surface of the mask. There are words applied to the

On both sides of the mask, the punctuation stands out. The artist used thick application of paint to

dyad of cool colors, punctuation and symbol

punctuation. The colors are warmer on the front than on the inside. The sun appears to be casting

How are the elements arranged with respect to orientation with each other?

Geometrical perspective

The outer mask emphasizes the sun on the upper right and the dark right cheek with overlying

Organization of space within the mask

calm/peace that is disrupted by the bold ? !

mixed, particularly around the cheek and chin. The saturation is mixed. The yellow is pure, the

color scheme of the mask says to you:

Part #2 Spatial Organization

The front of the mask is a blend of yellow, red, green, black, and white. The colors are frequently

There are several elements of color to think about as you contemplate and reflect on what the

Part #1 Color (Interpretation Provided with Benefit of Full-color Mask)

Table 13.1

182  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations

Nature

Love

Hope

Gratitude

Uncertainty

and what we feel are often two different things

with it is personal – what we show the world

Chaos

Uncertainty is universal. How individuals deal

your thoughts

differently on the outside and the inside

Please take a moment to reflect and write down A struggle with uncertainty that plays out

impressions colleagues/other analysts

Notes here based on conversation with

Connections = within & between participants

 

 

Analysis = What does the data say?

Personal memo = Initial thoughts or

Interpretation = What does it mean?

peaceful struggle on the inside. The outside feels busy. The inside feels calm

 

Reflection and Interpretation

The overall feel of the image is one of contrast and struggle on the outside juxtaposed with a more

A written evocation of the ‘feel’ of an image – designed to express the overall effect.

Component parts (1 through 3) do not necessarily capture the overall ‘look’ of a mask

 

Part #4 Expressive Content

Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making  183

184  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Table 13.2

Sample codebook domains and subdomains

Domain

Subdomains

Attitudes

Humanism Cultural competence Service orientation

Personal characteristics

Leadership Interest and curiosity Resilience and adaptability Capacity for improvement Discernment Abilities Emotional traits

Duties and responsibilities

Confidential Appropriate disclosure Honoring commitments

Habits

Self-directed learning Critical thinking Self-care Empathic labor Reflection Self-awareness

Relationships

Collegiality Appropriate boundaries Effective relationships Effective communication Patient-centered advocate Selection of role model

Perception and recognition

Observational skills Cultural sensitivity Discernment Emotional intelligence Ethics competence Narrative competence

With regard to space, after conducting multiple sessions with multiple different audiences, a cohort of eight to ten participants appears to be the optimal group size. This allows participants to create as individuals, while still feeling connected to others in the group. Having some space between participants allows them to spread out their materials. This spacing also reduces the temptation among students to look at what others are doing as each mask is intended to be a personal creation. Professional facilitation helps to ensure a successful mask-making session. It is helpful to have someone guide the group to normalize the process, lay out materials and create a safe artistic environment. In the absence of appropriate faculty oversight, the process lacks standardization and structure. In this context, the facilitator should also emphasize that the mask-making activity is not a formal art therapy process. The purpose of the activity is not a behavioral or psychological analysis on an individual level. As we use the process, it is NOT art therapy. Rather, it is a structured process of reflective expression. Ground rules for participation are established by the group and guided by the facilitator (Stephens et al., 2019). Since making a mask is often intensely personal, participants must be given adequate time

Examining identity using the creative art of mask-making  185 and space for individual contemplation and subsequent expression. To safely accomplish this, faculty familiar with the process can provide reassurance to group members that the creative process will organically unfold. Facilitators can also guide any shared group discussion at the end of each session. To promote successful mask-making sessions, we have also found that it is important to achieve student ‘buy-in’ to the artistic process. Our experience has been that many students may not consider themselves to be inherently creative or artistic. Emphasizing that the purpose of the activity is personal reflection, and that all creations are anonymous, helps to put participants at ease. Students consistently note that they are able to reflect on deeply personal identity-related issues using the mask-making process. The mask-making process helps students ‘reclaim’ elements of self they may have given up as they progressed through medical school (Shapiro et al., 2018). Mask-making demonstrates how students are better able to organize scattered facets of identity into a more complete sense of self as they progress through their training (Higgins et al., 2021). By allowing students to compare and contrast elements of what they show the world (outside the mask) with personal elements of identity (inside the mask) (Stephens, 2022) students tell the stories of their own ‘hero’s journey’ through the mask-making process. Masks also appear to be a ‘third object’ (Lawton, 2018) that opens up space for self-exploration and growth. Common threads of uncertainty and impostorism (Stephens, 2022) are revealed through the masks and accompanying narratives. Mask-making allows participants to ‘talk through the masks’ to tell stories about self – past, future and present. Using the masks as a visual vehicle for this exploration potentially creates a safe space within which to address challenging situations, while encouraging reflection and personal growth.

CONCLUSION Mask-making is an underutilized means of artistic expression that can augment the process of PIF – a structured process of reflective expression. Recognizing that individuals view their present selves differently from their past or future selves, we feel that mask-making represents an interesting way to examine identity formation over time. We have found the mask-making activity to be a safe and engaging way for learners to explore identity. While students have responded positively to the process, most commonly describing the mask-making experience as provocative, liberating, and fun, the most persuasive illustrations of the power of mask-making to support student reflection are the masks themselves. Professional identity formation occurs at a pace that is unique to individual experiences and mask-making helps to contextualize those experiences. Mask-making represents an effective means of reflective expression that includes elements of artistry and non-linguistic expression. We suggest that the expressive opportunities afforded by mask-making provide additional insights into PIF that are otherwise difficult to capture in words.

186  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge the qualitative expertise of Dr. Lara Varpio, the administrative support of Karlen Bader, and the creative genius of Melissa Walker. This chapter is dedicated to the loving memory of Carolyn Knorr Stephens.

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PART V METHODS FOR ELICITING PERSONAL MEANINGS

14. Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme Rosalía Cascón-Pereira, Miquel Alabernia-Segura and Guillem Feixas

INTRODUCTION Originally devised by George Kelly (1955/1991) based on his personal construct theory (PCT), the repertory grid (RG) is a technique that seeks to explore how an individual constructs personal theories to make sense of and predict the world. These theories are made up of meanings that Kelly (ibid.) regarded as bipolar constructs, which capture distinctions in the similarities and differences perceived in the flow of experience. They are called ‘bipolar’ to reflect the fact that, according to the PCT (dichotomy corollary), we think in terms of contrasts. For instance, the word ‘good’ does not mean much by itself until it is compared with the word ‘evil’, ‘bad’, ‘poor’ or ‘mediocre’. So, ‘good–evil’ is a bipolar construct that conveys a meaning that differs from, for example, ‘good–mediocre’. Personal constructs are organized into a relatively complex and hierarchical network of meanings employed to make sense of the world, oneself and others. Hence, the RG was initially designed to systematically explore the meanings that form the personal identity of interviewees (ibid.), not for research purposes but for counselling purposes, to help individuals understand themselves better. Notwithstanding this initial purpose, the RG has been used for a wide range of reasons since its adoption by management research in the 1960s. For example, it has been employed to explore managers’ mental models as the basis for decision-making (Van Rossem, 2021) and for the purposes of job descriptions (Smith, 1986), employee selection (Anderson, 1990), performance appraisals (Wright & Cheung, 2007), and training (Easterby-Smith et al., 1996), to cite just a few examples. In this chapter, we revisit the origins and essence of this technique to illustrate how the RG can be used as an idiographic research method compatible with constructivist and phenomenological traditions to explore the personal identity of managers in relation to their ideal selves and their mental representation of a good manager. In particular, we illustrate its potential for exploring personal identity and professional selves through the case study of a senior executive participating in a coaching programme using the RG as the main tool for self-discovery. Coaching is a well-proven, effective strategy for facilitating personal and professional development by achieving personal and professional objectives (Grant, 2001; Whitmore, 1992) and for fostering self-knowledge as the basis for other managerial skills (Whitmore, 1992). In this context, the RG may prove ideal for executive coaching because of its developmental and constructivist nature, which could help individuals gain self-knowledge and set personal and professional goals. In fact, it has proved to be a reliable method in human resources (HR) consulting (Harris, 2001) and career counselling (Brook, 1992), but to the best of our knowledge, no report has yet demonstrated its benefits not only as a developmental tool but also as a research method in coaching. 189

190  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations In this chapter, we will show how the RG can be used to: (1) explore conscious desires for change in personal identity; (2) identify unconscious hindrances to attaining the desired identity; and (3) explore how close to or far from being a good manager interviewees perceive themselves to be, and hence develop their desired managerial identity. In addition, (4) we will show how dialogic feedback on the knowledge gained through the RG helps foster self-knowledge as a basic managerial skill and the development of managers’ personal and professional identities. This study was conducted within the context of a research project titled ‘GRID CONSULTOR (GRIDCON): A 3D tool for the exploration of professional identity in healthcare organizations’, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (EU) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2019-LLAV-00023). The project was designed to help healthcare managers develop self-knowledge of their personal and professional identities using the RG displayed in navigable 3D (Feixas et al., 2021b). Hence, this chapter is not intended as a general guide to using the RG, for which there are already very detailed manuals (e.g., Fransella et al., 2004). In addition, specific guides have been published for the organizational domain (see Stewart & Stewart, 1981). Our purpose here is to show how the RG can be used to explore identity in management and organization studies. The rest of this chapter is organized into three sections. First, we briefly describe the RG, its theoretical underpinnings and the most epistemological and theoretical approaches for exploring identities. In addition, we consider the methodological implications of its theoretical roots. Second, we illustrate the use of the RG through a case study that explores the core meanings that make up the current self-identity, the ideal self and the idea of what makes a good and a bad manager. We show how coaching objectives and individual, unconscious conflicts that hinder personal and professional development can be identified. In addition, we demonstrate how dialogic feedback on this knowledge and its co-construction with the participant can be used as a coaching technique to increase personal and professional self-awareness as an essential managerial skill (Whetton & Cameron, 1995). Finally, we critically reflect on the possibilities, advantages and disadvantages of the RG as a research method to explore identity in organizations, suggest ideas on how to design the RG according to various research purposes, and offer some practical recommendations.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE RG Before illustrating how to apply the RG, this section briefly describes its theoretical underpinnings, rooted in personal construct theory (PCT), and its understanding of identity. In addition, it proposes the most suitable epistemological and theoretical approaches to exploring identity when using this method in research. In his formulation of PCT, Kelly (1955/1991) saw individuals as actively engaged in creating their phenomenological world and suggested that each person perceives the world differently, and actively constructs distinctive meanings based on personal experience. Accordingly, people actively (although often unconsciously) interpret the world and the events they encounter using their own personal theories, which constitute a meaning system formed by personal constructs. This construct system develops throughout life and can be accessed by means of the skilled use of the RG. This psychological theory is constructivist and socially

Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme  191 constructionist in nature, in contrast to what is referred to as positivism and empiricism. At the core of both approaches lies the denial that we can access reality in an objective way. It is constructivist because it assumes that each individual constructs their reality, and socially constructionist because this construction does not occur in isolation but is embedded in a social context that shapes this construction. Hence, use of the RG as a research method is most appropriate in projects compatible with these epistemological premises. In line with constructivist approaches, the RG is idiographic in nature, which means that its results are designed to be applied and interpreted in the context of the person being analysed. Therefore, while analytical or theoretical generalization (Hammersley, 2008) is achievable through the use of the RG by comparing and analysing the results of the individual grid against a theory (i.e., the meaning of ‘being a good manager’ in the eyes of the person is interpreted according to theoretical concept of transformational leadership), statistical or empirical generalization, which implies the inference of universal rules or aspects concerning a population on the basis of the data in a sample (ibid.) is only possible when referring to the structural characteristics of the grid (such as statistical distances among fixed elements with no reference to its specific content or meanings – i.e., distances between the current self and the ideal self, which is conceived as self-esteem). This is in line with the idiosyncratic purpose of the RG – that is, to understand the individual’s construct system and make sense of their behaviours and perceptions rather than generalize this construct system to others. With respect to Kelly’s (1955/1991) understanding of identity, he contended that an individual’s core constructs are responsible for maintaining a distinctive sense of identity that is continuous over time, with implications for other constructs at a lower hierarchical level. That is to say, in the network of meanings constituted by the construct system, it is the self-defining constructs – those closest to the core of the system – that constitute the individual’s personal identity. This conception is in line with Baumeister’s (1986) idea of identity as the meanings that individuals attach to themselves as they seek to answer the question, ‘Who am I?’ However, in PCT, these core constructs are applied not only to the self, but also to other people. Thus, in PCT, self-construal and the construal of others are necessarily interwoven. Hence, the RG is perfectly suited to capturing the meanings that form individuals’ personal and social identities (e.g., different professional, occupational, role, cultural, or ethnic identities). In fact, since its inception, the RG has proved very useful as a means of accessing an individual’s personal identity and different selves using different self-constructions as elements (Bannister, 1983). Kelly (1955/1991) believed that even core constructs can change over time as they are contrasted with experience. Hence, PCT holds an anti-essentialist view of identity, as opposed to traditional mainstream psychology, which infers unchanging, permanent individual characteristics, usually understood as personality traits. In other words, PCT and the RG do not assume the existence of essences within people that can be objectively discovered, but instead posit that people are the product of social and personal processes and can construct and change their identities reflected in a construct system based on their experiences. This conception of identity brings us to the ongoing debate in organizational research about how identities should be theorized and researched. First, regarding the extent to which identities are chosen by or ascribed to individuals (Brown, 2015), the RG is socially constructivist as opposed to deterministic in nature. Thus, despite the fact that it recognizes the influence of institutional structures and historical forces on the construct system through people’s individual experiences, the RG is based on the premise of human agency – that is, the notion that anyone can change their personal identity

192  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations by reconstructing personal meanings in the context of their network of relationships (Gergen, 1991). From this perspective, identities arise in a continuing dialectic of ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ (Brown, 2015) and are continually revised and crafted through identity work processes that are expressed in changes in the construct system as it develops throughout life. In line with this conception, the RG is suitable for capturing these changes in the construct system and, when used longitudinally, will reflect identity changes and identity work processes. In general, the RG holds an anti-essentialist view of the person. In other words, it is based on the assumption that there are no essences or stable traits within people that make them what they are; instead, there are symbolic processes, social interactions through which our identities are constructed. Second, with regard to the debate on whether identities are stable, fixed and secure or, by contrast, adaptive, fluid and shifting, the underlying concept of the RG is that, although there is scope for flexibility, core constructs that constitute personal identity are difficult to change. Kelly (1955/1991) defined core constructs as those by which people maintain their identity and existence, so that when an imminent change in this core structure is anticipated, they will experience threat. However, people may differ in the degree of flexibility of their construct system, thus allowing for varying degrees of self-transformation. This is a different stance to that of traditional psychology, which assumes that the stable traits that form personality cannot be changed. Finally, regarding the controversy over whether identity is coherent or contradictory, theoretical underpinnings of the RG hold that it can be both, but that people are motivated to reduce inconsistencies and contradictions in their identities because these generate discomfort (Down & Reveley, 2009). As we hope to illustrate through our case study, the RG is a powerful technique to identify these contradictions through the identification of implicative dilemmas (a kind of internal conflict in the construct system). Likewise, the RG assumes the existence of multiple coexisting identities (often reflecting social and role-based positionings). In this regard, the RG can be a vehicle for recognizing and reconciling the different selves in a dialectical and reflexive process (Bannister, 1983), effected through feedback on the results. We will now move onto the practical part of this chapter, in which we describe the RG through a case study. Before that, we will outline some of its basic principles. The RG has three components: (1) elements, in columns, which can be anything that defines the kind of conversation to have with the interviewee (these must be homogeneous – i.e., of the same class, e.g., people); (2) unique bipolar meanings, in rows (called constructs here), which are elicited by comparison between pairs of elements and also applied to all elements to generate a matrix of ratings; and (3) a matrix of scores resulting from each construct being applied to each element, in which the constructs are usually given in rows and the elements in columns (see Figure 14.1 for an example). In the case study that follows, we illustrate how the 16 bipolar constructs that compose the participant’s construct system were elicited through comparison/difference questions with dyad combinations of elements generated using the GRIDCON automated algorithm. This allowed us to access the meaning dimensions used by the interviewee when she thought about the elements. In particular, we discovered how she constructed herself (Self) and her concept of being a good manager in the context of the construal of significant others.

Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme  193

DESCRIPTION AND ILLUSTRATION OF THE RG IN A CASE OF COACHING Case Example and the Research Project The individual presented below participated in the GRID CONSULTOR research project. The aim of this research was to demonstrate that the RG technique is a helpful consultancy tool for improving clinical managers’ self-knowledge, especially with respect to their managerial identity. For this purpose, we randomly assigned participants to two different consultancy conditions. Both groups participated in a brief coaching exercise using the RG. In the control group, each participant’s grid data multivariate analysis was visualized through traditional means, with a 2D display of the two main factors corresponding to the main meaning dimensions. In the experimental group, the RG results were represented using the 3D GRIDCON display based on the three main factors (Feixas et al., 2021a), thus providing an opportunity for managers to visualize their own personal, idiosyncratic mental maps. In addition, GRIDCON also allows for navigation within the space created by the three meaning dimensions extracted from the RG analysis to explore possible pathways to reach personal goals, as represented by the ‘ideal self’. Thus, the only difference between groups was the display mode of the RG results. The consultancy process was carried out in tri-weekly sessions for both conditions. In the first session, the coach (one of the authors) explored the managers’ views of their work environment, functions, personal and professional background, the reasons and expectations underpinning their decision to enrol in the study, job difficulties, and what they liked and disliked about their position as managers within their organizations. In the second session, updates for the week and the specific goals of the coaching process were further clarified, and the RG was administered using GRIDCON. In the third session, the results obtained from a multi-dimensional analysis of the participants’ grid data matrix were visualized (in a 2D display for the control group and with 3D GRIDCON in the experimental group) and discussed with the coach according to the coaching goals. They also discussed the insights gained from exploring participants’ personal and managerial identity, and ways of improving their current activity as managers. Thus, although the three sessions were conducted by the coach, the specific questions to elicit the bipolar constructs were created by the GRIDCON algorithm. Of the 29 study participants, we selected Mary (name changed to protect anonymity) to illustrate the objectives described in this chapter because her case shows how implicit conflicts or dilemmas may be involved in self-knowledge as a leader and in attaining the coaching objectives. Mary was a 53-year-old woman who was born in Argentina but had been living in Barcelona for the last 40 years. She worked for a company with more than 3000 employees and led a team of 20 people. For 14 years, she had managed both the development, training and hiring and the corporate social responsibility areas of the HR department. For the last 24 years, she had been working for the same healthcare corporation. Mary divorced some years ago and had two daughters aged 16 and 14. She was highly educated, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and various master’s degrees in organizational psychology. At the time, she was planning to enrol for a new master’s degree in coaching.

194  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations In the first coaching session, she expressed the following as a demand for change: ‘I feel I have lost my enthusiasm for work. I want to regain the enthusiasm I had 20 years ago, when I started working for this company’. The RG Design The RG design was agreed upon by the three authors before it was incorporated into GRIDCON. We selected a maximum of 15 elements from people who were significant to the participant, including several fixed elements: Self Now, Myself after Coaching, a Good Manager, a Subordinate, a Bad Manager and Ideal Self (Figure 14.1). The Bad Manager was presented as a manager you knew but did not like. The Good Manager was a mental representation of the perceived ideal manager. The Ideal Self was presented as what you would like to become. Then, to achieve significant diversity and representativeness in the participant’s construct system, the GRIDCON automated interview algorithm asked the participant about different elements of their personal lives, such as parents, partners, siblings and friends, to include them in the RG.

Figure 14.1

The RG created with Mary

Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme  195 Except for the Ideal Self, all elements were presented in varying dyad combinations generated using the GRIDCON automated algorithm to elicit the constructs. Comparisons consisted of asking for similarities and differences between combinations of elements (e.g., ‘What are the similarities [or differences in the following question] between yourself and a good manager?’). After the algorithm obtained a similarity and/or difference between the dyad of elements presented, the participant was automatically asked to find the other extreme of the construct in their own words (e.g., if ‘honest’ was elicited by comparing ‘Self Now’ with a ‘Bad Manager’, then GRIDCON asked, ‘What is the opposite of being honest for you?’). The GRIDCON algorithm repeated this process in consecutive pairs of elements until the maximum of 15 constructs or a saturation point was reached (Feixas et al., 2004), when the participant could not find any new constructs. After eliciting all constructs, GRIDCON asked the participant to rate the elements for all constructs using a seven-point rating scale to create the grid data matrix illustrated in Figure 14.1. The GRIDCON automated process was assisted by a coach, who was available to help Mary with any difficulties or doubts. Analysis of the RG Data In this section, we illustrate the way in which the RG can be used to explore: (1) conscious desires for change in personal identity; (2) unconscious hindrances to attaining the desired identity; and (3) how close to or far from being a good manager interviewees perceive their current self to be. In addition, (4) we illustrate the provision of dialogic feedback on the knowledge yielded by the RG results, which are shared to promote self-knowledge as a means of stimulating development of the participants’ personal and managerial identities. Congruent constructs are identified when the Self Now and the Ideal Self are on the same pole, while discrepant constructs are those with a difference of at least four points (out of a seven-point scale) in the absolute value between both ratings. We consider these latter constructs as indicators of the desired changes and expected impact of the coaching itself. If we accomplish these changes in the coaching sessions, the client will move closer to their Ideal Self. Therefore, discrepant constructs reflect the baseline and the aspects that participants think the coaching sessions could help them improve in themselves, in the desired direction. This is an essential factor in understanding motivation with respect to the coaching sessions. A quantitative analysis of the grid data matrix offers a wealth of information, including measures on the discrepancy between Self Now, Myself after Coaching and Ideal Self, based on the Euclidean distances between the scores given to these elements by the participant. A long distance between the Self Now and the Ideal Self indicates low self-esteem (Feixas & Cornejo-Alvarez, 2002). Moreover, the degree of similarity can also be compared with different elements. For example, the distance between the Self Now and the Good Manager sheds light on the changes that are required to become a Good Manager, in the participant’s eyes. In addition, we can compare Myself after Coaching and Ideal Self, which will indicate the participant’s expectations with respect to the potential outcome of the coaching sessions. To identify hindrances to the desired changes, we employed a procedure to identify implicative dilemmas (IDs) developed by our research team (e.g., Feixas & Saúl, 2004; Feixas et al., 2014). An ID is a cognitive conflict formed by a discrepant construct that reflects a desire for change but is associated with a congruent construct for which change is undesirable, thus creating an obstacle to the person’s achievement of the desired change, given that this would imply abandoning positive characteristics that define that person’s identity. Accordingly, the

196  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations existence of an ID in a coaching process might hinder the client’s performance or impede learning throughout the coaching session. This concept thus helps explain clients’ difficulties or (often unconscious) resistance to change to attain their desired objectives. Consequently, when IDs are found in the construct system, personal or professional change will be inhibited. The grid data matrix can be analysed using the GRIDCOR 6.0 software created by García-Gutiérrez and Feixas (2018) and integrated into the GRIDCON system. For the specific objectives of this study, we considered (dis)similarities between the Self Now and both the Ideal Self and the Good Manager to study the development of participants’ personal and professional identities. In addition, we analysed the grid data matrix to detect IDs. For this purpose, GRIDCOR 6.0 examines the correlations between scores given to each discrepant construct (Self Now and Ideal Self rated at opposite poles of the construct, thus reflecting a need for change) and each congruent construct (Self Now and Ideal Self rated at the same pole of the construct, which means that the person is comfortable and experiences coherence in that construct dimension). Mathematically, we identify an ID when there is a noticeable correlation (r > 0.35) between the desired pole of the discrepant construct and the undesired pole of the congruent construct. Exploring how Mary viewed herself in relation to her Ideal Self In the case of Mary, a comparison between the Self Now and the Ideal Self showed that she was not very satisfied with how she was at the time (Euclidian distance = 0.37). In particular, she did not like being self-conscious, unbelieving, embittered and intolerant. To become the best version of herself, she wanted to be more confident, believer, energetic and tolerant. These were desires for change in her personal identity, which were discussed with the coach during the third coaching session as a demand for change, as opposed to the explicit demand in the first session (‘I want to regain the enthusiasm I had 20 years ago, when I started working for this company’). This tendency towards low self-esteem and a high potential need for change was also reflected in her expectations of the coaching sessions. In fact, the distance when we compared the Ideal Self and Myself after Coaching was very short (Euclidian distance = 0.11). This shows that she thought she could attain her desired self through the coaching sessions and, therefore, that she was highly motivated by the coaching process. Exploring how Mary viewed herself in relation to her concept of a Good Manager As reflected by the RG scores, Mary believed that a Good Manager should be very sensitive, intelligent, ordered, energetic and a perfectionist. According to the (dis)similarity between her Self Now and the Good Manager, she saw herself as quite different from a Good Manager (Euclidian distance = 0.42), which was consistent with her motivation to participate in the coaching sessions. In addition, the element Myself after Coaching and her concept of the Good Manager were somewhat closer (Euclidian distance = 0.27), thus indicating the potential of the coaching process to help her become a better manager. There was also some similarity between the Good Manager and the Ideal Self (Euclidian distance = 0.25). This finding indicated a need to examine the changes required to become a Good Manager in her eyes and ascertain whether these aligned or not (i.e., conflicted) with her view of the Ideal Self. In particular, she considered herself very different (> three points) from a Good Manager because she rated herself as more self-conscious, unbelieving and embittered. Instead, a Good Manager in her eyes should be more confident, a believer and energetic. Still comparing

Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme  197 herself with the concept of a Good Manager, she considered herself to be very family-oriented, affectionate and sensitive, and gave the Good Manager a score of four in these characteristics. When the coach asked Mary the meaning of these mid-point ratings, she referred to the need for balance in these characteristics to become a Good Manager. Identifying the existence of cognitive conflicts that prevent her from achieving her desired identity Figure 14.2 shows Mary’s IDs as detected by the GRIDCOR algorithm described above. She wanted to regain her enthusiasm for her job and expressed this objective in terms of becoming more confident and a believer again. However, if she changed from being self-conscious and unbelieving to being confident and a believer, she would also become isolated, cold, insensitive and a bad person; she did not want this, which prevented change from happening.

Note: ‘r’ stands for the Pearson product-moment correlation between the scores of the congruent and those of the discrepant constructs involved in the dilemma. For example, the scores in the congruent construct ‘good person–bad person’ correlate (r = 0.41) with those of ‘self-conscious–confident’ indicating that there is a tendency for confident people to be perceived by Mary as ‘bad persons’.

Figure 14.2

Implicative dilemmas identified in Mary’s RG

When examining the correlations between constructs, we found that Mary unconsciously associated being confident with being a bad person, insensitive and isolated. Furthermore, she feared that becoming a believer would make her cold and insensitive. Consequently, if she were to change and become confident and a believer, she would be betraying her sense of self and harming some aspects of her self-esteem because she would no longer be a good, affectionate, sensitive and family-oriented person. In this case, the importance of identifying and tackling these dilemmas in the coaching process becomes evident. Mary’s work in this coaching process was oriented toward constructing the personal meanings involved in her IDs so that she could revise the negative meanings associated with being confident and a believer. Key aspects of her identity were involved in the desired change, because becoming an isolated and bad person, which she

198  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations associated with regaining enthusiasm for her job, would be a very undesirable change for her. For Mary, bringing that cognitive conflict into her consciousness through language helped her gain self-knowledge, an essential managerial skill that helped her become a better manager in her eyes (see Box 14.1 for an example of this).

BOX 14.1 EXTRACT FROM TRANSCRIPT OF MARY’S INTERVIEW ILLUSTRATING THE PERFORMATIVE OF LANGUAGE TO FACILITATE PERSONAL CHANGE Mary expressed the coaching objective of recovering her enthusiasm of 20 years ago. Also, she would like to be more confident and a believer in the cognitive dilemma: Coach: May it be possible that there was a relation between the desire to recover your enthusiasm and the idea of becoming more confident and a believer? Mary: Yes, sure. If I would become confident and a believer, I may feel more content and do things with more passion. Coach: How do you know that? Mary: Because 20 years ago, when I started working, I felt plenty of energy, and I had the confidence that I was going to thrive somehow. I could spread that enthusiasm to my collaborators and inspire them to start new projects and initiatives. Coach: That’s great! Some years ago, it seems that you experienced that kind of motivation that helped you to lead new projects. Mary: I felt more inspired and full of strength and motivation to lead those projects. Also, my coworkers were very receptive, and it was easy to help them work. Coach: Well, may I ask you something quite unusual? Mary: Yes, of course! Coach: Imagine that you wake up to feel that you have that energy, motivation, enthusiasm in yourself. How would you know you are enthusiastic? Mary: I would feel like smiling and enjoying the plans for the day. I would enjoy the passion I feel for whatever I am doing and I would not be worried about everything happening around me. It would be easier to go home after work and sometimes combine work with leisure. I would feel playful and happier. Coach: That sounds really good! What would other people notice? Mary: I think my oldest daughter would think someone changed their mother. We would be more playful and maybe do more things together because I had more energy. At work, they would see me as more sensitive and less bossy. Coach: So, if a 10 is the day you just described to me and a 1 means you have totally lost your enthusiasm and you are totally self-conscious. How would you rate yourself right now?

Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme  199 Mary: Maybe I will be at 6. Coach: Amazing! What makes you think that you are a 6 right now? Mary: I am aware of that problem, and I think that I have already started making changes. Some mornings I start the day in a better mood and I don’t even know why. Coach: What would help you to get closer to the 7? Mary: I think I would be more present, less agitated by the problems, meetings, bosses… I would be more confident about my experience and the results I already got. Coach: May you please tell me a bit more about this? Mary: It would be like a change in my attitude, maybe to laugh and smile more at the job. Try to be less tense. Perhaps I would put on some music while working. I would intend to make my job funnier, with some music, pictures on the walls, some candy (laugh). Coach: That’s great! The guidelines for dilemma-focused interventions produced by our research team (Feixas & Compañ, 2016) suggested that we first needed to reframe the demand in terms of the dilemma. Mary’s initial target of regaining enthusiasm for her job was reformulated as a conflict between the desire to achieve this change and the problematic aspects associated with doing so, which impeded change and perpetuated her suffering. This step helped Mary see that she was at an impasse and that the difficulties she was encountering in changing reflected an internal logic and coherence and were not a sign of incompetence or madness, as she had initially believed. An analysis of the 3D map (Figure 14.3) then made it possible to suggest to Mary that the characteristics she disliked, such as being cold, insensitive and isolated, were the very characteristics that she associated with Edgar, whom she had identified as a Bad Manager in the interview. She also realized how much influence this former boss (Edgar) had had on her construal of management. However, being confident and a believer were characteristics that she associated with being a Good Manager. Thus, a connection was suggested between the desire for change and self-image or personal style as a manager. Mary observed that her Ideal Self was closer to the Good Manager and that the characteristics that would bring her closer to an Ideal Self and being a Good Manager, and further away from the Bad Manager, were energetic, ordered, cheerful, proactive and tolerant. This connection offered Mary an insight into her capacity to change and regain her enthusiasm in a way that would allow her to maintain her qualities as a good, affectionate, sensitive and family-oriented person by showing her as energetic, ordered, cheerful, proactive and tolerant. Through this case study, we have illustrated how the RG can be used to explore healthcare managers’ personal and managerial identities in the context of a coaching process designed to increase their self-knowledge as the basis for improving their managerial skills.

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Figure 14.3

3D navigable representation of Mary’s construct system as applied to self and others

CRITICAL EVALUATION Although we are enthusiastic about this method, we are not uncritical of the use of the RG to explore personal and professional identities. In this section, therefore, we will discuss the potential of the RG to contribute to identity research in a managerial context and the many challenges we would have liked to have known about before using the RG as researchers. First, as we have already illustrated with the case study, the RG is a sophisticated tool for studying personal identity and different occupational, professional or work-role identities that we can include as elements. Although it has been applied in business consulting (Stewart & Stewart, 1981), marketing (Ortega, 2007) and strategic management research (Wright, 2006), its use in identity research within the business management field is still in its infancy (Cascón-Pereira, 2018; Fournier, 1996). This is good news for future researchers on identity, as there is a great deal of room for developing new uses for the RG to explore identity-related issues in the work domain. In particular, it could be used to bridge gaps in the field of identity research with respect to the need for an in-depth understanding of how sense-making connects to personal and professional identity, and the role of identity work in external interpretation

Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme  201 and meaning-making processes (Brown, 2015). We believe that the RG is the most suitable technique for assessing and understanding these aspects, as it provides access to the content of personal meanings and the relationship between these and personal and work identities. Therefore, it offers useful insights into how sense-making (Weick, 1995) connects to identities by revealing how people make sense of themselves and the world around them. In fact, theoretical underpinnings of the RG present the individual as an active construer of their world who is heavily influenced by experience, a notion very similar to the term ‘sense-making’. Moreover, it can help advance identity research by bridging the gap caused by a lack of suitable methods and contributing to our understanding of ‘the process by which identity evolves’, which remains underexplained according to Ibarra (1999, p. 765). In this respect, the RG is highly useful for exploring personal change in work-role transitions, as it tracks all changes (i.e., in successive applications of the grid), not only in identities but also in their associated mental maps, thus making it possible to explore the mental processes associated with changes in identities. Therefore, it allows us to open the black box of identity work through cognitive mapping of identity change processes. The analysis of change in self-constructions or related identities requires a longitudinal RG design and application (Cascón-Pereira, 2021; Fournier, 1996) to track changes in the construct system. In addition, the RG has great potential for exploring unconscious barriers to change, mainly by identifying implicative dilemmas associated with core constructs and personal identity. Finally, it also has the potential to explore relationships between multiple identities by including different selves as elements (Feixas et al., 2021b). Consequently, we hope this chapter will inspire other identity researchers to enrich their current methodological approaches and consider using the RG by employing the application described here or new applications to increase current knowledge on identity and identity processes. Second, having highlighted the potential contributions of the RG to identity research, we will discuss some of the challenges involved and how these can be overcome. The first three are epistemological and methodological in nature, while the last is procedural. The first challenge for using the RG for identity research (or any other type of research) is to have a clear research purpose in mind and then design the grid to suit that purpose. The RG is a highly versatile, adaptable method suitable for many research purposes that involves the exploration of individual mental processes and maps or perceived characteristics associated with almost any type of element (from a marketing product, meeting type or team to different social identities and identity work processes). However, researchers must have a clear, well-defined purpose before selecting the elements to use, because these will guide the kinds of conversation that will evolve with the interviewee and define the research area to be investigated. For instance, if I wanted to explore migrant workers’ identity work processes, I would include the self before the international experience, the self after the international experience, significant others, host country nationals, home country nationals and the ideal self as elements (e.g., Cascón-Pereira, 2021). Therefore, it is very important to incorporate the domain under study into the grid interview design from the very outset. Likewise, although the grid interview itself is open and flexible, it must be protocolized when used for research purposes to allow for a subsequent comparison of the grid results for different participants. Thus, to analyse grid data either qualitatively or quantitatively, it is important to ensure that all elements (or supplied constructs) are of the same kind for each grid interview administered to all study participants. This advice on establishing the grid design beforehand and maintaining it throughout the data collection process might sound like it runs counter to more open, flexible and ad hoc approaches in the

202  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations qualitative tradition and social constructionism, where data collection methods evolve and adapt to the findings. It might also appear at odds with the idiosyncratic nature of the RG, but a price must be paid to obtain aggregated results. This point brings us to the second challenge encountered when using the RG for research purposes, which is the potential for generalization. Although one cannot statistically generalize the findings from the grid and ensure coherency with the epistemological origins and idiosyncratic nature of the RG, analytical (versus statistical) generalization and transferability of findings (Maxwell, 2021) are both possible with the RG, as this method represents a good tool for uncovering patterns or developing theoretical frameworks. The third challenge relates to the RG analysis process, which should be inductive. Given that one of the grid’s main characteristics is that it yields data with minimal observer bias (e.g., unlike the questionnaires, the terms used are provided by the person being coached), data interpretation should be conducted in the terms of the interviewee rather than in the terms of existing theoretical frameworks or the researcher’s construct system. A useful strategy to ensure that the participant’s construct system is being interpreted rather than your own is to provide the participants with feedback on the results and elicit their comments and reactions. This would also ensure construct validity (Maxwell, 2002), or what Glaser and Strauss (1967) referred to as ‘fit’, when inductively generating a theory from data. Finally, the fourth challenge relates to the richness and quality of the data obtained via the RG. As with most qualitative research, this will depend on the researcher’s interviewing skills and their knowledge of the PCT and the RG method. Consequently, after reading basic manuals on the RG (Feixas & Cornejo-Alvarez, 2002; Fransella et al., 2004; Jankowicz, 2003; Stewart & Stewart, 1981), it is necessary to obtain some real-life practice under the supervision of a researcher with experience in the use of the RG to ensure that the researcher is sufficiently skilled at choosing the best elements for a given research purpose and eliciting constructs from participants. Even more skills are needed to identify core or superordinate constructs and subordinate constructs through laddering up and down, respectively. It is also important to conduct several full interviews, including analysis of the data, before embarking on a full study. In other words, researchers must conduct a pilot test on the intended grid before starting to collect data for research purposes to ensure that the wording of the elements is comprehensible, they are familiar with the elements, analysis of the grid is aligned with the initial research questions, and so on. For instance, having pilot-tested the RG in a study of migrants’ identity work, we decided to eliminate ‘Myself in the Destination Country’ from the grid administered in T1 (longitudinal study) because the interviewees were unable to imagine themselves in the destination country before arriving and therefore this element did not elicit constructs effectively. We then pilot-tested another element, ‘Myself after the International Experience’, which happened to work very well, as interviewees were able to imagine and project their desired selves with this element. As a final critical reflection for future users of the RG in identity research, we would highlight the powerful performative role of language during application of the grid and subsequent joint discussion of the results. We have illustrated this performative role of language in our case study by showing how simply talking to the participant about the results fosters personal change by increasing her self-knowledge (see Box 14.1). The use of language and discourse to elicit a participant’s constructs constitutes an intervention in itself, in that it raises participants’ awareness of their personal meanings; thus, through this process, their perceived world is (re) constructed. In this respect, the language used when applying and discussing the RG is a form

Repertory grid for exploring managers’ identities in a coaching programme  203 of action that has practical consequences of which researchers must be aware. On the whole, we believe that applying the RG in identity research has enormous potential for contributing new insights about theory development, research and practice, and we hope we have conveyed this idea in this chapter.

REFERENCES Anderson, N. (1990). Repertory grid technique in employee selection. Personnel Review, 19(3), 9–115. Bannister, D. (1983). Self in personal construct theory. In J. R. Adams-Weber & J. C. Mancuso (Eds.), Applications of personal construct theory (pp. 379–386). Academic Press. Baumeister, R. F. (1986). Identity: Cultural change and the struggle for self. Oxford University Press. Brook, J. A. (1992). Use of the repertory grid in career counselling. Career Development Quarterly, 41(1), 39–50. Brown, A. D. (2015). Identities and identity work in organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(1), 20–40. Cascón-Pereira, R. (2018). Repertory grid technique as a useful tool for assessing identity and identity change in HRD. In K. Black, R. Warhurst & S. Corlett (Eds.), Identity as a foundation for human resource development (pp. 129–143). Routledge. Cascón-Pereira, R. (2021, June 14–15). A longitudinal study of the cross-cultural identity work of expatriates as part of their adjustment process [Paper presentation]. EURAM 2021 Online Conference. Down, S., & Reveley, J. (2009). Between narration and interaction: Situating first-line supervisor identity work. Human Relations, 62(3), 379–401. Easterby-Smith, M., Thorpe, R., & Holman, D. (1996). Using repertory grids in management. Journal of European Industrial Training, 20(3), 3–30. Feixas, G., Alabernia-Segura, M., García-Gutiérrez, A., Martí-Mora, J., & Cascón-Pereira, R. (2021a, February 19–20). GRID CONSULTOR (GRIDCON): A 3D tool for the exploration of professional identity in organizations. [Conference presentation]. First European Conference on Digital Psychology (Virtual Forum). Feixas, G., Alabernia-Segura, M., García-Gutiérrez, A., & Montesano, A. (2021b). Studying the dialogical self with the repertory grid technique. In C. Monereo, C. Weise & H. Hermans (Eds.), Dialogicality: Personal, local and planetary dialogue in education, health citizenship and research (pp. 428–434). International Society for Dialogical Science. Feixas, G., Bach, L., & Laso, E. (2004). Factors affecting interpersonal construct differentiation when measured using the repertory grid. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 17(4), 297–311. Feixas, G., & Compañ, V. (2016). Dilemma-focused intervention for unipolar depression: A treatment manual. BMC Psychiatry, 16(1), 235–263. Feixas, G., & Cornejo-Alvarez, J. M. (2002). A manual for the repertory grid: Using the GRIDCOR programme (version 4.0). Retrieved March 26, 2023 from https://​www​.ub​.edu/​terdep/​pag/​index​.html Feixas, G., & Saúl, L. A. (2004). The Multi-Center Dilemma Project: An investigation on the role of cognitive conflicts in health. Spanish Journal of Psychology, 7(1), 69–78. Feixas, G., Montesano, A., Erazo-Caicedo, M. I., Compañ, V., & Pucurull, O. (2014). Implicative dilemmas and symptom severity in depression: A preliminary and content analysis study. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 27(1), 31–40. Fournier, V. (1996). Cognitive maps in the analysis of personal change during work role transition. British Journal of Management, 7(1), 87–105. Fransella, F., R. Bell, & D. Bannister (2004). A manual for repertory grid technique (2nd ed.). Wiley. García-Gutiérrez, A., & Feixas, G. (2018). GRIDCOR: A repertory grid analysis tool (version 6.0) [Web application]. Retrieved March 26, 2023 from http://​www​.repertorygrid​.net/​en Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. Basic Books. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Aldine. Grant, A. M. (2001). Towards a psychology of coaching: The impact of coaching on metacognition, mental health and goal attainment [Doctoral thesis]. Macquarie University.

204  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Hammersley, M. (2008). Questioning qualitative inquiry critical essays. SAGE. Harris, H. (2001). Researching discrimination in selection for international management assignments: The role of repertory grid technique. Women in Management Review, 16(3), 118–126. Ibarra, H. (1999). Provisional selves: Experimenting with image and identity in professional adaptation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 764–791. Jankowicz, A. D. (2003). The easy guide to repertory grids. Wiley. Kelly, G. A. (1991). The psychology of personal constructs (2 Vols.). Routledge (Original work published 1955). Maxwell, J. A. (2002). Understanding and validity in qualitative research. In A. M. Huberman & M. B. Miles (Eds.), The qualitative researcher’s companion. SAGE. Maxwell, J. A. (2021). Why qualitative methods are necessary for generalization. Qualitative Psychology, 8(1), 111–118. Ortega, E. (2007). Applications of the repertory grid technique in the field of marketing. Investigación y Marketing, 95, 31–39. Smith, M. (1986). A repertory grid analysis of supervisory jobs. International Review of Applied Psychology, 35, 501–512. Stewart, A., & Stewart, V. (1981). Business applications of the repertory grid. McGraw-Hill. Van Rossem, A. D. H. (2021) Assessment and selection of management consultants: A comparative cognitive study between small and large scale companies. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 27(1), Article 100673. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. SAGE. Whetton, D. A., & Cameron, K. S. (1995). Developing management skills (3rd ed.). HarperCollins. Whitmore, J. (1992). Coaching for performance. Nicholas Brealey. Wright, R. P. (2006). Rigor and relevance using repertory grid technique in strategy research. Research Methodology in Strategy and Management, 3, 289–341. Wright, R. P., & Cheung, F. K. K. (2007). Articulating appraisal system effectiveness based on managerial cognitions. Personnel Review, 36, 206–230.

15. A portrait in words: using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities Angela McGrane, Viv Burr and Nigel King

INTRODUCTION Background to the Research In common with many other countries, English higher education has become increasingly concerned with the ‘value for money’ offered by degree study (Burnett, 2017). Employment outcomes are seen as key (Tomlinson, 2018), with work-integrated learning (WIL) promoted to improve employability by developing skills in graduates that academic study alone may struggle to provide (Effeney, 2020; Freudenberg et al., 2010). However, the role it can play in influencing graduate and work identity is often overlooked in these discussions. The research described in this chapter attempted to redress this imbalance through a longitudinal study of changing work identity in undergraduate students as they moved in and out of WIL during their degrees. Individuals were followed from first year to graduation using several methods to explore their changing views of their work identity across time. One of these, the self-characterization sketch, is presented in detail here as a proposed innovative method for exploring personal views of work identity. Existing Work If the impact of undertaking WIL on student identity is to be understood, there is a need to explore how undergraduates develop and describe their work identity alongside their personal identity. An individual’s work identity impacts on the way they carry out their job, but also on the roles they assign themselves and their organizational loyalties and behaviours (Walsh & Gordon, 2008). Holmes (2013a, 2013b, 2015) suggests that the process of becoming a graduate is complex, takes place over time, and is negotiated both between the individual and those around them. Work identity is therefore dependent on two aspects: how the student sees and presents themselves, and how they are seen by others (Holmes, 2013a). Much of the existing work on identity development in students is done from the perspective of professional identity formation in highly regulated areas such as teaching and medicine. This means that it tends to be motivated by the imposition of external models of identity by government policy-makers or educators (Helmich et al., 2010; Weaver et al., 2011; Wilkins et al., 2011) rather than identity being seen as something intrinsic to behaviour, beliefs and self-efficacy (Lamote & Engels, 2010; Vähäsantanen et al., 2008). A contrast to this can be seen in work that explores the broader changes in work identity that are experienced by students during their course of study using social identity theory and social categorization theory 205

206  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1975; Turner & Reynolds, 2012). Using this, Hallier and Summers (2011) considered the processes that human resource management (HRM) students went through to see themselves as a professional, although their work was limited by collecting retrospective views from final-year students only. In contrast, Jungert (2011) conducted a longitudinal study of postgraduate engineering students over four and a half years. It appears that what influenced changes in identity in these studies was a challenge to expectations about the self or about the profession: when this happened, either the student changed or the challenge was rejected. In some cases, academics were used as what social categorization theory would call the ‘out-group’ that the profession should be defended against, as students came to see themselves as part of the ‘in-group’ of HRM professionals or engineers. However, for some students, identity as a professional was rejected when their initial expectations (what they believed on enrolment that a professional should do and be) were proved false, and they became isolated from the main group. These students were likely to reject the profession and choose a different path on graduation (Hallier & Summers, 2011). In contrast to work suggesting that one of the desirable outcomes from WIL is that students should develop high career decidedness and be ready to step into a profession on graduation (see, for example, Brooks & Youngson, 2016; Cranmer, 2006; Jackson, 2014; Reddy & Moores, 2006), it seems likely that students may undergo a process of questioning their ideas about their work identity. A desire to explore this process of change was one of the main motivations for this project. The Framework for This Research The emphasis in the research described here was to allow participants to describe their personal and work identities in their own terms, meaning the methods chosen needed to be flexible and also to reflect the idea that identity and construal of self changes across time. For this reason, George Kelly’s (1955/1991) personal construct theory (PCT) was used as the underlying framework for the study. PCT is a psychological theory based around the concept that a person possesses a unique, individual and distinct construct system through which they make sense of their experience. This is constantly being assessed, re-evaluated and changed as necessary to explain the world around them. This world does not come to us ‘pre-packaged’ but instead there is an infinite number of ways in which a person might organize and categorize their experience (Butt & Burr, 2004). We organize and make sense of our experience through our ‘construct system’, an individual network of bipolar constructs that may sometimes change in the light of so doing (Butt, 2008). As part of his work as a clinical psychologist, Kelly developed techniques that could be used in therapy to explore this system and to assist in understanding and articulating the changing constructs of his clients. These include the repertory grid and the self-characterization sketch. The self-characterization sketch formed an integral part of the study discussed here and is presented in depth as a novel way of addressing the question of how WIL might influence development of graduate identity. The chapter begins by setting out some background to the method in the form of an introduction to PCT, followed by a detailed explanation and illustration of the application and analysis of self-characterization sketches. The main body illustrates the use of the method with a ‘step-through’ of its application in the example study. The chapter closes with a reflection on the usefulness of the method and ideas for possible further developments.

Using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities  207

DESCRIPTION OF SELF-CHARACTERIZATION SKETCHES Context for the Method: Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory In PCT, views of the world are seen as being unique to the individual, as they are chosen by each of us based on what we think fits best with (or makes sense of) our experiences of it. We predict and explain events as we encounter them through a process of individual construction, changing our understanding and anticipation of ourselves, our world, and our place within it as we do so (Butt, 2008). Kelly’s theory asserts that this is done using our personal constructs, a hierarchical system of bipolar dimensions we use to make sense of what we see. We do this by an active process of construing: creating, testing and amending our construct system. For graduates entering employment for the first time, PCT has been used to explain how disconfirmation of constructs is likely to result in revision and reconstrual of work identity during this transition phase (Fournier, 1996; Fournier & Payne, 1994). This supports the earlier suggestion that as students experience WIL they may go through a process of questioning and changing their views of their personal and work identities. The name given by Kelly to this process of change is ‘constructive alternativism’, meaning that the way people see themselves changes over time depending both on their prior and current experiences and the contexts and environments they participate in. There are an infinite number of alternative ways of construing an event or experience that we might choose from, and our present constructions are always subject to replacement and revision. In a research environment, this situates PCT among constructivist theories (Gergen, 2015), meaning that PCT techniques aim to explore unique sets of individual constructions (Burr, 2015; Gergen, 2015). The methods associated with PCT focus on gaining insights into individually created internal processes of understanding, which can include understanding of identity. Self-characterization sketches are one of a number of methods originally developed by Kelly to help with this understanding of the construction processes of someone else: this is most strongly expressed in the sociality corollary, which states that ‘to the extent that one person construes the construction processes of another he may play a role in a social process involving the other person’ (Kelly, 1955/1991, p. 66). Self-characterization Sketches Perhaps the best known method for exploration of personal constructs is the repertory grid developed by Kelly (1955/1991). There are, however, also a number of more qualitative methods associated with the theory. Some, such as the self-characterization sketches set out here, were explicitly described by Kelly in his original work, while others, such as the Pictor technique (King et al., 2013) or Salmon lines (Salmon, 1988), have been developed from the theory by others. The fundamental description of a self-characterization sketch given by Kelly (1955/1991) is deceptively simple and easy to understand. As a starting point, the participant is invited to produce a short, individual, written description of the self according to very specific instructions. Directed to a fictional ‘Harry Brown’, he sets them out as follows:

208  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations I want you to write a character sketch of Harry Brown, just as if he were the principal character in a play. Write it as it might be written by a friend who knew him very intimately and very sympathetically, perhaps better than anyone ever really could know him. Be sure to write it in the third person. For example, start out by saying, ‘Harry Brown is…’. (Kelly, 1955/1991, p. 242, original emphasis)

Through these instructions, the writer is encouraged to be more open and reflective than they might be otherwise. Once the sketch has been completed, Kelly (1955/1991) also provided detailed instructions for analysis, with the aim of providing insights into the participants ‘truth’ about themselves and their ‘story’ (Banister et al., 1994). The protocol for the analysis is set out in Table 15.1. This is used after an initial in-depth reading of the account, taking a ‘credulous approach’, which means adopting an open and accepting attitude in order to understand how the person experiences the world. What is said is considered carefully, and emerging constructs or areas for deeper exploration with the participant are identified tentatively in this activity. Among the further stages of analysis are ‘observation of sequence and transition’, comparing and contrasting any stories that may appear in the sketch, and ‘shifting emphasis’, taking each sentence and dividing it into units, then changing the emphasis when reading from line to line to see if further possible meanings and constructs emerge. Through this in-depth exploration of the sketch, the researcher builds up their own constructs about the participant and their view of themselves. In the example discussed here, these perceived insights were then explored with the author of the sketch in an interview, prompting further discussion and elicitation of constructs. Table 15.1

Kelly’s protocol for analysis of self-characterization sketches

Protocol Step

Description

Observation of sequence and transition

What ‘stories’ appear in the sketch? How do they compare and contrast? Can any movement be seen in the way the author describes themself?

Observation of organization

Often the first sentence will represent a ‘safe’ place for the author, something they are comfortable saying about themselves (perhaps a core construct). The final sentence may be more speculative and forward-looking to where they hope to be in future

Reflection against context

Look at each sentence in the context of the others. Does thinking about the sketch in this way lead to any other insights?

Collation of terms

Look for terms that are similar/repeated – might these contribute to constructs that are not yet clearly articulated?

Shifting emphasis

Reread the sketch, dividing each sentence into units, placing emphasis on different parts each time. Does this lead to any alternative possible interpretations of what is being said?

Analysis of contextual areas invoked by

What broad topics does the respondent talk about? These may be where they feel able

the protocol

to make changes

Thematic analysis

Look for the reasons for or understanding of why something has happened that the respondent gives. For example, is it influenced by their actions, by someone else’s actions, by ‘fate’?

Dimensional analysis

Look for similarities and differences in the protocol. What are the ‘dichotomized alternatives’ (Crittenden & Ashkar, 2011, p. 117)?

Restatement of argument

Paraphrase the respondent’s point of view to reinforce the sociality corollary, thinking about how well you understand their construction processes

Using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities  209

ILLUSTRATION OF THE USE OF SELF-CHARACTERIZATION SKETCHES Overview of the Research Process Self-characterization sketches were used as part of a multiple method longitudinal study of a group of students across the course of their degree studies. Three stages of data collection were carried out. Initially, first-year students from nine different programmes at two UK universities were surveyed, with the programmes chosen carefully to ensure a range of WIL models were included. Some had highly integrated work placements, with periods of work experience taking place across three years of the undergraduate degree (e.g., social work); others were four-year degrees incorporating a ‘sandwich placement’ where the third year of a four-year degree could be spent working (e.g., business studies); and a third type had a credit-bearing module in the curriculum incorporating shorter blocks of work experience over the academic year (e.g., journalism). Students who did not have the opportunity to undertake any WIL at all were not included. The initial data collection was exploratory and drew on established literature about the skills and characteristics valued by employers. The intention was to gain broad insights into the participants’ backgrounds and views of themselves and their current skills at work at an early stage in their studies. Six hundred and forty-four questionnaires were distributed, and 172 responses or partial responses were received (26.7 per cent). As part of the questionnaire, participants were also asked to indicate if they would be willing to take part in further research, and 78 agreed to consider this. Analysis of the survey data suggested that there was some considerable diversity in the way cohorts of first-year students perceived themselves and their skills at work. Social work students seemed to have markedly ‘different’ views from the other groups in the way they rated themselves. This led to emphasis being placed on exploring identity in the second and third stages of the study, which were designed to allow more in-depth exploration of self-perceptions. It was at these later stages that the self-characterization tool was used. All 78 participants who had expressed interest in further participation were contacted again towards the end of their second year of studies and formally invited to join the study. Fifteen students from social work, business and journalism degrees subsequently did so. These self-selected participants were first asked to write a short sketch describing themselves in a work role, with Kelly’s instructions adapted slightly to suit this specific scenario. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with the same participants to further explore constructs of identity emerging from the sketches. It was not possible to carry out full analysis in advance of the interviews due to the short time that elapsed between the sketch being returned and the interview date; however, as a minimum, the first step, an in-depth reading of the sketch and identification of possible emerging constructs, was carried out and provided a basis for discussion. A step-through of the complete process of data collection and analysis undertaken for one participant is presented here with an emphasis on how the self-characterization sketch contributed to gaining an understanding of the participant’s views of their work identity. A shortened version of the resulting case study based on the sketches and interviews follows.

210  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Data Collection with Connor Connor was studying business management. As explained above, he completed the questionnaire in his first year and was then invited to complete a self-characterization sketch and follow-up interview in the second year. The instructions supplied to participants were changed slightly from Kelly’s original guidance to remove the gender-specific language from the instructions (use of ‘he’ and ‘him’) and to focus the sketch more clearly on how the author would describe themselves at work. The instructions supplied to all of the participants were as follows: Here is what I would like you to do: Write a character sketch of [your name] as you think of or imagine yourself in a work role, ideally in the type of role you think you would like to take up after graduation (e.g., social worker, journalist, policy expert, manager, physiotherapist). Write just as if you are the central character in a play. Write it as it might be written by a friend who knows you very intimately and very sympathetically, perhaps better than anyone ever really could know you. Be sure to write it in the third person. For example, start out by saying ‘[your name] as a [social worker, journalist, policy expert, manager, physiotherapist etc.] is…’.

Connor chose to describe himself as a ‘Sales Manager’, and the full text he sent in response to the invitation (including his typographical errors and spelling mistakes) is given below: Connor as Sales Manager is a manager who fellow workers would enjoy being around and working for. Connor would follow the motto of work hard play hard. Connor would often set targets to his staff who when they complete receive extra benefits such as time and extra pay. Often when Connor comes into the office in the morning he would spend time speaking to all his staff and see how their weekend was and chat about non work related issues before setting them weekly targets he would like them to achieve. As the week goes on Connor would increase contact with the staff they have in order to see how they are doing and if there was anything he could help them with. Connor as a keen sportsman would often speak to staff about sports and try to organize as many out of office activities which the staff would participate in as Connor likes to see his staff as more of friends than just staff members. Connor would always be in the office earliest when working and try to get things organized and set up before staff came in so that less time would be wasted and staff would know exactly what was required from them selves [sic] throughout the week. Connor would usually leave the office earliest through the week as he feels that due to him being first in and if he is on top of his workload then he has the right to leave slightly early as he enjoys spending time with family and friends through out [sic] the week. Connor would be known to his staff as being a jokey friendly character that often likes to play pranks and have a laugh with his team. Connor enjoys knowing that he has made someone at least smile and laugh at least once in the day. It would be very rare for Connor to come into work upset or down hearted [sic], as he always seems to be happy and enjoying life to the full. One [sic] weekends Connor often goes to bars and nightclubs with his friends in order to chill out. He enjoys more relaxing things during the weekend in order to be refreshed for the week ahead of him. Another trait of Connor’s that people enjoy spending time with him for is that he is caring and never would ask his staff to do something that he himself wouldn’t be comfortable doing. One of Connor’s weaknesses however was that Connor would sometimes be to [sic] laid back and naïve to some members of staff therefore offering them liberties that they may not deserve.

This short 433-word description provided a number of areas to explore with Connor in the follow-up interview. In line with Kelly’s protocol, the first step was to read through the account taking a ‘credulous approach’ and to highlight anything that seemed to point towards construal of work identity, and this was done before the interview took place. At this point,

Using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities  211 the first impression noted was that there appeared to be two relatively distinct conflicting areas within the sketch. On one hand, Connor seemed to want to be seen as fun and engaging to people who worked for him, while on the other he had a concern for target setting and efficiency. Terms such as ‘enjoy being around’, ‘helpful’ and ‘will not ask for things he wouldn’t do himself’ were highlighted and tentatively recorded as indicating constructs around the first category, while ‘organized’, ‘to [sic] laid back’ and ‘setting them weekly targets’ were thought to belong more broadly in the second category. These two distinct areas and the individual highlighted terms provided areas for elicitation of bipolar constructs in the interview. In some cases, this was done through questions designed to identify the opposite pole of a construct (for example, asking Connor how he might describe a manager who did not ‘get things organized’ to which he said someone who is ‘chaotic’) and in others by ‘laddering’ (for example, asking him if he could expand on how a manager who was ‘laid back and naïve’ might behave or be seen by others). Questions were also asked about how Connor would categorize himself now in terms of the bipolar constructs (i.e., which end he felt closer to; for example, was he someone who ‘gets things organized’ or someone who is ‘chaotic’?), where he would place himself in the past, and where he expected to be in future. In this way, some information about how Connor saw his work identity in terms of the constructs was brought out, and ideas about what had led to his ideas or had promoted change in his views were also explored. After the interview, the sketch was further analysed in depth using Kelly’s protocol as set out above. Some of the notes made at this stage in the process are presented in Table 15.2 to illustrate the insights gained. Table 15.2

Sample of analysis notes made, based on Kelly’s protocol, Sketch 1

Protocol Step Observation of sequence and transition

Extract from Researcher’s Analysis Notes He moves between describing someone who staff would ‘enjoy being around’ and then straight away saying he would set targets that would be rewarded when they were met. Is there something of a ‘benevolent dictator’ described here?

Observation of organization

First sentence – identifies himself as a ‘Sales Manager’, although in the interview he wasn’t entirely sure about a career path. Is ‘enjoy being around’ part of the description about how he sees his workplace identity now – is this the characteristic he feels most comfortable with at present? His final sentence expresses concern that people will take advantage of him – suggesting that he knows he can’t be the jolly employer he would perhaps want to be? This is the only place where he implies there may be some conflict, suggesting he knows his two personas may be in conflict but finds it hard to say this

Reflection against context

He wants people to enjoy being around him and wants his employees to see him as a friend and someone who is good to work with. What this seems to mean in practice is that his staff are rewarded for doing good work, and the social relationship leads to this happening as they want to please him. On the other hand, things should be organized, people should know what is expected of them and time shouldn’t be wasted – so the social interaction has a purpose. Does he want everyone to be happy or to get results? He relaxes with his friends, not people from work – he needs to get away from work to relax and be ‘refreshed’

212  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Protocol Step

Extract from Researcher’s Analysis Notes

Collation of terms

‘Targets’ and staff ‘knowing what is required’ appears in a few places, but he doesn’t say much about what that means to him in practice or on a personal level. It is mentioned, but then he goes back to talking about being the ‘fun’ boss who makes everyone happy when he is actually describing himself. Does this suggest it is something he is not comfortable with but knows it is necessary (or is it just unfamiliarity)? There is more repetition of terms around being friendly, happy and caring and that people like to be around him – a desire to be liked comes through. If this were to be two poles of a construct, perhaps being popular vs being target driven?

Shifting emphasis

Example section: ‘As the week goes on Connor would increase contact with the staff they have in order to see how they are doing and if there was anything he could help them with’ (emphasis added) This feels quite paternalistic – he is giving out his time (what if the staff have a problem, is it up to them to come to him or to wait for him to approach them?). Again, an element of him dispensing favours – anything he can do to help them, not worded as finding out problems or solving issues. Where is the upwards reporting relationship for him in this scenario? ‘Connor would always be in the office earliest when working and try to get things organized and set up before staff came in so that less time would be wasted and staff would know exactly what was required from them selves [sic] throughout the week’ (emphasis added) Contrast between ‘often’ and ‘always’ – often trying to organize things related to others but when it comes to himself he is ‘always’ in the office first. Setting things up for others comes through here – whether that be social or work related. Facilitating others’ working efficiently, making sure they know ‘exactly’ what is needed so no ambiguity. ‘It would be very rare for Connor to come into work upset or down hearted [sic], as he always seems to be happy and enjoying life to the full’ (emphasis added) ‘Seems’ to be happy – is this about what he demonstrates at work rather than what is actually going on with him underneath?

Analysis of contextual areas invoked by

He talks about seen as being the ‘fun boss’ who everyone likes and gets on with, the one

the protocol

who organizes social (sports) events and who is involved with his team. Is this more about how he is perceived or how he genuinely is – ‘he is caring’ so for him this seems to come from genuine belief rather than a cynical attempt to use it to make people work harder In contrast, there is a target/reward culture to ensure results. He communicates what he expects to happen, and hands out treats if his expectations are met He recognizes that there may be some conflict between who he wants to be (everyone’s friend) and the possibility that people will take advantage of this – perhaps something he needs to work on/resolve to find the balance

Thematic analysis

He is very much in charge of other people’s work experience (it is not clear who influences his own working environment – no mention of his own reporting lines or relationships; it’s all about the people who work for him). He can make the work environment ‘fun’ and sociable, and can help people to build good relationships. He can also pass out rewards when he wants to – this is in his power The only mention of other people’s actions having an effect is in his concern that they may take advantage of him – while he wants to be the person acting from motives of creating a good working environment, others may see him as a ‘soft touch’ who can be taken advantage of

Using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities  213 Protocol Step

Extract from Researcher’s Analysis Notes

Dimensional analysis

He wants to be seen as a caring manager who is concerned to make sure his staff are happy at work, but may just be seen as someone who can be taken advantage of instead. He wants to be liked and for people to work for him and towards meeting his goals because of this, but he needs to set targets and give rewards, presumably this also means withholding rewards from staff who don’t perform (punishing them?)

Restatement of argument

He manages by making a good, fun work environment for the people he manages. He looks after them, sets clear goals and targets and helps them when they need it. He is fair (doesn’t ask them to do anything he wouldn’t do himself) and, as a consequence, they respect him and want to please him

As can be seen from this, a sketch does not have to be long or detailed to provide a number of possible insights and interpretations of how someone sees themselves. In this case, as the principal interest was in looking at what might promote changes in identity over time, the same process was followed for a further stage of data collection. For Connor, this took place approximately 16 months after Sketch 1 was completed as he undertook a sandwich placement in his third year at university. The second sketch he completed, and its analysis, is not given in full here, but it did contain a number of similarities to the first one. First impressions of this second sketch before interview were that there was a continuing emphasis on a wish to be popular and liked. There was perhaps more in the later sketch about seeing himself as someone who leads by example, ‘puts his staff first’ and ‘doesn’t feel above them’, because he himself ‘is able to do all different jobs’. While there is still mention of ‘reward’ and ‘incentive’, this did not seem quite as strong as in Sketch 1. Again, these ideas were taken forward for discussion in an interview with Connor, allowing for more exploration of the way he saw himself. The full analysis of both sets of data was then used to compile individual case studies of each of the participants. The next section shows a summarized version of the result for Connor. While these case studies drew principally on the sketches, they also incorporated some materials from the interviews, which added depth or explained the meaning of some of the things which had been said. The interviews also allowed for reflexive checking that the analyst’s reading of the sketch resonated with the writer and made sense to them. Connor’s Work Identity Connor’s placement experience seemed to confirm his sense of work identity, meaning that, in many ways, his story illustrated the potential for deep-rooted construal of identity to remain unchanged. Exploring what he had written in the first sketch, it was clear that Connor’s previous work experiences had had a very strong influence on how he saw his identity as a manager of others and his construal of what the ‘ideal manager’ might look like. There seemed to be strong identification of what social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1975; Turner & Reynolds, 2012) would classify as his preferred ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’. This was seen in his movement between describing himself as someone who would be fun to be around, who would see his staff as ‘more of friends than just staff members’ (Sketch 1) and as someone who would set targets and hand out rewards. There seemed to be some conflict: he wanted people to enjoy being around him and wanted his employees to see him as a friend and someone who was good to work with. However, what this seemed to mean to him in practice was that his staff would be rewarded for doing good work and the social relationship (and the

214  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations fact they were all part of the same in-group) would naturally lead to this happening. Connor explained in the interview that his views were very much influenced by a previous job he had held, where he had a very good relationship with the owner of a shop he worked in but he also recognized that this may not be the way that everyone else sees things. Although he wanted to be liked by his employees, he was concerned that this may lead to him being ‘to [sic] laid back and naïve to some members of staff therefore offering them liberties that they may not deserve’ (Sketch 1). There was a hint that he recognized that the style he prefers, where everyone he worked with was in the ‘in-group’, may not be practical. Further influences from his previous work experience also informed ideas about the identity he would have liked to claim for himself. He contrasted the way he saw his boss in the shop with other experiences he had working on a building site, making very clear references to management behaviours he had seen in both situations, and identifying those he had learned from and would adopt (or not) as part of his own professional behaviours. In particular, being prepared to do the same work as everyone else was important to him in establishing credibility, and in describing himself he said that ‘he is caring and never would ask his staff to do something that he himself wouldn’t be comfortable doing’ (Sketch 1). This contrasts with his memories of the building site work: [S]ometimes we got asked to do things I didn’t really want to do, and it was as if the other people weren’t doing it, they were just giving it to us to do. And I hated that, like I lost all motivation for a while, and we worked with a bit of grudge and so I probably didn’t work my best. (Interview 1)

During his sandwich year, Connor worked as a trainee manager in a hospitality setting. Surprisingly, however, it seemed that minimal change took place in Connor’s construal of his ideal work identity after this experience. He still saw himself as a manager who ‘puts his staff first’ (Sketch 2). This remained a core part of construal of his work identity with a very strong desire to be liked and respected by the people that he managed. It seemed that his identity was still rooted in having a large in-group. This would come with a lot of emotional investment in others’ happiness: he ‘hates upsetting people as he always feels guilty thinking that someone may go home feeling they are useless or unwanted’ (Sketch 2). Ideas of reward and incentive were not mentioned until the very end of the final-year interview, and there was also some reluctance to talk about disciplinary matters. He would rather avoid conflict, sorting out problems with ‘informal’ methods (repeated word, Sketch 2) and he seemed to expect that he would be given the same level of respect he offered to his staff and that they would reciprocate his concerns to avoid letting him down. He wanted everyone to leave work ‘holding no grudges against himself or the organization Connor works for’ (Sketch 2). In both sketches he seemed to expect that by demonstrating this competence he would gain respect: he ‘has not just walked his way into a more senior role without getting “his hands dirty” in the day-to-day roles first’ (Sketch 2). In the second interview, it became clearer that the placement had reinforced his already existing worldview: Connor had spent periods of time working in many different areas of the business and therefore felt he had ‘earned’ his place as a manager. This meant that when he was operating in a management role he felt he had gained the respect of the people he was supervising – a fundamental part of his work identity.

Using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities  215

CRITICAL EVALUATION Benefits of Self-characterization Sketches in Exploring Identity The findings and this discussion have demonstrated that using self-characterization sketches as a research tool can be used to provide valuable insights into a participant’s construal of their work identity. This method was innovative in that it allowed us to get an initial insight into the participant’s worldview without asking specific questions to begin the discussion. Given the main researcher was employed at one of the universities used in the study this ‘arm’s length’ data collection was also felt to partly mitigate the possibility of participants giving socially desirable answers influenced by their construal of the researcher. While the participant’s construing of the research setting could have been influenced by the way they were asked to write or by their perceptions of the reasoning for the request and what they thought they were ‘expected’ to say, this method allowed them freedom to speak in their own terms about what they felt was important in a way that interviews may not have done. In PCT terms, this demonstrates the impact of the sociality corollary: allowing the researcher a glimpse into the construal of the participant as they would describe it, in their own terms. The sketches helped us to gain understanding of our participants’ constructs, and therefore indicated areas for further exploration in the interviews that followed. Without these, we would almost certainly not have considered some of the areas that were uncovered. Specifically, it is doubtful that we would have realized that Connor’s view of himself (what PCT would categorize as his core constructs) remained relatively unchanged. Kelly’s (1955/1991) protocol for analysing the sketches through multiple readings from different perspectives proved extremely valuable in drawing out alternative possible meanings that may not have been considered otherwise, and also in reinforcing some of the findings. As can be seen in the analysis notes, some of the emerging ideas around Connor’s identity were repeated or resonated across the different readings, while others appeared only fleetingly: this gave us valuable insights into which might be the ‘core’ constructs for Connor. Limitations of the Method Since self-characterization sketches were developed by Kelly (1955/1991) for use in a therapeutic sphere, their focus remains on understanding and articulating the participant’s construal of their world. In this research, the method was adapted slightly with the instructions changed to reflect the interest in exploring work identity and while the main aim in doing so was achieved there are inevitably some points which, with the benefit of hindsight, might have been done differently. The original aims of the technique meant that the instructions as designed were intended to draw the writer of the sketch towards more positive than negative language: for example, asking them to write ‘as it might be written by a friend who knows you very intimately and very sympathetically’. With the minimal adaptations applied here, this tended to mean that the descriptions of the self found in the sketches were almost all positive, and there was little negative content to balance this. While this is not visible in Connor’s sketches, some participants seemed to almost treat the writing like a job application, emphasizing only their positive attributes. Although it was possible to elicit the opposite poles of a number of these emerging

216  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations constructs, which in many cases were more negative, it would have been useful to consider the instructions given and to develop them further to gain a more balanced insight. Timing of the sketch production was also an issue that impacted on the research. Sketches were often returned only shortly before the interview took place. This meant only one in-depth reading and identification of possible constructs was possible before speaking to participants. Ideally, more analysis would have been carried out before the interview, as conducting it afterwards meant that the researcher’s reading of what was written will inevitably have been reconstrued after discussion with the participants. If the work were to be repeated, some thought would be given to managing timing between sketch completion and interviews to allow analysis to take place as two separate stages.

REFERENCES Banister, P., Burman, E., Parker, I., Taylor, M., & Tindall, C. (1994). Qualitative methods in psychology: A research guide. The Open University Press. Brooks, R., & Youngson, P. L. (2016). Undergraduate work placements: An analysis of the effects on career progression. Studies in Higher Education, 41(9), 1563–1578. Burnett, K. (2017, September 18). Do UK universities provide value for money? Times Higher Education. Burr, V. (2015). Social constructionism (3rd ed.). Routledge. Butt, T. (2008). George Kelly: The psychology of personal constructs. Palgrave Macmillan. Butt, T., & Burr, V. (2004). Invitation to personal construct psychology (2nd ed.). Whurr. Cranmer, S. (2006). Enhancing graduate employability: Best intentions and mixed outcomes. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 169–184. Crittenden, N., & Ashkar, C. (2011). The self-characterization technique: Uses, analysis and elaboration. In P. Caputi, L. L. Viney, B. M. Walker & N. Crittenden (Eds.), Personal construct methodology (pp. 109–128). Wiley. Effeney, G. (2020). Risk in work integrated learning: A stakeholder centric model for higher education. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 42(4), 388–403. Fournier, V. (1996). Cognitive maps in the analysis of personal change during work role transition. British Journal of Management, 7(1), 87–105. Fournier, V., & Payne, R. (1994). Change in self construction during the transition from university to employment: A personal construct psychology approach. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 67(4), 297–314. Freudenberg, B., Brimble, M., & Cameron, C. (2010). Where there is a WIL there is a way. Higher Education Research & Development, 29(5), 575–588. Gergen, K. J. (2015). An invitation to social construction (3rd ed.). SAGE. Hallier, J., & Summers, J. (2011). Dilemmas and outcomes of professional identity construction among students of human resource management. Human Resource Management Journal, 21(2), 204–219. Helmich, E., Derksen, E., Prevoo, M., Laan, R., Bolhuis, S., & Koopmans, R. (2010). Medical students’ professional identity development in an early nursing attachment. Medical Education, 44(7), 674–682. Holmes, L. (2013a). Competing perspectives on graduate employability: Possession, position or process? Studies in Higher Education, 38(4), 538–554. Holmes, L. (2013b). Realist and relational perspectives on graduate identity and employability: A response to Hinchliffe and Jolly. British Educational Research Journal, 39(6), 1044–1059. Holmes, L. (2015). Becoming a graduate: The warranting of an emergent identity. Education + Training, 57(2), 219–238. Jackson, D. (2014). Employability skill development in work-integrated learning: Barriers and best practice. Studies in Higher Education, 40(2), 350–367. Jungert, T. (2011). Social identities among engineering students and through their transition to work: A longitudinal study. Studies in Higher Education, 38(1), 39–52.

Using self-characterization sketches as an innovative method to explore work identities  217 Kelly, G. (1991). The psychology of personal constructs: Volume one: Theory and personality. Routledge (Original work published 1955). King, N., Bravington, A., Brooks, J., Hardy, B., Melvin, J., & Wilde, D. (2013). The Pictor technique: A method for exploring the experience of collaborative working. Qualitative Health Research, 23(8), 1138–1152. Lamote, C., & Engels, N. (2010). The development of student teachers’ professional identity. European Journal of Teacher Education, 33(1), 3–18. Reddy, P., & Moores, E. (2006). Measuring the benefits of a psychology placement year. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(5), 551–567. Salmon, P. (1988). Psychology for teachers: An alternative approach. Hutchinson Education. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole Pub. Co. Tomlinson, M. (2018). Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market. Higher Education, 75(4), 711–727. Turner, J. C. (1975). Social comparison and social identity: Some prospects for intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 5(1), 1–34. Turner, J. C., & Reynolds, K. J. (2012). Self-categorization theory. In P. A. van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology: Volume 2 (pp. 399–417). SAGE. Vähäsantanen, K., Hökkä, P., Eteläpelto, A., Rasku-Puttonen, H., & Littleton, K. (2008). Teachers’ professional identity negotiations in two different work organisations. Vocations and Learning, 1(2), 131–148. Walsh, K., & Gordon, J. R. (2008). Creating an individual work identity. Human Resource Management Review, 18, 46–61. Weaver, R., Peters, K., Koch, J., & Wilson, I. (2011). ‘Part of the team’: Professional identity and social exclusivity in medical students. Medical Education, 45(12), 1220–1229. Wilkins, C., Busher, H., Kakos, M., Mohamed, C., & Smith, J. (2011). Crossing borders: New teachers co-constructing professional identity in performative times. Professional Development in Education, 38(1), 65–77.

16. A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work Christina Gossayn, Anne Crafford and Arien Strasheim

INTRODUCTION The human brain is made up of conscious and unconscious processes that work together to make sense of a person’s world (Newell & Shanks, 2014). To date, identity studies have focused predominantly on mental processes at a conscious level, leaving unconscious processes under-researched (Devos & Banaji, 2003; Hoare, 2013; Newell & Shanks, 2014). Of the 11 million bits of information received every second, the conscious mind can process only 40 per second (DiSalvo, 2013). This suggests that the majority of brain processes happen unconsciously, impacting our decisions and behaviour (Newell & Shanks, 2014). By ignoring them, we may be missing out on important information in many domains of research (Bargh & Morsella, 2008; Devos & Banaji, 2003). Graziano and Kastner (2011) propose that conscious attention happens in full awareness when the brain concentrates all its resources on processing information. Conversely, Bargh (2007, p. 1) defines the unconscious mind as ‘those [thoughts] of which we tend to be unaware, that occur without our intention or consent, yet influence us on a daily basis in profound ways’. Based on these unconscious mental processes, Greenwald and Banaji (1995) propose the concept of implicit social cognition that describes thoughts, views and opinions that transpire beyond conscious control and that underpin attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, self-esteem and self-efficacy. The aim of this chapter is to propose, within the context of a case study design, a combination of qualitative data-gathering methods that enable the study of unconscious processes in interaction with conscious processing to explore the construal of woman leader identity. Implicit stereotypes based on the implicit biases1 we hold develop over the span of one’s lifetime. In the case of a woman leader, these stereotypes may hamper her ability to grant and accept a leader identity. The International Labour Organization (2015, p. 3) defines unconscious gender bias as ‘an unintentional and automatic mental association based on gender, stemming from traditions, norms, values, culture and/or experience. Automatic associations feed into decision-making, enabling a quick assessment of an individual according to gender and gender stereotypes’. Unconscious bias will impact whether a woman leader claims, accepts or grants a leader identity, impacting her decision to take on a leadership role or grant it to another whom she perceives to better fit her prototype of a leader (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). Unconscious and conscious gender stereotypes not only affect how others assess a woman’s capability as a leader, but also impact the way in which a woman leader views herself, her perception of how others view her, her motivation toward a leadership role, and ultimately her success as a leader (Davies et al., 2005; Hoyt & Blascovich, 2007; Hoyt & Murphy, 2016; Saint-Michel, 2018; Tabassum & Nayak, 2021). Using the DeRue and Ashford (2010) model of leader identity construction, construal takes place at three levels: individual, relational and 218

A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work  219 collective. Our method explores the impact of unconscious gender bias at all three of these levels. The contribution of the suggested method is therefore to illustrate the impact of unconscious gender bias on the identity work of women leaders as evident in the roles they choose or choose not to claim; in how this impacts those around them at a relational level and the organization as a whole at the collective level; and in who grants or declines her leader identity at all three levels. Using an example of a woman leader,2 the chapter illustrates a combination of qualitative methods – namely, semi-structured interviews, the repertory grid technique (RGT), a vignette and the implicit association test (IAT).3 The outline of the chapter covers key concepts of the mixed qualitative method research design, followed by the methodology followed in this design. This is concluded by an example of how the method was applied, and a critical evaluation of the methodology.

DESCRIPTION We used an interpretive case study design with multiple methods to gather data to access information at conscious and unconscious levels. The case study was considered appropriate as it is ideal for studying social processes such as identity work (Hartley, 2004). Moreover, identity work is dependent on the context, to which case study design pays particular attention (Hartley, 2004). The case chosen for the study was a financial institution (which we call Legacy Finance, or Legacy) that started up in South Africa and is currently operating internationally. We included 13 culturally diverse women from various areas/business units in senior to executive leader positions with over seven years of leadership experience. Three semi-structured interviews (Adams, 2015; Edwards & Holland, 2013) were used, with the second interview combined with the RGT and the third with the vignette, and we concluded with the IAT. All three semi-structured interviews used open-ended questions to explore how the participant developed her particular leader identity (Interview 1); her view of leadership currently on three levels of construal (Interview 2); and how conscious and unconscious biases have played out in her experience and how she navigated them (Interview 3). To reduce the risk of contaminating the participants’ responses around unconscious bias, the order of the data collection was crucial. The data was collected in the order shown in Table 16.1, detailing the stage at which we tried to elicit conscious or conscious processes. Data was collected over a period of three months, with the methods triangulated to supplement and augment the dependability and credibility of the data. Personal Construct Theory and RGT Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory (PCT) is a personal psychological theory that views each person who anticipates and processes events as a bipolar construct at a unique and personal level (Horley, 2012; Kelly, 2017). PCT admits an objective reality in a real world but acknowledges that we as individuals only know the reality through events and our personal encounters. Individuals extract meaning from these events by using and prioritizing their own individual personal constructs, which can be changed or discarded as events unfold and new experiences shape them. This suggests that PCT is a dynamic theory that considers the nature of life more in its view of the future rather than the past. In this view, persons differ in how

220  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Table 16.1

Summary of the research methods

Method

Description

Semi-structured Interview The first semi-structured interview was to inquire about the participant’s earlier life, how she sees the 1 (conscious)

world and herself and from where her views of leadership stem. It also explored her work history and experiences of bias, working with conscious thought, not yet influenced by an unconscious measure: ‘Tell me about your story, growing up, schooling, work roles, family life etc.?’

RGT and Semi-structured

This method is embedded in a second semi-structured interview and is used to understand the

Interview 2 (unconscious

individual participant’s view of leadership from a conscious and unconscious perspective on all three

and conscious)

levels of leader identity construal through the interview questions and the RGT: ‘Do you feel supported and accepted by colleagues and the organization in your leadership role?’

Vignette and

Vignettes bring to the surface unconscious identity work and are embedded within a third

Semi-structured Interview semi-structured interview that explores conscious and unconscious leader identity and consolidates all 3 (unconscious)

the information acquired. It included questions around experienced and perceived differences between women and men leaders, as well as unfair practices in the organization, if any: ‘Are women rewarded and accepted as leaders in the same way that men are?’

IAT (unconscious)

This is a test used to detect the degree of implicit gender bias the participant holds towards women in leadership. It is included towards the end to avoid giving the participants too much information about unconscious bias too early in the process and to avoid influencing their interview data

they evaluate past events and in the systems they use to anticipate future events. In line with PCT, Kelly (1955) developed the RGT method to operationalize the idea of individuals using bipolar constructs and making sense of future responses to events by exploring similarities and differences in the content and structure of subjective meanings (Bell, 1988). The RGT helps to surface, organize and prioritize individual constructions since the schemata are often not directly accessible to the rater (Marsden & Littler, 2000). The first semi-structured interview was followed by the RGT, which was embedded in the second structured interview process (Burr et al., 2014). This method was used to elicit the unconscious and conscious schemata that participants hold around leadership and gender. The RGT uses a bipolar scale with two opposing extremes as response categories to illustrate the bilateral nature of the construct (for example, assertive versus communal). Further to the constructs, the RGT uses ‘elements’ that are events or ideas or ‘objects’ that are conceptualized through the construct. The RGT is used to draw out the underlying/triggering constructs that individuals use to construe the world and influence the decisions they make at conscious and unconscious levels (Kelly, 1955; Rogers & Ryals, 2007). Normally, the RGT method is flexible in allowing participants to generate the elements on their own, but for the purpose of this study the elements were predetermined to enable the researcher to explore themes across participants. Guided by levels of construal identified in the theoretical framework of DeRue and Ashford (2010), the elements chosen were, ‘me as a leader currently’, ‘me as an ideal leader’, ‘ideal man leader’, ‘ideal woman leader’, ‘my subordinate’s ideal leader’ and ‘my organization’s ideal leader’. Participants were asked to select a combination of three of these elements and then demonstrate which two they perceived as similar and which one as different, and why (e.g., ‘me as a leader currently’ is different from ‘ideal man leader’ and ‘organization’s ideal leader’). After the interview, the participants were asked to rate each element (described in the previous paragraph) in respect of the constructs (e.g., aggressive leader style vs nurturing leader style) anchoring each continuum. The rating was done on a six-point scale, with 1 being most like the construct on the left (Pole 1 in Table 16.2) and 6 being most like the construct on the right

A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work  221 Table 16.2 Pole 1

Example of an individual construct completed in the repertory grid technique by Maria Young Me As

Me As My

Competent

Competent

My Subordinate’s My

Leader

Ideal Leader

Man Leader

Woman

Ideal Leader

1

1

2

Ideal Leader

Leader

Currently Equitably

3

Pole 2

Organization’s

1

2

Inequitably

treated and

treated and

accepted as

accepted as

a leader

a leader

(Pole 2 in Table 16.2). This numerical rating illustrated how the participant viewed each of the elements with respect to the constructs, purely as a gauge to see where on the continuum the participant lay. The rating figures do not carry any inherent meaning but allow the participants to position elements relative to one another on the construct dimensions, providing a richer picture of their construct system (Marsden & Littler, 2000). Table 16.2 provides a visual depiction of one construct that was completed by Maria Young for each of the six elements. Vignette For the third interview a vignette was used. The participants had to respond to a simulated real-life event in cartoon format (Jenkins et al., 2010). Vignettes are a projective technique that may include various types of materials such as short stories, films, pictures or photographs that stimulate participants to speak about the subject matter under investigation (Gouraly et al., 2014; Törrönen, 2002). The vignette may be fictional scenarios (De Gouveia et al., 2005; Jenkins et al., 2010), simulations of real-life events (Wilks, 2004) or real-life stories. Törrönen (2002) suggests three ways of using stimulus texts: as clues, microcosms and provokers. The cartoon used in this instance most closely resembled the stimulus as a microcosm and provoker. The stimulus as microcosm encourages participants to ‘compare their worlds and identity positions against those of the stimulus objects’ while the text as provoker uses cultural products to elicit established meanings, conventions and practices (Törrönen, 2002, p. 343). Like all methods, vignettes are not without their challenges, and Sampson and Johannessen (2020) highlight some of them. There are analytic challenges, especially distinguishing between participants’ views and those of the fictional others in the vignettes, whose own views could be an expression of social norms rather than the participants’ own beliefs and values. Other challenges include the possible distance between the imagined scenario and the social reality of the interviewee. As part of the final semi-structured interview, participants were faced with a gender-related cartoon that acted as a projective technique (Jenkins et al., 2010) to guide the discussion and explore their reasoning around the contents of the cartoon. In summary, the cartoon showed a woman sitting in a chair facing a panel of ten disinterested male interviewers, captioned ‘Describe what you can bring to this company?’. The participant was expected to make use of their experiences, beliefs and attitudes to provide an account of the feelings, thoughts or behaviour they attribute to the different characters in the scenario (Hughes, 1998; Jenkins et al., 2010). This is assumed to provide insight into the participants’ conscious and unconscious values, perceptions, behavioural norms, beliefs and attitudes toward a stimulus/scenario and the meaning attributed to the latter (Bloor & Wood, 2006). The vignettes, through projection,

222  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations provide more information about the unconscious gender biases and the identity work the participants undergo when placing themselves in the scenario depicted. The participants were asked questions aimed at the three levels of construal: 1. What is happening in this image? 2. Describe the thoughts of the interviewee (individual level): a. How would the thoughts of the interviewee differ if the panel behind the table was all male? b. Or if it comprised an equal number of men and women? c. And last, if it incorporated only women? 3. Describe the thoughts of the interviewers (relational level). 4. What type of company is the candidate applying to and what may its culture be like (collective level)? Implicit Association Test Following the vignette, the IAT was used to gather data on whether the participant holds an unconscious gender bias toward women in leadership and the intensity of this implicit bias. This method was used at the end to avoid triggering the participants with talk of unconscious bias early on in the data collection phase. The IAT assesses the unconscious and automatic associations an individual holds towards two focal constructs by recording the speed and accuracy with which they complete the assessment, thus minimizing the amount of introspection allowed when taking the assessment (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald et al., 1998; Nosek et al., 2006). In this study, the focal constructs were gender and leadership. The fundamental principle of this measure is that individuals should find it simpler to sort two related concepts together if they are evaluatively congruent, thereby minimizing the response times and ensuring greater accuracy when sharing a response key (Brunstein & Schmitt, 2004; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Nosek et al., 2006). The IAT result identifies whether the participant has a ‘low’, ‘moderate’, or ‘high’ unconscious gender bias towards women in leadership. This information, together with the information gathered in the other techniques, creates a well-rounded approach to understanding each woman’s unconscious gender bias.

APPLICATION To provide some context, Maria Young (pseudonym), who is in her late 40s, is the head of a division at Legacy, with about 240 individuals reporting to her. Legacy was chosen as our case study as it is known to espouse a progressive culture and practices with regard to the development of women in leadership, despite the fact that not many women are represented in senior leadership positions. A Brief Background Maria’s first few years were spent in a small coastal town in South Africa in what is considered a traditional, conservative cultural group. Her father was in the Air Force and spent most of the year away from home. Her mother was a homemaker. By her own admission, Maria never

A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work  223 really dreamed of having a family and was more focused on wanting to be successful in her work life. Despite this, she got married early in her life, had her first child before finishing her degree and had two more children. In later years, her husband became a stay-at-home dad, and she became the sole breadwinner. Both of their extended families find this hard to accept, but this works for them as a couple. Maria started her career in structured finance, a male-dominated environment, and moved up the ranks until becoming a regional head of banking. According to the IAT, she has a strong implicit bias against women in leadership, yet despite this has achieved considerable success herself in a male-dominated industry. Although she describes herself as naturally tending towards a masculine style of leadership, she admits to tensions in how she compares as a leader in this environment because of the biases against women with which she has had to contend over the years. In her mind, technical competence and leadership are closely entwined, partly due to the belief that women must ‘earn their stripes’ before being taken seriously in the business. In addition, she is energized by building people and building businesses and turning them around where necessary. In her early-career years, she shadowed one of the consultants who shared her passion for aviation. Under his guidance they built the aviation side of Legacy’s business; once he left she was the default, although unacknowledged, leader of the section. Her awareness of leadership came as a slow realization of what she had achieved when considering the nature and status of the business unit she had helped create. It was at this point that she felt ready to take on new leadership challenges. On approaching leadership to expand her opportunities, she was told she was not ready, that the current business was too reliant on her and that she needed to develop her network. Taking this to heart, she worked on this developmental area and was rewarded with additional leadership roles in two other arms of the business to run in conjunction with the aviation section. As the head of these divisions, she was invited onto Manco, Legacy’s business leadership structure. As the only woman in an all-male leadership team, she was particularly challenged with having ‘to show up like what I think a man at Legacy should show up like’ (Maria). More recently she was asked to head up the regional division of the private banking side of the Legacy group. This context and her own development as a person and leader have meant that for the first time in her career she is able to display a more authentic side in her leadership style, and there is greater congruence between her personal and professional identity. She revels in being able to be most like herself. Demonstrating the Method To illustrate the method, it is helpful to refer to Table 16.3, which provides a summary of the various data types – the introductory interview, the interview with the RGT, the interview with vignette, and finally the IAT – and the insights into conscious and unconscious bias in respect of leadership these brought to light for our exemplar participant. During the first introductory interview, data was gathered about Maria’s family and work history, creating a context for the remainder of the data. From this interview, the three broad phases of her career, as discussed above, were identified, as were various sources of bias. Although this interview was focussed on exploring conscious bias, examples of which are illustrated in Table 16.3, she also mentioned some unconscious biases she had held, which had been highlighted by others or recognized by herself, enabling her to change them. For example, she shared an incident about a woman in her business who had just had a baby. For

224  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Table 16.3

Integration of some findings for Maria Young

Method Interview 1

RGT and Interview 2

Vignette and Interview 3

IAT

Conscious bias

Conscious and unconscious

Conscious and unconscious bias

Unconscious bias

bias Individual level Women are granted leadership Men are more likely to view Women leaders are likely to be if they are technically strong

themselves as natural leaders insecure in a male-dominated

You can be yourself once you

Men are more likely to

environment

have earned your stripes

accept leadership

Technical competence is key to

  High female gender bias

being a woman leader Women are required to ‘fake it till you make it’, which leads to imposter syndrome Relational level

 

Men start with more credibility Men are more likely to Put your head down and work

be treated equitably and

and you will be recognized

accepted as leaders

Women leaders have to shout to

High female gender bias

have their voices heard

Men are more likely to feel confident that they will be accepted as leaders Collective level

  Leaders must respect the culture of High female gender bias

To truly influence and effect

Organizational gender

change, women have to show

practices will treat men more the organization to be accepted

up like men

equitably

In Legacy, leadership should be

Organizational culture and

about managing diversity,

values will favour men

which requires listening

this reason she initially did not grant her the opportunity to head up the structuring of a deal in Africa because she assumed, on behalf of the woman, that she would not want to travel, having a small child. The second interview, using the RGT in a semi-structured format, was important for allowing the participant’s schemata around leadership to emerge, while capturing conscious and unconscious features when asked to complete and rank the constructs against each element in the table. Data around the granting, claiming and accepting of leadership roles at different opportunities became apparent, as did the tensions around them. In line with the DeRue and Ashford (2010) model, this data also provided insightful information on how leadership was viewed at the various levels of construal. In Figure 16.1, we have plotted Maria’s scores on the various elements of the RGT, from left to right on the x-axis, at the individual, relational and collective levels of construal. From Figure 16.1, it follows that the first three dimensions – leader vs follower, assertive vs communal and accepts vs grants leadership – relate to the individual level of leader identity construal. The second two – equitably treated vs inequitably treated and confident about others’ view as leader vs unconfident about others’ view as a leader – relate to the relational level of identity construal. The final two dimensions – organizational gender practices as equitable vs organizational gender practices as inequitable, and culture and values as gender equitable vs culture and values as gender inequitable – relate to the collective level of construal.

A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work  225

Figure 16.1

Repertory grid plot of Maria Young for three elements

For the sake of simplicity, Figure 16.1 does not reflect all the elements included in the scoring. Despite this, the trend with respect to Maria’s views provides insight into her unconscious biases regarding women in leadership. From the RGT, as shown in Figure 16.1, Maria’s scores on the middle solid line with circles reflect a difference from how she viewed herself on all the constructs relative to a competent man leader (the bottom dotted line with squares) and a competent woman leader (the top dotted line with triangles). Maria has a clear bias towards a competent man leader being more easily accepted, more assertive and more likely to accept leadership at an individual level. At a relational level, she sees a competent man leader as being more equitably treated and confident of his position as leader. At a collective level, she also believes that within Legacy’s organizational practices and gender-related culture, a competent man leader experiences the most equitable treatment. Interestingly, her view of herself as leader is located between the scores of competent man and competent woman, with a slight inclination toward men, suggesting that she identifies with neither gender completely. This is in line with her high implicit bias (IAT score) against women in leadership, and perhaps explains why she views herself as more aligned with a masculine leadership style, something she consciously claims in her interview, both as a natural style and as a result of being socialized in a predominantly masculine leadership environment. As indicated in Table 16.3, on the IAT, Maria scored high on unconscious bias towards women in leadership. She had completed this test six years earlier while attending a programme at Harvard Business School and her score had remained unchanged despite all the work the company had been doing about transformation, diversity and inclusion. When referring to her high IAT score she expressed sincere disappointment that it remained unchanged despite her active work at Legacy towards a more inclusive culture for both women and different ethnic groups. Thus, identity may change from time to time, but the IAT tells us that our unconscious biases continue to operate even if we become aware of them; by their nature they happen without awareness/deliberation. It is only once they operate and surface that we can become aware of them. We can construct identity in a moment, but these identity constructions will be framed by the largely fixed unconscious thoughts and biases that govern our decisions

226  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations without our awareness. This process aligns with Kelly’s personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955, 1966/2017). The final interview, structured around the vignette, aimed to bring to the fore conscious and unconscious elements; the questions asked in the vignette were aimed at the three levels of identity construal, as identified earlier. At an individual level, Maria described the interviewee in the vignette as engaged and wanting the job; despite her slight hesitation, she will ‘fake it till she makes it’. She mentioned that she had been in a similar position at a round table with men all around her; she was thus able to empathize with the interviewee, whose projections would be quite similar to her own personal experience. The remainder of this interview was about the challenges of being a woman leader, even in the context of Legacy, a company that claims taking transformation and diversity seriously and prides itself on being committed to equity. She admits that during the latter part of her career, the shift she had to make from an action orientation, which she views as a more masculine style, to a listening orientation, traditionally more feminine, had been difficult. This is consistent with her high IAT score and her RGT scores, where leadership sits more naturally on the masculine side for her; however, she notices the importance of the feminine elements too, and consciously, with effort, brings those into her leadership style. While these unconscious biases do not inhibit her progression in the organization, they do impact her perception of her leader identity and trigger identity tensions and subsequent identity work in many situations. The triangulation of these methods has allowed us to see the influence of unconscious bias and identity work across the data points. In addition, it has increased the reliability of the data collected, as the information can be cross-verified for various data collection phases.

CRITICAL EVALUATION The aim of this chapter is to explain a methodological approach that explores both conscious and unconscious bias and, in particular, implicit gender bias pertaining to the identity construction of female leaders. In this section, we offer a critical assessment of this methodology. Multiple Sources of Data We found that the multiple opportunities for data collection and the use of different tools were adaptable when the data collection did not proceed as initially planned. This allowed for more flexibility; for example, when a participant got stuck on a topic or story, the research design allowed for adjustments to obtain comparable information across all participants. This was helpful when a participant’s interview differed from that of the others in some respects. The interview did not have to be repeated as the triangulation of methods provided other opportunities to obtain the information. Significant Time Requirements A disadvantage of this method is the time required from each participant. Approximately three one-hour interviews were conducted; completing the RGT table and the online IAT increased

A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work  227 the total time to between three and a half to four hours per participant. Although this was quite an ask for busy executives, the topic resonated with the interviewees and they felt quite passionate about it. Several of the women also mentioned at the end of the process that they enjoyed being able to talk about their journey; it gave them an opportunity to reflect. Having two follow-up interviews was beneficial to clarify information or a point where required. The multiple interviewing opportunities allowed sufficient time for a deep and rich discussion of issues related to women in leadership and for spontaneously revisiting critical incidents in their respective journeys. Challenges with the RGT The RGT is not always easy for participants to grasp, but it facilitated a rich discussion that provided additional depth during the interview. We chose to use the same adjectives for all participants to facilitate exploration of the individual, relational and collective levels of leader identity construal. A limitation of this approach is that there may be elements of the participants’ schemata not considered. However, in terms of our research question the schemata was not the topic at hand, which was more about the information around leader identity construal and unconscious gender bias and being able to see how they transpired across the participants. Having the same elements was more useful to our research question, based on the theoretical lens of DeRue and Ashford (2010) that we adopted in this study. We initially planned to complete the RGT tables during the interview, but the interviewees all suggested completing them in their own time. This suggestion was highly beneficial as more rich data could be collected since all the women interviewed were very passionate about the topic. Amount and Complexity of the Data The process generated approximately 40–60 pages of transcribed text for each interview, in addition to data from the other methods. However, the RGT table and IAT scores allowed for more rigour due to triangulation, which permitted independent checks on both conscious and unconscious processes operating in tandem. Working with data sources aimed at exploring the conscious and unconscious mind is complex and required us to constantly revisit the aim of a particular method to remind ourselves of the purpose of the analysis. Given that some of the methods were aimed at accessing both conscious and unconscious processes, we spent time analysing the intention of a text and whether it related to conscious thought or implicit bias and whether it referred specifically to woman leader identity work. In addition to a woman leader’s own bias, the bias of others had to be considered in the analysis. ‘Others’ included role-players in the woman’s work environment: her bosses, peers, subordinates and clients. At a personal level, they included spouses, parents, children, friends and members of social circles outside work. A complication here was that a woman leader contemplating the biases of others does so from the perspective of her own conscious or unconscious biases. An examination of the bias of others is beyond the scope of this chapter, however. We found that having a member peer review the data analysis in a discussion was helpful to ensure that the interpretation of examples/scenarios was consistent. Also, as women negotiated their different roles as leaders through the claiming and granting process at individual, rela-

228  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations tional and collective levels, the research requires that the interplay of the woman leader and the other role-players, in surfacing the bias, is necessary. One must interact with the tensions between the role-players and find ways to recognize unconscious bias, as it may only surface when it moves to a conscious level. Having clear objectives and a focus on the research question was critical during frequent discussions among the three authors while cross-checking for consensus. Data Analysis Initially, we attempted to do thematic analysis. It turned out to be more cumbersome than helpful, however, and we changed the analysis by reading through the interviews and searching for explicit evidence of bias, whether conscious or unconscious, along with evidence of leader identity construal at all three levels. We then discussed all the examples for each of the women, checking whether we were in agreement about the evidence of leader identity construal, as well as the level and the type of bias. Using the RGT tables, vignettes and IAT scores, we applied step-by-step triangulation. Keeping memos on our thought processes during the process was vital. Also, as women negotiated their different roles as leaders through the claiming and granting process at individual, relational and collective levels, it was necessary to evaluate the extent to which the interplay between the woman leader and the other role-players affected the surfacing of bias. Changing our analytical approach allowed us to make sense of the data in context, permitting a more comprehensive understanding of how the unconscious and conscious minds interact. It was more important to see our data holistically across all the methods, as the analysis cannot be done in isolation. Importance of an Audit Trail Throughout the process it was imperative to remain reflexive and keep a detailed record of the process, especially where the primary researcher had to adapt the data collection and analysis. Since the approach in this study is unique and, analyses needed to be revisited at times, it was important to keep track of the process to justify the changes. Important decisions had to be noted in order to develop a comprehensive audit trail. It was also important to document the thoughts and experiences of the primary researcher before and after each interview to determine the nature and extent of her impact on data-gathering. Order of the Data Gathering To remain as objective as possible regarding the degree of gender bias of a participant, we decided to keep the IAT results confidential until the interviewee’s data analysis was completed. The IAT on its own is purely an indicator of one’s implicit bias; the other methods were therefore required to show how this plays out in the identity tensions and experiences of female leaders. Delaying the unconscious data collection methods to the end of the data collection phase prevented sensitizing the participant regarding unconscious bias too early in the process. It is important to remember that unconscious bias operates even if one is aware of it, but in a different way, or sometimes in the same way until the habit is changed. In addition, the unconscious can only become known when it becomes conscious; during the conscious description, the participant provides the event in which unconscious bias surfaced.

A multi-method approach for studying conscious and unconscious identity work  229

CONCLUSION Our endeavour in this study was to reach into the unconscious bias of women leaders. We found it difficult, perhaps over-ambitious, but encourage future researchers not to shy away from attempting to access the unconscious, but rather to include this new element in identity research and thereby facilitate a more thorough understanding of how the conscious and unconscious mind interact in the formation and negotiation of identity.

NOTES 1. 2. 3.

We view unconscious and implicit bias as meaning the same and will use the terms interchangeably. We have chosen one of the 13 participants as an exemplar of the method. See https://​implicit​.harvard​.edu/​implicit/​takeatest​.html. Retrieved March 22, 2023.

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PART VI METHODS FOR ANALYSING NATURALLY OCCURRING DATA

17. Using membership categorization analysis to study identities in talk and text Andrea Whittle

INTRODUCTION All human societies categorize things. People, objects and places can be categorized in any number of ways. In religion, people and objects can be categorized into the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’. In politics, people, parties and ideas can be categorized into the ‘right’ and the ‘left’. In societies, people can be categorized according to their class status as ‘working class’, ‘middle class’ or ‘upper class’. In families, people can be categorized into roles and relationships such as ‘uncle’, ‘step-mother’ or ‘half-brother’. Membership categorization analysis (MCA) involves the study of how categories are used within practices of talking or writing in naturally occurring situations.1 ‘Membership categories’ refer to the ‘classification or social types that may be used to describe persons’ (Hester & Eglin, 1997, p. 3). Given the ‘sheer fact that any given member [of a group, organization or society] can be referred to in an indefinite number of ways’ (McHoul, 2007, p. 461), people select particular categories when describing themselves or others because of their relevance or usefulness to the practical task they are engaged in. MCA therefore involves the study of which categories are used, and how, when and where they are used, to accomplish some kind of practical activity (e.g., chairing a meeting, making a decision about something, or writing a policy document or a newspaper headline and so on). Anything can be categorized: people, places, objects, and so on. However, for the study of identity, MCA is most relevant when it involves analysis of the categorization of people. We can refer to these categories as ‘social categories’ when they seek to categorize the person as a member of a social group of some kind (such as ‘mothers’ or ‘managers’). MCA can be used to study any kind of identity description. A description of a person or group using a social identity (e.g., ‘the lads’), a professional or occupational identity (e.g., ‘those accountants’), or an organizational identity (e.g., ‘the Walmart people’) can all be analysed using MCA. Moreover, MCA is interested in studying both the categories people use to describe themselves and the categories people use to describe others. The aim of this chapter is to explain the methodological underpinnings and practical steps scholars can use to conduct an MCA analysis of identities in studies involving data sources comprising talk and/or text.

WHY CATEGORIES-IN-USE MATTER Which category gets used in a description of someone really does matter. Given the fact that ‘any individual can, of course, sensibly be described under a multitude of categories’ (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998, p. 2), the category used can make a big difference to how they are 232

Using membership categorization analysis to study identities in talk and text  233 viewed and evaluated. A woman, for example, could be described as a ‘mother of five children’, a ‘devoted wife’, an ‘entrepreneur’ or a ‘Tai Chi instructor’. All might be accurate, but the one chosen by the speaker or writer is likely to make a difference. Antaki and Widdicombe (1998, p. 2) explain: [A] person’s identity is their display of, or ascription to, membership of some social category, with consequences for the interaction in which the display or ascription takes place. Which category, or combination of categories, and which of the characteristics it affords are matters of changeable arrangements made locally. Membership of a category is ascribed (and rejected), avowed (and disavowed) and displayed (and ignored) in local places and at certain times, and it does these things as part of the interactional work that constitutes people’s lives.

People use categories to describe or evaluate a person in terms of the attributes they are presumed – or expected – to share with that social group. For example, a child can be praised for ‘acting grown up’ or can be admonished for ‘acting like a baby’. A woman can be praised for being ‘motherly’ or can be admonished for overly ‘mothering’ someone. However, it is not a simplistic matter of saying that the category chosen dictates particular social or organizational outcomes (such as being offered a job or being found not guilty of a crime). A categorization can be accepted, questioned, rejected or ignored by others. For example, a person might be described as a member of an ethnic group (Day, 1998) or a member of a group such as ‘goth’ or ‘punk’ (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998), but they might try to resist or deflect this categorization. A domestic abuse suspect can tell the police ‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’ (Stokoe, 2010), but the police (and for that matter the judge or jury) might not believe them. As Stokoe (2012, p. 299) argues, people can ‘invoke, produce, sustain and resist a category’s situated meanings’. MCA therefore involves studying all of the following: who uses which categories, where and when those categorizations are produced, whose categorizations are accepted and whose are contested or rejected, and what consequences these categories seem to have in the flow of conversation (or the uses of written texts). MCA is a distinct approach to studying identity, which differs from dominant approaches to identity research grounded in theories from social psychology such as social identity theory or self-categorization theory (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). MCA is distinct from social psychological research, which focuses on things like stereotyping and in-group and out-group categorization, because this approach does not conclude that the categories we use to describe ourselves or others reflect ‘attitudes’ or ‘mental models’ stored inside our heads. When a person uses a particular category, it is not assumed to reflect the mental ‘filing systems’ stored in their head for classifying other people or their own self-perception (i.e., how they ‘think’ or ‘feel’ about themselves). Rather, MCA asks: how are categories used to do things in the social world as part of social interaction? MCA focuses on how people use categories when they describe themselves (or others) in real-life interactional settings in organizations (e.g., recruitment interviews, boardroom meetings, performance appraisals, sales encounters, etc.). It focuses not only on which category is used by whom, but also at which moment in the interaction and with what ‘upshot’ or ‘effect’ for that interaction. Categories are viewed as part of the stock of knowledge of the social world we have available to us when trying to accomplish some practical task. The idea of categories as stable cognitive ‘pigeon-holes’ or ‘filing systems’ breaks down when we observe that people routinely use categories in ways that vary according to context. For example, people can use categories in stereotypical ways, such as making jokes about ‘women drivers’ (Stokoe, 2012, p. 281) or

234  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations making idiomatic complaints that ‘all men are bastards’ (ibid., p. 286), without necessarily holding any stable sexist attitudes. The categories we use therefore display ‘the knowledge that members of a society have about the society’ (Sacks, 1964–72/1992, Vol. 1, pp. 40–41), without necessarily being the reflecting a stable attitude or stereotype held by the person (see also Edwards, 1991, 1997; Edwards & Potter, 1992).

ORIGINS OF MCA Many approaches to the study of identity are grounded in disciplines such as social psychology or hermeneutics. MCA has a different intellectual history. MCA is both a ‘theory’ of identity, insofar as it is grounded in the theory of social action used in conversation analysis (CA) and ethnomethodology (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, Ch 2; Heritage, 2008), and also a ‘method’ insofar as it involves a series of methodological choices about data sources (such as the preference for naturally occurring data) and steps used in data analysis (such as the emphasis on identifying the categorical ‘machinery’ such as categorization devices and category predicates – terms that will be explain later in the chapter). CA and MCA both emerged from the work of the Harvey Sacks, an American sociologist. A series of lectures given by Sacks between 1964 to 1972 were posthumously published in 1992 in two volumes entitled Lectures on Conversation. The first approach, CA, analyses how people interact with each other in sequences of interaction. These sequences involve turns at talk and other embodied practices, such as gestures or facial expressions, used to produce intelligible and accountable social actions within a flow of interaction. The second approach, MCA (the focus of this chapter), involves analysing the social categories that people use to describe themselves and others when engaged in whatever practical business they are undertaking. Liz Stokoe (2012, p. 278), one of the key proponents of the latter approach, has noted that MCA is less well known and less well used in the social sciences compared to CA, but this is rapidly changing as MCA increases in popularity and influence. The ‘practical business’ being studied could be writing a newspaper headline, holding a business meeting, calling a helpline, teaching a class or writing a suicide note. The analyst asks: how are social categories used for the purposes of ‘practical reasoning’ (Watson, 2015, p. 38) about the social world in order to accomplish this particular practical task? MCA studies both talk-in-interaction and written texts, or their combination if both are used to accomplish that particular task. To understand why MCA is distinct from other approaches to studying identity, we need first to consider the ethnomethodological (EM) tradition that the work of Sacks was grounded in (Sacks, 1964–72/1992, Vol. 1, p. 32). Some scholars use the term EM/CA to reference this close link (Llewellyn & Hindmarsh, 2013). Ethnomethodology is the label given to the work of American sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Ethnomethodology approaches the question of social order from a different perspective compared to classical sociological theories. Rather than start with the assumption that social facts (e.g., rules, roles, norms, expectations, obligations, and so on) exist ‘out there’ as forces of normative constraint that create social order, ethnomethodology instead seeks to identify the methods people use to produce these ‘facts’ in each and every social interaction. Garfinkel (1967, p. 79) used the phrase ‘fact production in flight’ to refer to this focus on the methods through which people accomplish ‘social order’. Ethnomethodology rejects the assumption that members of a society, organization or social group are ‘cultural and judgemental dopes’ (Watson, 2015, p. 26). The term ‘dopes’ refers

Using membership categorization analysis to study identities in talk and text  235 to the idea that people are pushed and pulled into compliance by social facts (e.g., a norm or a role). Ethnomethodology instead studies how – that is through what ‘ethno-methods’ or ‘members’ methods’ – members of a society use their common-sense knowledge of the social world to accomplish social organization ‘from within’. From an EM perspective, then, the analyst is actually studying people who are themselves sociologists – namely, the ‘folk’ sociologists (Wieder, 1974) or ‘practical’ sociologists (Benson & Hughes, 1983) who create the ‘social order’.

KEY CONCEPTS USED IN MCA In this section, I will discuss a few (but not all) of the concepts used in MCA to analyse identity categories used in talk or texts. For a full exposition of MCA, the reader can consult texts such as Jayyusi (1984), Eglin and Hester (2003), Stokoe (2012) and Fitzgerald and Housley (2015). Membership Categorization Devices Membership categorization devices (MCDs) are one of the key concepts in MCA. MCDs are collections ‘not of individuals but of types of person in the society. They are, in short, social identities’ (McHoul, 2007, p. 461). To illustrate this, consider the simple example given by Sacks involving a two-sentence story written by a child: ‘The baby cried. The mommy picked it up’. Sacks asked a simple but important question about this story. He asked: ‘Why do we hear the “mommy” as the mother of this “baby”? Why do we hear the baby’s cries as the “reason” why the mommy picks it up?’ (Sacks, 1964–72/1992, Vol. 1, p. 236, cited in Silverman, 1998, p. 78). The fact that you, as reader, can presumably make sense of the story without observing the actual scene being described is thanks to a kind of inferential ‘magic’ for Sacks (ibid.). The ‘magic’ lies in the fact that we readily, and common-sensically, infer that the ‘baby’ is the baby of the ‘mommy’ because both are related in the device ‘family’. MCDs can be ‘standardized relational pairs’, such as when the category ‘mother’ is typically paired with the category ‘baby’ in the device ‘family’. MCDs can also collect categories together in any form of structured relationship, such as the player positions within a sports team or the stages involved in development (baby, toddler, teenager, adult, elderly person) (Stokoe, 2012). Used in other contexts, other devices might be used to make sense of what the term ‘baby’ means, for instance. In the sentence ‘Oh baby, I’m going to miss you’, a ‘romance’ device could be used. In the sentence ‘Stop acting like a baby’, the ‘stage of life’ device enables us to hear the sentence as (presumably) an insult. The story of ‘the baby cried’ is heard as an infant child because two categories from the ‘family device’ were used in close proximity. MCDs, then, are devices people use to make sense of collections of categories that ‘go together’ with some sort of normative expectations about their roles and relationships. For example, when babies cry, their mothers are expected to pick them up or attend to their needs (and can be judged accordingly when they do not). In other words, mothers are commonly understood to have a ‘category-bound moral obligation’ to pick up their crying infants.

236  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Category-bound Activities and Category Predicates This discussion of moral obligations brings us to the concept of ‘category-bound activities’. This term was used by Sacks to refer to the activities typically associated with a particular category of person (e.g., babies ‘cry’ and mothers provide ‘care’). Since then, the term has expanded to the concept of ‘category predicates’. Category predicates are the whole array of social characteristics commonly associated with a category (Hester, 1992, p. 165). This includes all the assumptions and inferences we routinely make about the ‘motives, rights, entitlements, obligations, knowledge, attributes and competencies’ (Psathas, 1999, p. 144) of that category of person. As such, categories are said to have a ‘normative and moral infrastructure’ (Jayyusi, 1984, p. 166). In other words, they ‘bring with them’ moral inferences and implications for what certain types of people should (or should not) be, know or do. Using a social category to describe yourself or someone else is therefore a ‘normative practice through which inferences and implications are generated and managed’ (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, p. 66). It is this ‘triplet’ of category, device and predicates that performs ‘moral work by implication and inference’ (McHoul, 2007, p. 462). Categories can ‘do their work’ without the speaker or writer having to explicitly ‘spell out’ their predicates because they trade on the social knowledge that all competent society members are presumed to share. Let us now consider an example to illustrate why categories and their predicates matter. Stetson (1999) analysed Japanese newspaper coverage of an incident involving a death at a railway station and found that different newspapers used different categories to describe the man and woman involved in the incident. Some referred to the woman as simply a ‘woman’, while others described her as an ‘exotic dancer’. Some referred to the man as a ‘teacher’, others as a ‘drunk’. These categories made a difference to the moral reasoning used in each version of the story. For example, the category ‘teacher’ is associated with predicates such as responsibility and professionalism, while ‘drunk’ is associated with predicates involving recklessness and antisocial behaviour. Readers, then, were invited to view the allocation of responsibility and blame differently based on the categories used.

DOING MCA ANALYSIS: METHODOLOGICAL STEPS Step 1: Identifying Data Sources The first step in MCA analysis involves selecting appropriate data sources. These sources can be any instance of talk or text where language is used to categorize the identities of people. Some examples of potential data sources include: ● audio- or video-recordings of workplace interactions (e.g., management meetings, manager–employee interactions, employee–customer interactions); ● organizational texts (e.g., company documents, memos, emails); ● publicly available texts (e.g., social media posts, blogs, websites, newspaper articles, policy reports, minutes of hearings, transcripts of testimony). Sources can also be combined if multiple forms of talk and text are used in the setting of interest. For example, Eglin and Hester’s study of the 1989 Montreal Massacre involved analysis of both newspaper coverage (Eglin & Hester, 2003) and the suicide note written by the

Using membership categorization analysis to study identities in talk and text  237 gunman himself (Eglin & Hester, 1999). MCA has a strong preference for naturally occurring data because it seeks to study real-world situations where people use categories and where these categorizations have practical implications or consequences. MCA does not ask people to report what they do in a questionnaire survey or an interview or focus group; instead, it captures in real time how they conduct their organizational activities. However, it is also possible to conduct MCA on researcher-generated interactions such as interviews, as Svensson (2009) shows, if the focus is on categorization practices within the interview interaction (as opposed to making claims about ‘identities’ outside of the interview context). Interviews are not viewed as reliable sources of information about what people think, feel or do outside the interview context, so are therefore studied only as the setting in which ‘doing interviewing’ is performed. Step 2: Identifying Category Use in Talk or Text The second step involves identifying the categories that were used in the talk or text.2 The analysis could focus on a single significant or dramatic case, such as a suicide note from a terrorist attack (Eglin & Hester, 1999), or it could be a broader collection of similar ‘patterns’ of categories used in interactions, such as a collection of moments in conversations where gender categories are used (Speer & Stokoe, 2011). Texts can be analysed as they occur in their original format. For talk-in-interaction data, a transcript should be generated from the audio- or video-recording using the ‘Jeffersonian’ transcription method.3 Step 3: Identify Who Uses Categories, When and Where The third step involves the analyst scrutinizing the text or transcript, line by line, to identify the categories that are used, who uses them, when or where they occur. In the case of multi-party interactions, this could also include analysis of how others make sense of and respond to the categories used to describe themselves or others. As noted earlier, a category could be accepted and ‘taken up’ by others, or a category could be questioned, rejected, ignored or replaced by others. Step 4: Identifying Categorical Knowledge and Practical Reasoning Being Used The fourth step involves identifying what ‘common-sense’ knowledge the people themselves are using when they use the category (for example, knowledge about what a member of a category normatively should or should not do or say). In MCA, the analyst focuses on the knowledge and use of categories employed by the members of the social group themselves, not those attributed to the members by the analyst (Watson, 2015, p. 26). This includes identifying the MCDs and predicates associated with the category. The analyst tries to identify the kinds of practical reasoning and/or inference the categories are being used for, including forms of moral reasoning and inference. Step 5: Identifying the Social Actions Being Accomplished In the fifth and final step, the analyst then examines what that stock of social knowledge associated with the category is trying to accomplish. By ‘trying to accomplish’ we mean the kinds of social actions people do with talk and texts: things like inviting, declining, complaining,

238  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations justifying, excusing and blaming. This means analysing the kinds of reasoning and inference these categories enable the speaker or writer to accomplish, in the context of the practical actions the categories are deployed to achieve. The focus in this step is on the social actions accomplished by the inferences and interpretations generated by the categories. For example, the analyst could pay attention to how categories are employed to make evaluations or judgements about someone based on the ‘category predicates’ associated with the categories being used. For example, a category could be used to praise someone within a conversation about who to hire or promote. A category could be used to admonish or criticize someone within a conversation about disciplining or sacking someone. Whether the attempted social action is accomplished or rejected or contested by other parties to the interaction is itself also part of the analysis in this step. A simple example of categories being used to accomplish something is the two-word newspaper headline ‘KILLER NUNS’ analysed by McHoul (2007). The headline constructs reader interest by ‘deliberately mismatching membership categories (designations of types of persons) with their expectable actions (predicates)’ (p. 460), what Stokoe (2012, p. 281) refers to as ‘category-activity puzzles’. The social action here is obvious: the writer created an ‘attention-grabbing headline’ designed to make us want to read the article by using an atypical combination of category and predicate. This final step is important – and distinguishes MCA from other identity approaches that do not normally examine naturally occurring talk and text – because it is grounded in the appreciation that categories are part of doing something, not just describing something or cognitively processing something. Categories are used during all kinds of daily business – going to the doctors, making a call to a company call centre, having meetings at work, answering emails, reading the news, and so on – and therefore MCA is unique amongst identity theories and methodologies in its emphasis on how the display of identities in talk or text form part of this daily business (Stokoe, 2012). As Watson (2015, p. 29) states, MCA asks not only ‘which categories get used by whom and when’ but also ‘what is this categorization doing?’ in a real-world setting. As such, it has particular analytical and methodological advantages over other approaches that dominate the social sciences and are typically grounded in social psychology and based on ‘artificial’ and ‘contrived’ interview or experimental data. The inclusion of paraverbal (e.g., tone of voice) and non-verbal (e.g., facial expression) elements in the transcription, following the conventions of CA, means MCA can capture how verbal categories are used alongside other interactional practices to get the ‘job’ of interaction done in a range of organizational settings. For example, in other related work in CA, research has shown that particular forms of talk lead to particular interactional outcomes.4 Categories can also be analysed in the same way to identify their interactional effects, or what Stokoe (2012, p. 280) refers to as ‘the interactional consequences of a category’s use’, given a sufficiently large corpus of similar examples.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE: ANALYSING CATEGORIES IN A MANAGEMENT MEETING In this section, I will discuss a practical example of how I have used MCA, together with a team of co-authors. The paper, published in Human Relations, is entitled ‘Category predication work, discursive leadership and strategic sensemaking’ (Whittle et al., 2015). The

Using membership categorization analysis to study identities in talk and text  239 dataset involved recorded meeting conversations and fieldnotes from a 30-month qualitative participant observation research project. The project involved a researcher based at Lancaster University who conducted ‘action research’ in a UK subsidiary of a US-based multinational sportwear company. I was not involved in data collection and only became involved at the data analysis stage after the project had ended. In what follows, I will explain what data we analysed, the methodological steps we took and what MCA enabled us to ‘see’ and ‘do’ analytically that other approaches would not. The dataset generated by the research project was huge, like in many qualitative research projects. Dozens of hours of recordings of meetings, generating hundreds of pages of transcripts, had to be read as well as the fieldnote diaries kept by the two researchers. For an MCA analysis, the preference for naturally occurring data meant that we focused primarily on analysis of the audio-recordings of meetings organized by ‘Justin’ (a pseudonym), the first of the two researchers to enter the company, who acted as a ‘pro bono’ consultant on the change project. After several months in the company gathering and analysing fieldwork and interview data, Justin proposed to the managing director that a new cross-functional team should be established, bringing all relevant departments together to decide a coordinated strategy for each of the key account customers. Once approval was given, Justin invited the middle managers (one level below the board of directors) from each department to a monthly meeting of this new team, which he called the ‘Steering Group’. In this paper (Whittle et al., 2015), we analyse the first meeting of the Steering Group where Justin explained the purpose and remit of the new cross-functional group. The paper is an example of a ‘single case’ analysis (as opposed to a ‘collection’ analysis). To clarify, the focus of the MCA analysis published by Whittle et al. (2015) is on the interactional practices of Justin as a consultant and ‘discursive leader’ of the change project in selected moments during this first meeting, not the content of the recommendations or interventions he made in the company. The first stage of analysis involved dividing up the transcript into discrete ‘chunks’ based on what was being done with the talk. For example, there were phases where the researcher delivered long speeches akin to monologues to ‘set the scene’, phases where the group members began to discuss their doubts and concerns, and later on, phases where they began to discuss practical issues about who would take which roles and responsibilities for the work that would follow. Here, we identified an early ‘chunk’ of the interaction where Justin outlined the nature, remit, threats and opportunities for the proposed changes. We decided to ‘zoom in’ on the categories Justin and others used during this ‘scene-setting’ sequence (covering three pages of the transcript). A Jeffersonian transcription was created for these three pages. The next stage involved highlighting all those words and phrases where either a category was being used or category-based reasoning was being employed. We identified a range of categories, including group categories such as ‘the board’, job titles such as ‘sales director’ and ‘salesperson’, generic categories such as ‘customers’ and ‘team’, and references to the middle management status of the members of the Steering Group using the term ‘you guys’. The next stage involved looking at what kinds of membership categorization devices and category predicates were used to ‘frame’ the company’s situation and the need for change. Let us now examine one example of a sequence involving category-based reasoning. In this extract, one of the managers tells Justin that the UK sales director is currently away in Australia working on a company project. Justin responds to this news as follows:

240  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations Well that’s good to hear (.2) That’s really good to hear Justin (researcher/consultant): because he’s a ↑serious danger isn’t he? Yes he is.5 Bill (consumer marketing manager): This short exchange struck me as particularly interesting because I initially did not understand why the sales director being in Australia was ‘good’ and why this person was regarded as a ‘serious danger’ to the team and their plans. To help me understand the exchange, I arranged a call with Justin (who was a co-author of the paper) and asked him. Justin explained that it was not a reference to the sales director having any individual grudge or vendetta that might make him a ‘danger’ to the team and their plans. Rather, it was a reference to the set of typical rights, responsibilities, motives and preferences that sales directors are deemed to have – namely, a desire to keep tight control over matters relating to the key accounts. In other words, Justin’s practical reasoning based on the category of ‘sales director’ was something along these lines: given our aim of having cross-functional control over key account strategy, the sales director would be likely to oppose this change, therefore it is a ‘good thing’ that the ‘danger’ he poses is reduced by his current absence. In our paper (Whittle et al., 2015), we coined the term ‘category predication work’ to identify the types of work involving using categories to engage in practical reasoning in and about organizational life. This case, involving strategic organizational change, seemed to involve two distinct types of related ‘categorical reasoning’. The first type involved using established understandings of category predicates – that is, what certain categories of people normally do, or think, or feel. For example, board members were described as the types of people who are unable to ‘change their way of behaving quickly’. The second type involved talk about changing established category predicates. The middle managers were being invited to change established expectations of what senior managers and middle managers do – namely, that the former decide the firm’s strategy and the latter implement it. For instance, at one point Kate, the trade marketing manager, describes the act of deciding key account strategy and telling the board of directors what their strategy was as ‘brave’: Kate (trade marketing manager): We’re going to have to be a bit brave if we are going to have these conversations and have more integrated plan (.) then if there isn’t going to be any change then = =>Well there will be 90 percent agreement (Krippendorff’s alpha score of 0.93 with a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.8–1.00 after 10 000 bootstrap samples). This filtering process resulted in 727 comments by vegans on the WatchMojo video and 184 vegan-authored comments on BSV’s response video. We conducted sentiment analysis on all remaining comments and calculated the word count for all comments. Outcomes of the analyses supported all three hypotheses. The findings show that vegans’ comments in response to the WatchMojo video held negative sentiment on average, and vegans’ comments in response to BSV’s video held positive sentiment on average. Furthermore, a t-test analysis demonstrated that the difference in means was statistically significant. Also as hypothesized, vegans commenting on the non-verifying video by WatchMojo were more verbose than those commenting on BSV’s identity verifying response, reflecting the flurry of interactional adjustments that follow experiences of non-verification. The results are summarized in Table 19.1. Finally, we deepened our analyses by considering qualitative aspects of these data. First, we bolstered the validity of sentiment analysis scores by spot-checking quantitative sentiment scores against qualitative evaluations, finding strong correspondence between sentiment ratings and the sentiments expressed. We also identified patterns and themes in the ways that people responded to non-verifying and verifying feedback in the two videos. The qualitative analysis demonstrates how vegan commenters collectively contest WatchMojo and support BSV in identity-relevant ways. For example, vegans commenting

Assessing collective identity (non-)verification with social media data  269 on the WatchMojo video correct for the video’s omission of veganism’s ethical implications, thus, re-establishing a key identity meaning and reinforcing ingroup behavior: No. 1 fact about Veganism. No innocent beings with nervous systems are kept in cages their entire lives, abused, neglected and violently slaughtered for a vegan’s meal or clothes. Unlike the non-vegan who mindlessly contributes to this cruelty every day with their $$ while having the nerve to act like a victim when a vegan confronts them with the reality of what they are doing. (Comment on WatchMojo)

Comments on BSV’s response video tended to be shorter (see Table 19.1). These comments validate the activist’s knowledge and show affinity with both the claims she puts forth and the community of vegans with whom she identifies. For example: [I] love you!! i was going to make a scientifically critical vegan channel but looks like you’ve got it covered :) [Y]ou’re Awesome! I Really love what you do. Love your witty responses and knowledge to overcome any adversity. You make me proud to be A Vegan.

Across the two videos, we observed commenters bolstering collective vegan identity meanings, contesting identity threats, and establishing in-group affinities. These patterns align with the tenets of IT and SIT, illustrating how vegans work to verify a collective social identity, and thus animating the theoretical synthesis established through hypothesis testing. Summary Using a combination of web scraping, sentiment analysis, word counts, and ‘small data’ qualitative techniques, we tested hypotheses at the intersection of IT and SIT. Results showed that IT hypotheses about (non-)verification, emotion, and behavioral response have predictive value for collective identity, as theorized in SIT. This study therefore converges two major theories via the construct of collective social identity, instantiated in this case through the identity of ‘vegan.’ As the first study to formalize a linkage between IT (sociology) and SIT (psychology), this study ‘places social psychology in direct conversation with a vibrant field of research at the intersection of mobilization and digital technologies’ (Davis et al., 2019, p. 256) while working towards a general theory of identity in social life.

CRITICAL EVALUATION As with all research methodologies, those described here also have limitations. We outline some critiques and considerations when using social media data for identity research. These are divided into three categories: generalizability, validity, and ethical considerations. Generalizability Generalizability refers to the capacity for research findings in one setting to apply in other settings. Social media data face three main challenges to generalization: (1) not everyone takes part in social media, and for those who do, (2) data are demographically skewed by the platform used, and (3) data are only partially accessible because of users’ privacy practices

270  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations (Fuchs, 2017; Jensen, 2017; Kitchin, 2014; Tufekci, 2014). In our study, this means we must take care when applying outcomes derived from YouTube comments in generalizations about vegan identities in other contexts. To manage the limitation of generalizability, researchers have two options. One option is for researchers to limit their claims to the platforms under study (e.g., produce findings about certain behavioral patterns on specific social media services). A second option, which we employed in our study, is to focus on theoretical generalization. Theories are general and abstract, applying across circumstances that meets theoretically defined conditions. To design a study that allows for theoretical generalization, researchers will need to begin with theoretically derived research questions and variables, which they match to a particular social media data source. The process is thus deductive rather than inductive, driven by theoretical tenets and questions rather than by the data itself (see Davis & Love, 2019). Validity Validity refers to the congruence between what one intends to measure and what one actually measures. Sentiment analysis, a methodological technique central to our study, has been criticized for low validity, meaning that sentiment scores do not necessarily reflect actual emotional states (Kross et al., 2019; Puschmann & Powell, 2018). For example, a study by Kross et al. (2019) found that young adults’ self-reports of personal feelings throughout a day were not significantly associated with the sentiment analysis scores of their Facebook posts during the same time periods. The study’s authors suggest that the discrepancy between an individual’s emotions and the emotional valence of words used in their social media posts may stem from the ubiquity of image management on social media. Moreover, sentiment analysis falters when analyzing irony and sarcasm, as these communicative forms are defined by the act of saying one thing but meaning another (Davis et al., 2018). This is especially troublesome due to the norm of irony and sarcasm within Internet culture, which means social media data may be especially susceptible to miscategorization compared to other text-based data sources. Researchers can take steps to mitigate these issues by spot-checking quantified codes with qualitative assessments, adding domain-specific words to sentiment lexicons, and including caveats to acknowledge that sentiment scores are imperfect proxies for actual felt emotion. Ethics and Privacy Issues of ethics and privacy have been central to public conversations about the collection and use of social media data. Although much of this conversation focuses on the use of these data for political and commercial purposes (Darmody & Zwick, 2020; Isaak & Hanna, 2018; Zuboff, 2019), there are also concerns about academic researchers accessing these data, even when publicly available (Gilbert et al., 2021). These concerns pertain to the people who use social media platforms and to rules and regulations enacted by the platforms themselves. Data scraping gives researchers access to troves of data that users produced for reasons that had nothing to do with academic research. Normally, researchers need to obtain informed consent before including a person in a study. With social media data, however, consent is given through a cumbersome Terms of Service Agreement that people often quickly agree to as a pre-condition for signing up for a new service. Researchers should be cognizant of this and take care to anonymize data where possible, obtain consent when they can, consult closely

Assessing collective identity (non-)verification with social media data  271 with institutional ethics boards to ensure compliance with legal and institutional standards, and maintain sensitivity to potential harms and exposures that could result from the research process. Data collection may also be subject to a website or platform’s rules and regulations, often presented through their Terms of Service. Examples of this include Facebook prohibiting many forms of data collection without explicit permission from the company and private website owners indicating that data on their websites are proprietary or otherwise protected. These rules and regulations can change over time, especially for large social media platforms. It is up to the researcher and their institutional ethics board to stay apprised of such issues and make informed decisions about if and how to proceed. Ethics and privacy require ongoing consideration when doing social media research, and it is important to keep up with the ethical norms of the research community. One excellent resource in this regard is the Association of Internet Researchers’ Ethical Guidelines. This document offers the most current and thorough guidance on ethical matters in social media research and is updated regularly by a collaborative consortium of scholars in the field (see Franzke et al., 2020, Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0).

CONCLUSION The study of identity has been a central focus for scholars over time and across disciplines, with significant theoretical advances using a range of methodological tools. In the age of social media, identity is now constructed and performed in new ways, leaving data traces that allow for novel forms of research design. In this chapter, we highlighted the ways researchers can use social media data as a tool for theory testing, leveraging large and naturally occurring data archives to answer fundamental questions that have been bubbling in the literature. With the techniques described herein, identity scholars can draw on digital data to shore up existing theories, challenge established assumptions, test propositions, and even build new theories altogether. Handled with care, social media data have the potential to usher in significant theoretical advancements. As much of our social lives now happen online, theorists of self and identity would be remiss to ignore this interactive shift if they hope to understand how identity processes operate today and into the future.

NOTES 1. See Zhao (2017) for a review. 2. See https://​commoncrawl​.org. Retrieved March 29, 2023. 3. See Feldman (2013) and Medhat et al. (2014) for more information. 4. For more information on intercoder reliability, see Compton et al. (2012).

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Epilogue: towards a methodological roadmap and beyond Ingo Winkler, Rosalía Cascón-Pereira and Stefanie Reissner

CELEBRATING METHODOLOGICAL DIVERSITY All methodologists recognize that research methods, like a pair of spectacles, allow you to obtain information about the world but also condition what you see and how you see it. Hence, using specific research methods conditions the knowledge you develop in a discipline or domain. This is no different in the case of the identity field in organizational contexts. Whenever scholars set out to study identity in and around organizations, the default research method appears to be an interview study – that is, conducting several semi-structured interviews – which are afterwards analysed typically through a form of thematic analysis. Even though we applaud the pertinent insights produced through such studies, we believe that identity scholars may unnecessarily confine themselves to a limited set of research methods and therefore risk limiting the knowledge they can develop. To provide identity scholars in the field of organization and management studies with a broader range of methodological possibilities was, therefore, one of the main aims of this Handbook. We hope to have paved the way for more methodological diverse identity scholarship in our field by introducing a range of narrative, visual, ethnographic and embodied methods as well as methods for eliciting personal meanings and methods for analysing naturally occurring data. In so doing, we hope to have opened up new possibilities ‘to see’ things in identity research in a different way. In this concluding chapter, we will discuss how the methods included in this Handbook can help the field move forward. In particular, we will showcase how the methods presented in this Handbook are well suited to accompanying the current turns and trends in the theoretical landscape of the identity field (Brown, 2020). We will illustrate how the methods included in this Handbook are well suited for studying uncertain, liquid, open, fluid, paradoxical, liminal, conflicting and protean identities. We will further address the methods’ capacity for exploring not only textual, discursive and socio-cognitive identities but also performed, acted on, embodied and symbolic identities that use symbols other than language to express themselves, such as dance, masks and dream-drawing. Furthermore, we will discuss how to apply the methods for studying temporality, spatiality and the contextual and relational nature of identities, and for exploring conscious but also eliciting unconscious processes of identification. We will also address the methods’ potential for analysing different levels of identity and identification from a processual perspective while also focusing on the content of the identities studied. Moreover, we will show how the methods in this Handbook can add a first-person perspective in the study of identities and can be used to address different levels at studying identities and identity dynamics. In addition, we will highlight the methods’ potential to study naturally occurring data and how they inform identity and identity dynamics. Eventually, we address the multiplicity of data-gathering and data-analysis methods. Finally, we discuss the methods’ relationship with theory. 275

276  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations The recently highlighted features of identities and the new turns in the field require identity scholars to equip themselves with a more complete repertoire of methods with which to explore the identities and identity dynamics in organizations of this new era and the new ways of working. With this Handbook, we hope to enrich the repertoire of identity scholars to respond to the current challenges that identities in contemporaneous organizations pose. In so doing, we will first share our views of how the research methods in this Handbook and the methodological diversity it promotes can accompany the current turns in identity research and inform future studies of identity. Second, we will move beyond the study of identity and discuss the methods’ capacity to aid the integration of research, scholarship and practical interventions with a view to generating real-life impact.

THE FUTURE OF THE STUDY OF IDENTITY IN AND AROUND ORGANIZATIONS Discursive, Socio-cognitive, Psychodynamic and Embodied Aspects of Identity and Identification The chapters of this Handbook offer a range of research methods with which to explore further the discursive, socio-cognitive, psychodynamic and embodied aspects of identity and identification in organizational settings. In this sense, they speak to both more prominent and emerging domains in the study of identity in organizations. On the one hand, the Handbook considers discursive and socio-cognitive identities, which are more established in the theoretical terrain (explored through discursive, narrative and textual means but also through other methods such as the repertory grid, sketches, and the implicit association test). On the other hand, it also goes beyond language in its multiple forms (words, meanings, discourses, narratives and conversations) to consider other symbols that might help express and develop identities. In doing so, it covers pictures as in Chapter 7, movement and dance as in Chapter 12, and masks as in Chapter 13. Moreover, the Handbook also considers psychodynamic aspects of identity by exploring the unconscious aspects of identities and identity dynamics through social dream-drawing (Chapter 6), autoethnography (Chapter 11), the repertory grid (Chapter 14), and the implicit association test (Chapter 16). Discursive and narrative approaches to the study of identity have developed into one of the dominant ways of researching aspects of identity and identification in organizations (Brown, 2020). Some of the chapters in this Handbook provide innovative methods with which to study identities in organizations from a discursive and narrative perspective. In so doing, Starbæk Bager (Chapter 4) introduces a research approach that enables identity scholars to zoom into the small stories co-created by organizational members in interaction with others on a more micro level. Kourti (Chapter 3) leverages performative textual analysis to analyse personal narratives. Whittle (Chapter 17) offers a research method to investigate how people use categories in organizational text and talk, thereby promoting a better understanding of the performative effects of the use of categories in language. Reissner (Chapter 2) underlines the value of narrative analysis of stories for studying processes of identification. Narratives constitute a fruitful research object for identity scholars who seek to learn how people connect the past, the present, and the potential future in their identity constructions. Introducing the qualitative survey as a research method for the study of identity, Crafford and Mouton (Chapter 5) show

Epilogue: towards a methodological roadmap and beyond  277 how data generated through such surveys can be used to identify narratives told by the organizational members to construe a sense of identity of the organization. Mmbaga et al. (Chapter 18) promote the study of autobiographies to uncover how subjects narrate their stories of who they are and how they relate to others. Various chapters put the focus on socio-cognitive aspects of identification, thereby zooming into mental structures and cognitive representations. Cascón-Pereira et al. (Chapter 14) describe how the repertory grid technique can be used to study the mental representations of ‘being a good manager’ and how far or close current personal and professional identities are from these ideal representations. McGrane et al. (Chapter 15) introduce the method of self-characterization sketches that enables individuals to describe, for example, their work-related identities in their own terms, thus allowing access to their construct system or cognitive representations of themselves and their world. The authors position their method as an alternative to the repertory grid technique for the exploration of personal constructs. Three chapters in this Handbook emphasize that identity construction is not only a discursive or socio-cognitive matter but essentially also involves bodily aspects. The authors of these chapters equip identity scholars with methodological knowledge for closer inspection of the embodied aspects of identity work and identification. Working with a particular part of the body – that is, the face – Stephens and Higgins (Chapter 13) show how mask-making can be used as a research method to investigate the inward and outward aspects of a person’s identity. This method constitutes a creative approach to tap into elements related to the authentic or real self and those connected to fake or expressed aspects of identity. Embracing the whole body, Baldwin and Motter (Chapter 12) describe a way to study somatic identity through dance performance. The authors engage research participants in the process of creating a movement-based performance, during which they construct and express somatic identity narratives. Finally, Moonesirust (Chapter 9) provides a unique approach for interviewing research participants while they move through local space. In so doing, she suggests a method that enables the study of how identities manifest in platial contexts and how the contextual spaces influence the knowledge created about identities through walking interviews. Taken together, the chapters in this Handbook speak to various strands in the study of identity in organizational contexts. In so doing, they provide alternative ways to study, for example, identity constructions in text and language as well as offer methodological approaches for tapping into the more material and embodied aspects of identity. Spatiality, Temporality and the Relational and Contextual Nature of Identity That identities are contextual and relational seems to be a well-accepted premise in identity research. All chapters in this Handbook stem from that premise. Nonetheless, the role of temporality and spatiality constitute areas that have only received limited attention in identity research in organizational contexts (Brown, 2015, 2020). The dimensions of space and time are of key importance as they configure the relational contexts in which identities form and develop. Several chapters of this book provide identity scholars with methods with which to explore these dimensions and study how they inform identity work. For instance, three out of four of the ethnographic methods (Chapters 8, 9 and 11) highlight the importance of physical or virtual places to understanding identity and identity dynamics. Samper-Martínez and García-Álvarez (Chapter 8) focus on the influence of being in-game (as a virtual place) and off-game (as physical space) on the construction of the players’ identities. Moonesirust

278  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations (Chapter 9) emphasizes the importance of considering ‘platial’ contexts in the knowledge generated through mobile interviews. Posselt (Chapter 11) highlights the importance of the situational context – that is, doing calligraphy – for unleashing flow experiences that enable the study of the interplay and tensions between the self-as-object and the self-as-subject. Likewise, Mmbaga et al. (Chapter 18) recommend autobiographies as a valuable method to provide insights into how places, as physical and social environments, impact processes of identity construction. This chapter is also an excellent example of how autobiographies allow the consideration of the role of temporality (remembered past, present and future) in the construction of identities. Also, Bentley et al., in Chapter 7, respond to the need to understand the person in ‘their natural habitat’ and ‘in situ’ by providing social identity mapping as a method for assessing a person’s group-based affiliations. Finally, Kourti (Chapter 3), Starbæk Bager (Chapter 4), Grosse (Chapter 10) and Whittle (Chapter 17) provide research methods for exploring how social actors move between identities in response to changing organizational circumstances and the critical role of social and relational context. All in all, the chapters of this Handbook provide a fruitful array of research methods to develop knowledge on how identities are temporally, spatially, relationally and situationally constituted. In that sense, the Handbook speaks to the need for identity studies to adequately account for the social contexts in order to understand individuals’ identification processes (e.g., Brown, 2015, 2020; Ybema, 2020). Conscious and Unconscious Processes of Identification Understanding identification as the self-reflexive practice of attaching meanings to the self, many identity scholars study the more conscious aspects of identity (Caza et al., 2018). However, some researchers argue that processes of identification have conscious and unconscious elements (e.g., Petriglieri & Stein, 2012; Watson, 2008). The Handbook includes three chapters that examine the unconscious aspects of identity, which, we believe, is an understudied area in the identity field. Using the repertory grid technique, Cascón-Pereira et al. (Chapter 14) explore both conscious desires for change in personal identity and unconscious hindrances to attain the desired identity. Gossayn et al. (Chapter 16) describe a multi-method approach within an interpretive case study design to uncover the influence of conscious and unconscious gender stereotypes on how female leaders view themselves as well as their perception of how others view them. Finally, Barnard (Chapter 6) introduces social dream-drawing to gain pertinent insights into the collective unconscious that can inform individual identities. In so doing, the method can be used to explore unconscious identity tensions and the resolution thereof by creating awareness of the emotional, cognitive and social processing that individuals exercise when working on the meanings that define the self. Processual Approaches to the Study of Identity Building on the established field of process organization studies (Langley, 2007; Langley & Tsoukas, 2016), this Handbook has introduced research methods through which the fluid processes of identity work and identification can be meaningfully studied. For example, Starbæk Bager (Chapter 4) studies the interpretive process of identity work through the concept of organizational small storymaking, while Reissner (Chapter 2) proposes plot and storyline analysis to examine changes in personal identity narratives in the light of organizational change.

Epilogue: towards a methodological roadmap and beyond  279 Similarly, Cascón-Pereira et al. (Chapter 14) and McGrane et al. (Chapter 15) show how the repertory grid technique can be used to study personal identity change processes in organizational settings and how self-characterization sketches can be used to explore the development of work identities. Together, these methods shift the researchers’ gaze away from static notions of identity towards the processes by which it is constructed and reconstructed as social actors make sense of who they are, could be, or want to be in their specific organizational context. We believe that research methods that enable processual studies of identity in and around organizations are a promising route for a more nuanced understanding of identification and identity work (Ainsworth & Grant, 2012; Brown, 2015, 2022). On a related note, all the chapters of this Handbook share the notion of identity not as something fixed and simple but as something uncertain and thus requiring continuous identity work (see, for instance, Chapter 10), as something open, fluid (as in Chapter 11), paradoxical and conflicting (as in Chapters 6 and 13) and pluri-voiced (as in Chapter 5). So, the processual approach in the chapters has not prevented them from looking at the content of the identities as Pratt (2020) recommended. In reflecting on how we can move the study of identities forward, he states that we should see identities as ‘fuller’ and less empty since the content of these identities influences identity dynamics. The Handbook provides a good array of examples showing that despite holding a processual view, the contents of identities need to be acknowledged to fully understand the processes that deploy from them. As a case in point, all the chapters in Part V ‘Methods for eliciting personal meanings’ share the feature of exploring the content of the identities studied in terms of meanings to understand processes of identification. Adding a First-person Perspective Many identity researchers seek to study the personal, social, professional or role identities of others in organizational contexts. In the spirit of detaching themselves, researchers often purposefully avoid using their own experiences as data, either on their own or as part of a reflexive examination of the research process (Reissner, 2018). Even though autoethnography gained much momentum in identity research, some scholars reject turning the research gaze towards themselves (Winkler, 2018). Some might devalue the worth of the self as a source of data (Sparkes, 2002), thereby thinking of researchers as a resource for investigating the organizational world and not as the source for providing data about this world (Holt, 2003). Others might think that using their own experiences and memories as data for studying – for example, how they are immersed in identification processes within their academic institution – might not be of much value to the world outside academia. We suggest that anyone doubting the value of autoethnographic research should read Chapters 10 and 11. Both Grosse (Chapter 10) and Posselt (Chapter 11) demonstrate that engaging in identity work related to one’s own experiences can provide a powerful research approach for understanding processes of identification in organizational contexts. Even though both authors write the chapters from the position of identity scholars, they address everyday experiences made in organizational contexts. In that sense, Grosse reflects on the tensions that dominant understandings of entrepreneurship and growth create for his identification as an entrepreneur. He aptly shows how seemingly insignificant conversations can spark identity work and reflections about how to respond to an entrepreneurial culture that promotes a heroic picture of the person of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship as a venture

280  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations for economic growth. Similarly, Posselt addresses an everyday phenomenon by reflecting on flow experience. Writing about her own flow experiences, she highlights that flow constitutes an experience where a person is perhaps closest to themselves and, therefore, most authentic, yet also a situation in which the question of ‘Who am I?’ may not matter to the person. This chapter also shows how autoethnography is a useful method with which to reflect on authenticity and authentic selves, which is an established and current concern in identity research (Brown, 2020). In addition, Samper-Martínez and García Álvarez (Chapter 8) emphasize that netnography entails some autoethnographic work. This chapter describes the creation of an autoethnographic field notebook. Similar to ethnographic research practices, such a notebook is created by the netnographer to reflect on their own perceptions and can serve as a data source in netnography. Chapters 8, 10 and 11 demonstrate the value of adding a first-person perspective to the study of identity in organizational contexts. The authors show that autoethnography is not simply about the researcher’s own life but about the embeddedness in specific social and cultural settings, which provide the material for working on their identity. We believe that this constitutes the potential of these research methods – bringing the researcher back into the research and making them an integral part of data gathering, analysis, and interpretation, as advocated by scholars of reflexive scholarship (Hibbert, 2021). Certainly, autoethnography is a good illustration of reflexive scholarship because reflexivity is an essential part in it. However, as other research methods in this Handbook show, reflexivity is an essential part of our practice as identity scholars since we are always part of the object that we study and of the knowledge generated. Hence, ‘the quest to understand others is, importantly, also an endeavor to know ourselves’ (Brown, 2020, p. 904). Naturally Occurring Data In the light of critiques of creating data specifically for research purposes (e.g., Potter & Hepburn, 2012), various research methods in this Handbook seek to use naturally occurring data. In so doing, they try to establish a closer understanding of identity in the making within real-life situations. In Chapter 17, Whittle explains that various naturally occurring data can fruitfully be used in membership categorization analysis. As this research method seeks to study how language is used to categorize the identities of people, audio- or video-recordings of workplace interactions, as well as organizational texts, provide suitable material for analysis. Also, Grosse (Chapters 10), Posselt (Chapter 11) as well as Mmbaga et al. (Chapter 18) offer research approaches for studying material that has not been specifically created for the research itself. Autoethnographers, to a large extent, draw on written experiences and on notes and reflections continuously produced in their autoethnographic journey to make sense of self and culture. This material is hardly created for a specific research purpose but instead forms the pool of memorized data from which research ideas emerge. Also, autobiography uses memorized data in the form of published autobiographies. Such publications constitute the reservoir on which autobiography draws to study first-hand historical insights in order to learn about aspects of identity emphasized in everyday interactions. In Chapter 19, Love et al. explain how social media data, such as user comments on YouTube videos, can be leveraged to study identity. Studying conditions ‘in the wild’, as the authors put it, provides complementary insights

Epilogue: towards a methodological roadmap and beyond  281 into, for example, research conducted through laboratory studies. Finally, Samper-Martínez and García-Álvarez (Chapter 8) show how netnography draws on material created by online communities to study the formation of online social identities. The authors do, however, supplement the naturally occurring data from online communities with interviews to arrive at a unique combination of data produced for the research and material from real-life interaction. All the above chapters show the vast potential for studying identity and processes of identification by using material that has not been explicitly manufactured for research purposes. Drawing on naturally occurring data helps identity scholars to grasp how identity is constructed in situ – that is, in real-life organizational situations. The chapters also show that relevant data are not always readily available, particularly when organizations classify naturally occurring data as confidential. However, we believe that there is plenty of material publicity available that identity scholars can use – for example, mission statements, codes of conduct, training videos, and recording of speeches. In that sense, we encourage identity scholars to pay more attention to naturally occurring data either as stand-alone material or in combination with material produced for the purpose of the research. Levels of Identity The chapters in this Handbook offer a range of methods to study identity at individual, group, organizational and professional levels. In that sense, the Handbook invites identity scholars to become more reflective on the methodological opportunities available for studying a particular level of identity, which in turn has implications for both the research process and the results. For example, Cascón-Pereira et al. (Chapter 14) and Stephens and Higgins (Chapter 13) use the repertory grid technique and mask-making, respectively, to study professional identity. However, while the former addresses cognitive processes of identification, the latter is a more artistic form of investigating identity that includes aesthetic issues (Taylor & Hansen, 2005). Furthermore, both methods are not confined to the study of professional identities but have the capacity to investigate other social identities. So, even though many of the methods in the Handbook address one particular level of identity, we hope that future identity scholars are inspired to creatively apply these research methods to other levels of analysis. Taking all chapters of the Handbook into account, it becomes apparent that most of them provide research methods for studying identity on an individual level. This might reflect the general trend in identity research in organizations where scholars seek to understand self-identities – that is, how individuals reflexively attach meanings to their self to develop understandings of who they are or could be. However, all chapters in this Handbook recognize and highlight the social character of identity, thereby emphasizing how identification is simultaneously informed by how people locate themselves within their social environment and how they are located by others in that very environment. As a case in point, Bentley et al. (Chapter 7) develop a novel research method for exploring a person’s social identities: social identity mapping. Furthermore, almost all chapters in this Handbook underline identity as a multi-level phenomenon. Several chapters seek to purposefully address identification on multiple levels. Gossayn et al. (Chapter 16) set out to investigate identity on individual, relational and collective levels. They illustrate how the purposeful combination of semi-structured interviews, the repertory grid technique, vignettes, and the implicit association test enables the study of leader identity construction on all three levels. More implicitly, other chapters also point to

282  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations several identification levels as being relevant for understanding the complexity of identity in organizational settings. For example, Reissner (Chapter 2) shows that narrative analysis enables identity scholars to study how individuals in their personal identity narratives respond to organizational change processes and thereby how they re-constitute their relationship to the organization. Also, Starbæk Bager (Chapter 4) seeks to implicitly bridge individual and collective levels of identity by studying how small storymaking in organizations contributes to relational identity construction. As such, the Handbook responds to calls for future identity research to be studied purposefully as a multi-level phenomenon (Alvesson et al., 2008; Ashforth, 2016; Brown, 2020). In that sense, identity research in organizational contexts would benefit from an enhanced understanding of how, for example, medical doctors identify (or not) as professionals and as members of a hospital, but also as members of a particular organizational unit and as individuals being embedded in a social network of colleagues with different cultural, ethnic, gender and other backgrounds defined by their social characteristics. We believe that the Handbook provides methodological foundations from which to ‘unpack’ intersectionality in processes of identification by investigating how various levels of identification interplay. Therefore, we encourage identity scholars to become braver in terms of both their aspiration to examine the intersection of various levels of identity and identification and their choice of research methods. We hope to have provided them with good examples to become so. Multiplicity of Data-gathering and Data-analysis Methods We purposefully decided on a Handbook of research methods. In that sense, we wanted to avoid it becoming a Handbook that only focuses on methods of either data collection or data analysis. With the benefit of hindsight, we believe this was a smart decision as the Handbook provides a collection of innovative research methods. However, the chapters also introduce the readers to a great variety of methods for gathering and analysing data. Referring to data collection, the chapters demonstrate that identity scholars can draw on a wide variety of data, such as semi-structured or ethnographic interview data (Chapters 9, 14, 15, 16), narratives (Chapters 2, 3, 18), self-portrayals (Chapters 15, 18), grids with personal meanings, self-characterization sketches and vignettes (Chapters 14, 15 and 16), answers to open-ended survey questions (Chapter 5), interactions (Chapter 4 and 17), memorized experiences (Chapters 10 and 11), organizational texts (Chapter 5), audio- or video-recordings (Chapters 4 and 17), social media data (Chapters 8 and 19), observational data (Chapters 8 and 9), visual data (Chapters 6 and 7) and bodily performances (Chapters 12 and 13). We hope that this multiplicity of possible data sources encourages identity scholars to stop relying on data gathered through semi-structured interviews and use the variety of other data sources instead. In addition to data gathering, the chapters in this Handbook also provide many ways to analyse material obtained through the above-mentioned data-collection methods. In that sense, identity scholars can, for example, use thematic analysis (Chapters 5, 14, 15 and 16), content analysis (Chapter 18), forms of narrative analysis (Chapters 2, 3, 5, 18), ethnographic (Chapters 8 and 9) and autoethnographic analysis (Chapters 10 and 11), listening guides and codebooks (Chapter 13), categorization methods (Chapters 14, 15), but also observe the local space alongside interview data (Chapter 9), analyse positions and positioning in interactions (Chapter 4, Chapter 7), use web scraping and sentiment analysis (Chapter 19), draw maps (Chapter 7), calculate statistical distances (Chapter 14), apply body mapping (Chapter 12),

Epilogue: towards a methodological roadmap and beyond  283 collective analysis for intervention as part of action research (Chapter 6), network analysis (Chapter 19) or even triangulate some of the former (Chapters 16 and 18), to name but a few ways of analysing data described in the chapters. Even though the sheer number of available data-gathering and data-analysis methods might be overwhelming for some, we believe it offers a tremendous number of possibilities for identity scholars to engage in creative research endeavours. Research Methods and Their Relationship with Theory Qualitative research methods are often understood as most suitable for theory building due to their inductive, interpretive and emergent character. However, the role of theory in qualitative theory is elusive (Nguyen et al., 2022), and as some chapters in this Handbook argue, qualitative research methods are not just confined to the role of building theory. Love et al. (Chapter 19) suggest that web scraping and sentiment analysis enable identity researchers to test theoretical propositions at scale. In that sense, the authors argue that applying qualitative methods also makes theory testing possible. Mmbaga et al. (Chapter 18) expand that view by explaining how autobiographies can be used to study identity in organizations in terms of theory building, theory elaboration, and theory testing. Theory building refers to using autobiographies to explore areas of identity research with limited investigation or mixed findings. In addition to theory building, the research method can also be used for theory elaboration and theory testing. The former refers to the identification of moderating or, in any other way, influencing conditions and the definition of clear boundaries for relationships related to theories of identity in organizations. The latter suggests testing theoretical aspects using autobiographies as a key data source. Even though only Chapters 18 and 19 address the role of qualitative research methods for testing theory in identity research, they point to an important aspect. Research methods can contribute in diverse ways to the development of theoretical knowledge on identities and identity dynamics in organizational contexts. Therefore, it might be too simplistic to assume that qualitative methods are only useful for theory building while the role of quantitative methods is theory testing. Rather, the research methods included in this Handbook foster a more diverse understanding of the relationship between methodological approach and theory. In that sense, we believe that the Handbook has the potential to establish amongst identity scholars a more innovative stance towards the various roles that both methods and theories can play in their research.

BEYOND RESEARCHING IDENTITY By definition, identity holds a pragmatic root since, in understanding ‘who I am’ as it is originally inscribed in the Oracle of Delphi, by ‘knowing thyself you will know the universe and the Gods’ (Nosce te ipsum and nosces universum et deos). So, identity research offers a unique scenario for connecting understanding to practice. Consequently, while some research methods included in this Handbook primarily serve to study phenomena related to identity, others are more performative in that they help develop research participants’ identities and/or solve their identity-related dilemmas or conflicts through developing self-awareness, self-regard, self-authorization and authentic self-experiences. In that sense, they either combine research

284  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations with education or practical interventions. For instance, dance (Chapter 12) and mask-making (Chapter 13) derive from educational interventions that were subjected to more systematic and rigorous interrogation to further the current understanding of identity and identification. For example, mask-making can spark students’ understanding of the various facets of the professional identity developed in their university education. While students experience identity transformation in professional degree courses, this transformation is accompanied by identity conflict and struggle (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Offering students the opportunity to express identity conflicts through an artful intervention, such as mask-making, can raise their awareness of the multiple professional identities available to them and help them reconcile tensions between the inward and outward self. Similarly, social identity mapping (Chapter 7) and the repertory grid analysis (Chapter 14) derive from research in leadership development, thereby indicating the potential to support professional development and consultancy interventions. In so doing, Cascón-Pereira et al. (Chapter 14) refer to the repertory grid’s heritage in counselling and therefore its potential for coaching to help individuals understand themselves better and to attain their desired selves and be aware of what personal meanings are hampering the achievement of their desired goals. They further refer to the use of the repertory grid in a variety of other human resource management practices such as employee selection and training. In a scholarly environment that increasingly expects real-world impact (UK Research and Innovation, 2022), research methods that can be combined with teaching and/or managerial practice have the potential to achieve both theory development and a real effect on professionals, organizations and societies. Also, autoethnography (Chapters 10 and 11) can be applied as a mentoring tool. From Grosse (Chapter 10), we can learn how his engagement with autoethnography helps him come to terms with the tensions inherent in his identity as an entrepreneur. Since being an entrepreneur means continuously developing, maintaining, and changing one’s entrepreneurial identity, autoethnography can provide an approach for reflection. Recent research on sustainable entrepreneurship suggests tensions as such entrepreneurs seek to simultaneously reach economic, social and environmental goals (Boyd et al., 2009). Creating awareness of potential conflicts that could arise from attempts to meet this triple bottom line, autoethnography could serve as a method for creating self-reflexivity among sustainable entrepreneurs. Turning to managers, in their collaborative autoethnography Kempster and Steward (2010) show how both authors engaged in various circles of narrative writing and examination to arrive at an authentic narrative that enables them to learn about the experience of situated learning of a senior manager. Even though they decided to publish the results of their collaboration in a research article, they also illuminate the power of autoethnography for providing managers with the opportunity to engage in reflexive thoughts about their role, position, and ultimately, their identity. In a later publication, Kempster and Iszatt-White (2013) revisit autoethnography as a non-directive method used in leadership development. They suggest using autoethnography in co-constructed coaching, arguing this to be a prolific method for executive coaching that enables critically reflexive dialogue. All in all, these research methods illustrate a paradigm change in research that requires studies not only to develop knowledge on identity and identity dynamics but also at the same time make an impact on society, as in action research through intervening with research participants by developing their self-awareness. In this regard, identity studies are privileged because they have the potential to foster reflexivity in participants and researchers. In so

Epilogue: towards a methodological roadmap and beyond  285 doing, the study of identity can enable us to get a better grasp of ourselves as researchers and promote the research participants’ understanding of how they and others are situated in the organizational world.

REFERENCES Ainsworth, S., & Grant, D. (2012). Revitalizing scholarship in identity studies. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 28(1), 60–62. Alvesson, M., Ashcraft, K. L., & Thomas, R. (2008). Identity matters: Reflections on the construction of identity scholarship in organization studies. Organization, 15(1), 5–28. Ashforth, B. E. (2016). Distinguished scholar invited essay. Exploring identity and identification in organizations: Time for some course corrections. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 23(4), 361–373. Boyd, B., Henning, N., Reyna, E., Wang, D., & Welch, M. (2009). Hybrid organizations: New business models for environmental leadership. Greenleaf Publishing. Brown, A. D. (2015). Identities and identity work in organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(1), 20–40. Brown, A. D. (2020). Identities in organizations: Some concluding thoughts. In A. Brown (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of identities in organizations (pp. 896–908). Oxford University Press. Brown, A. D. (2022). Identities in and around organizations: Towards an identity work perspective. Human Relations, 75(7), 1205–1237. Caza, B. B., Vough, H., & Puranik, H. (2018). Identity work in organizations and occupations: Definitions, theories, and pathways forward. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(7), 889–910. Hibbert, P. (2021). How to be a reflexive researcher. Edward Elgar Publishing. Holt, N. L. (2003). Representation, legitimation, and autoethnography: An autoethnographic writing story. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2(1), 18–28. Kempster, S., & Iszatt-White, M. (2013). Towards co-constructed coaching: Exploring the integration of coaching and co-constructed autoethnography in leadership development. Management Learning, 44(4), 319–336. Kempster, S., & Steward, J. (2010). Becoming a leader: A co-produced autoethnographic exploration of situated learning of leadership practice. Management Learning, 41(2), 205–219. Langley, A. (2007). Process thinking in strategic organization. Strategic Organization, 5(3), 271–282. Langley, A., & Tsoukas, H. (Eds.). (2016). The SAGE handbook of process organization studies. SAGE. Nguyen, T. N. M., Whitehead, L., Dermody, G., & Saunders, R. (2022). The use of theory in qualitative research: Challenges, development of a framework and exemplar. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 78, e21–e28. Petriglieri, G., & Stein, M. (2012). The unwanted self: Projective identification in leaders’ identity work. Organization Studies, 33(1), 1217–1235. Potter, J., & Hepburn, A. (2012). Eight challenges for interview researchers. In J. Gubrium, J. Holstein, A. Marvasti & K. McKinney (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft (pp. 555–570). SAGE. Pratt, M. G. (2020). Identity saves the world? Musings on how identity on where research identity has been and where it might go. In A. Brown (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of identities in organizations (pp. 881–895). Oxford University Press. Reissner, S. C. (2018). Interactional challenges and researcher reflexivity: Mapping and analysing conversational space. European Management Review, 15(2), 205–219. Sparkes, A. C. (2002). Autoethnography: Self-indulgence or something more? In A. P. Bochner & C. Ellis (Eds.), Ethnographically speaking: Autoethnography, literature, and aesthetics (pp. 209–232). AltaMira Press. Sveningsson, S., & Alvesson, M. (2003). Managing managerial identities: Organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle. Human Relations, 56(10), 1163–1193. Taylor, S. S., & Hansen, H. (2005). Finding form: Looking at the field of organizational aesthetics. Journal of Management Studies, 42(6), 1211–1231.

286  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations UK Research and Innovation (2022). Defining impact. Retrieved September 9, 2022 from https://​www​ .ukri​.org/​councils/​esrc/​impact​-toolkit​-for​-economic​-and​-social​-sciences/​defining​-impact Watson, T. J. (2008). Managing identity: Identity work, personal predicaments and structural circumstances. Organization, 15(1), 121–143. Winkler, I. (2018). Doing autoethnography: Facing challenges, taking choices, accepting responsibilities. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(1), 236–247. Ybema, S. (2020). Bridging self and sociality: Identity construction and social context. In A. Brown (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of identities in organizations (pp. 51–67). Oxford University Press.

Index

abduction and working hypotheses 74 Alvesson, M 14, 15, 16, 19, 59, 60, 71, 72, 130, 282, 284 analytical strategy in organizational small storymaking 44, 45–9 on participants/storymakers 44–5, 49–51 on sequential aspects questions and interactive accomplishments 44, 49 audience 15, 19, 27, 28, 29, 37, 38, 131 autobiographies 247 building theory 250–51 elaborating theory 251–2 establishing purpose and clarity 253–4 narrative approach 254 rigorous analysis of 254–6 testing theories 252, 253 using memorized data 280–81 autoethnographer(s) autoethnographic experiences and reflections 280–81 bringing in a world view 152 identities and 132 stories of 138 vulnerability and risks taken by 151 see also autoethnography autoethnography analytic 131 fieldnotes and diaries in 146 flow and 147–8, 149–50 identity research and 279–80 practicing autoethnography 145–6 reason for studying identity through calligraphy 146–7 strands of autoethnography 144–5 behaviour, identity and 124 'Big data' tools 264 bipolar construct 206 Repertory Grid Technique method and 220 bipolar scale 220 body-centered methods 158–70 body mapping 161, 164–5 Boje, D M 15, 23, 26, 41, 42, 43, 50, 66 bricoleur 62 Brown, A D 2, 4, 13, 14, 22, 26, 41, 56, 58–9, 62, 65–6, 71, 117, 191, 192, 201, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282

capacity-building, in research 4 CAQDAS (data analysis software) 250, 252, 256 see also NVivo categorization 243 'category-activity puzzles' 238 category-bound activities and category predicates 236 'category predication work' 240 established categorization devices 240 character positioning 34 codebook 181, 182–3, 184–5 creating a 176–7 example of visual rhetoric and listening guide 177–80 example of visual thematic analysis rubric 181 narrative for the inner side (actual) mask 180 narrative for the outside (aspirational) mask 179 professional identity formation (PIF) 173–5, 185 codes 43, 108, 251, 264 narrative 165 open-ended 62 second-order 62 co-inquiry, aim of 170 'collective social identity' 266, 269 congruent construct 195, 197 conscious and unconscious identity work methods implicit association test 219, 220, 222 personal construct theory and RGT (with interviews) 219–21 Repertory Grid Technique 227 vignette (with interviews) 219, 220, 221–2 conscious gender stereotypes 218 context and turning points 28, 29, 30, 33, 34 conversation analysis (CA) analytical moves and 49 level of transcript detail and 52 membership categorization analysis and 234, 241–3 three-levelled positioning model and 51 cyber-ethnography 105 Czarniawska, B 13, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 26, 27, 138 dance and movement choreographic motifs 162 choreographic tools, as method to study somatic identity 162

287

288  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations in explaining body dimensions 159 for studying somatic identity 158, 160 see also movement and dance data-analysis methods, multiplicity of 282–3 data-gathering method, multiplicity of 282–3 dialogical approaches, to narrative analysis 16 dialogic feedback, as method to study somatic identity 162 discourse analysis, three-levelled positioning model and 51–2 discourse-analytical orientation, central metaphors and 43 discrepant construct 195, 197 discursive and narrative approaches 276–7 dissensus orientation 40–41 diversity, methodological 275–6 documentary research 126 embodiment 159 embodied awareness 163 embodied self-understanding 159 see also dance and movement; movement and dance; somatic identity emotions masks and 175, 176 mobile interviewing and 122 in movement and dance 167 in social dream-drawing 74, 79, 81 'emplaced methodology' 118 ethics in autoethnography 153 and privacy 270–71 ethnographers 110–11, 112 ethnographic approaches definition of 112 to narrative analysis 16 ethnographic heritage 153 ethnography(ies) autoethnography and 152 connective 105 cyber 105 identity work and 131–2 observation and 132 online community and 105 principles applying to 105–6 research problems and 132 use in different fields 105 virtual 104 ethnomethodological (EM) tradition 234, 241–3, 244 fieldnotes 145–6 first-person perspective, identity and 279–80 flow concept of 153

autoethnography and 147–8 identity of being in 150–51 free association and amplification strategies 75, 78, 84–5 generalizability 269–70 grid data matrix 196 Grounded Theory 56, 250 group membership 71, 89, 90, 92, 95, 98, 265 group/social identity 265 guided visualization, to study somatic identity 160–161, 163–4 hermeneutic phenomenological approach 76 Hogg, M A 59, 64, 261, 265, 266 holistic and categorical analysis 16 hybrid identities 42 'hypo-egoic functioning' 143 'hypo-egoic turn' 150 ideal self 109, 194, 195, 196, 197 identification conscious and unconscious processes of 278 socio-cognitive aspects of 276–7 identity(ies) 2, 26, 59, 117 adding first-person perspective 279–80 aspects of 276–7 beyond researching 283–5 consensus-oriented and monologic approaches to 41 environmentalist, place and making 125–6 individual 72, 285 multiple 26, 42, 71, 72, 201 ontological sense of self and 159 processual approaches to the study of 278–9 spatiality, temporality and relational and contextual nature of 277–8 struggles 131 tension 72, 79–81 see also identity change; identity formation; identity in organizations; identity research; identity theory (IT); masks and identity; multiple identities; organizational identity (OI); social identity(ies) identity change 21 congruent self-concept and 72 movement and dance and 158 movement performance and 160 as outcome of self-reflection and learning 159 in psychosis 95 as qualitative shift in narrative self-understanding 159 repertory grid technique and 279

Index  289 as type of narrative transformation 158 identity constellations 89 identity dissonance 181 identity formation adult development theory and 174 changes of 173–4 imperial identity formation stage 174 impulsive identity formation stage 174 learning and 174 identity in organizations construction of 40 dissensus-based and (counter-) narrative approaches 41–2 narratives and 26 see also organizational identity identity narratives 63–4 textual analysis of personal narrative 28–30 identity research ethnography and 279–80 in management and organization studies 2 methodological diversity in 276 mobile interviewing, benefits for 122–3 narratives in 13, 15–16 organizational 26, 42 role of place 120–121 temporality, spatiality and 277–8 identity standard 265 identity statements, developing 62–3, 64 Identity Theory (IT) 71, 72, 252, 261, 265, 266 identity verification 265 identity work 61 approaches to 71 emotional and cognitive processing toward self-congruence 81–2 repertory grid and 200–201 studying 71–2 value of social dream-drawing for studying 83–4 see also autoethnography for exploring identities and identity work; conscious and unconscious identity work methods; socioanalytic method for studying identity work implicative dilemmas (IDs) 195–6 implicit association test (IAT) 218, 222, 223 implicit social cognition 218 individual dream drawing, reflective processing of 76 individual identity 72, 265 individuals' biography, mobile interviewing and 122 individuals' identity construction, mobile interviewing and 121 informed consent 75, 84, 111, 112, 139 innovation, in research methods 2–3, 5, 282

'inter-active work' 125 interdisciplinary research/approaches 4, 45, 144, 170 intervention psycho-educational 96 social identity-informed 95 interview/interviewing data 17 'go-alongs' 118 'narrative interviews' 15, 17 qualitative interviews 5 questions 17, 22, 119 research interview 15, 19, 21, 22 semi-structured 219, 220 serial interviewing 15 sit-down 121–22, 123, 125, 126 walking interviews 'ride-along' 118–9, 126, 127 see also mobile interviewing Kelly, G 9, 189, 190, 191, 192, 206, 207–08, 215, 219, 220, 226 ‘constructive alternativism’ 207 individual core constructs 191, 192 Personal Construct Theory 190–191, 207 protocol 208, 210–211, 211–12, 215 repertory grid 207 self-characterization sketch 207–8, 209–15 techniques in therapy 207 Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) 166 Langley, A 26, 41, 42, 253, 255, 256, 278 language, performativity of 198–9 leaders co-constructing small stories and identities 51 eco- 50 identity construction 218–9 researchers and 50 learning and identity formation 174 as identity transformation 159 Likert-type scales 88 listening guide goal of 178 visual rhetoric and 177–80 longitudinal research 93, 106, 201, 202, 205, 206, 209 macro-level narratives 26 main image 30, 31, 34, 35 masks and identity 173, 185 analyzing 177–81 membership categorization analysis (MCA) 222, 241–3, 244

290  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations analyzing categories in management meeting 238–41, 242 categorical knowledge and reason for use in 237 category use in talk or text 237 category-bound activities and category predicates 236 data sources in 236–7 membership categorization devices 235 naturally occurring data in 280–281 origin of 234–5 reason for categories-in-use matter 232–4 social actions associated with category 237–8 membership categorization devices (MCDs) 235 meso-level narratives 26 meta-themes or narratives, identifying 62 microcosms 221 'microgeographies' 122–3 micro-level narratives 26 mobile interviewing benefits for identity research 122–3 forms of 117–8 limitations of 126, 127 meaning of 117 mobile vs. sit-down interviewing in identity research 121–2 perceptions of 122 place and identity 120–121 see also spatiality and temporality, in identity mobility 119, 127 moral order 240 motif(s) choreographic 162 structural and motif coding framework 167 teaching artist and 162 movement and dance movement-based performance coding and analysis 166–7 as method to study somatic identity 161 movement sequence 167 solo performance analysis 167 see also dance and movement; somatic identity multimodal analyses 51 multiple identities 26, 42, 71, 72, 201, 281 narrative analysis approaches to 16 key concepts of 14 qualitative design and 56 studying personal identity in narratives 282 three-levelled positioning model and 51 narrative coding 165, 166 narrative identity 158, 159, 160, 162, 166, 170, 248

'narrative interviews' 15, 17 narrative(s) 15 analysis 15–16, 17–21, 22 audience and 15 construction of identity 14 fragmented and formed 21 identifying possible meta-themes or 62 levels of 26–7 multiple identities and 26 reality 16 somatic identity resolution 169 story dynamics 42 see also identity narrative; personal identity narratives; personal narratives narrators audience and 29 in interviews 29 positioning of 49–51 researcher and 30 role of 27, 33, 34 netnography 104–6 defined 104 field of study and research method 110 flexibility 110 relationship between field of study and method 110 tools and 110 use of 112 observation see ethnography offline contexts, digitalization of 10 offline self 104 offline social environment 104, 110 online community 104, 105, 110, 281 online contexts anonymous 111 individuals’ behavior in 112 materialization of 104 online ethnography 105 online identity 109 online social identities 104, 110 online social spaces, anonymity of 111 open-ended codes 62 open-ended questions 15, 22, 57, 61, 120, 219 organizational identity (OI) 135 autobiographies and 249 defined 56 employees and 65–6 see also identity in organizations organizational instability, identity and 26 organizational small storymaking (OSS) dissensus-based dialogic organizational studies 40–41 identity in organizations 41–2 model, three-levelled positioning 51

Index  291 pattern matching 251–2, 254 performance analysis example 167–9 performative approach personal narratives and 28–9 the textual approach and 37–8 performative textual analysis analysis process of 30–34 challenges in gathering data for 38 Personal Construct Theory (PCT) 189, 190, 206, 207, 219–21 personal identity 131, 136 repertory grid as tool for studying 192–203 self-authorization of 81 see also individual identity; personal identity narratives personal identity narratives 13–24 narrative analysis 15–16 narrative construction of identity 14 plot in 16 see also personal narratives personal narratives 30–31, 33 approaching with performative lens 28–9, 30 to explore multiple identities and identity interplay 27–8 performative and textual analysis of 37 place and identity 120–121 platial context 120, 121, 127, 277 plot focusing and analyzing 13 narrative and 16 sequence of events and 14 and storyline analysis 13, 279 see also personal identity narratives plurivocity 58, 59, 65 Pratt, M G 42, 254, 256, 279 professional identity 131, 136, 165, 281 professional identity formation (PIF) 173–5, 185 psychodynamic and embodied aspects of identity 277–8 psychometric measurement device 95 qualitative data 22, 87, 91, 96, 117 qualitative interviews 5 qualitative survey 56, 67 advantages 65–6 analyzing 61–2 conducting 61 critical reviews 65–67 design of online OI survey 58–61 disadvantages 66–7 reflections of the efficacy of 64–5 self administered online qualitative surveys 57–8 questions follow-up 15

interviewing 17, 22, 119 open-ended 15, 57, 61, 120, 219 reality, narrative 16 recollection of events, mobile interviewing and 125–6 reflected appraisals 265 reflective expression 175, 184, 185 relational and contextual nature of identity 277–8 repertory grid (RG) 189 analysis of data 195–6 challenges 201–3 components of 192 data obtained via 202 design of 194–5 foundations of 190–192 as method for exploring personal constructs 207 repertory grid technique (RGT) 219–21, 223–6, 227 researchers netnography and 111 triangulations and 254 scenes, as element of textual analysis 29, 30, 31, 34 sedentary interviewing 119, 121, 127 self-administered online qualitative surveys 57–8 'self-as-subject and self-as-object' self-processing 150–51 self-authoring identity formation stage 174 self-categorization theory 88 self-characterization sketches protocol for analysis 208 research process 209–15 self-esteem 89, 191, 195–7, 218 self-expression and integration, authentic 81–2 selfhood 87, 159 self-reflection process 173 self-transforming identity formation stage 174 semi-structured interview 219, 220, 221 sense of self 87, 159 sequentiality, in narrative 14 serial interviewing 15 Silverman, D 17, 22, 117, 235 sit-down interviews 121–2, 123, 125, 126 'small data' methods 264 small stories 43–4 small story analysis (SSA) 42 social actions 237–8 social dream-drawing (SDD) 74–7 analyzing data 76–7 emotional and cognitive processing towards self-congruence 81–2 naive reading 78–9

292  Handbook of research methods for studying identity in and around organizations objective of 74 performance and survival anxiety 79–81 procedure followed during session 75, 76, 84 strategies used in 75 structural thematic analysis 79 thematic reflection on SDD session 76 value for studying identity work 83–4 social group connections, social identity mapping and 87–102 social identity(ies) 87, 104, 105, 108, 109, 113, 235 social identity mapping (SIM) 87–8, 98 development of 89–90 online version of (oSIM) 87, 93, 95, 96 procedure and steps of constructing maps 90 psychometric validation 88 social identity approach 88–9 validation of 93–5 social identity measurement and limitations 88–9 Social Identity Theory (SIT) 88, 205, 213, 233, 261, 265 socialized identity formation stage 174 social network games 108, 109 social network sites 104 social relationships, mobile interviewing and 122 social spaces 104, 108 socioanalytic method abduction and working hypotheses 74 identity work 71–2 the unconscious in socioanalysis 73 socio-cognitive aspects, of identification 277–8 socio-cognitive identities 276–7 somatic identity awareness, guided visualization for 163–4 background and conceptualization of 159–60 coherence and resolve 168 methods 160–63 space/time mapping 162 spatiality and temporality, in identity 277–8 stanzas, as element of textual analysis 29, 30, 31, 34 stimulus text 221 storyline focusing and analyzing 13 narrative and 16 storyline analysis see personal identity narratives storytelling, defined 15 storytelling organization theory (SOT) 42 structural and motif coding framework 167 structural thematic analysis 79 Sveningsson, S 14, 15, 16, 71, 72, 130, 284 talk identifying see membership categorization analysis teaching artist(s)

coding and interpretation of data 170 as guide to participants 158, 161, 162 motifs and 162 movement-based performance guidance from 160 see also dance and movement; movement and dance; somatic identity text-coding techniques 250 see also codes textual analysis application with performative lens 30–34 challenges in gathering data for 38 combining performative 37 elements of 29, 30, 31, 33–4 performance in the narrative 32–3 textual and performative analysis challenges in gathering data 38 ideal data for 37 for personal narratives 28–30 steps followed in 31–3 textual approach application of 30–31 personal narratives and 28–30 thematic analysis 275 for analyzing social dream-drawing data 76–7 based on Kelly's protocol 208, 212 as form of qualitative coding 264 structural identity tension 79–81 for text analysis 30 visual thematic analysis rubric 181 see also codes transformative learning 158 triangulation, researchers and 254 unconscious bias 218, 219, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228 brain processes 218 conflicts 190 hindrances 190, 195 identity work 71, 72, 218, 278 mind, defined 219 in socioanalysis 73 validity 270 verification see web scraping, sentiment analysis, and qualitative coding vignettes, as projective technique 221 virtual ethnography 104 visual rhetoric and listening guide 177–80 visual thematic analysis rubric 181 vulnerability, autoethnographers and 152 walking interviews 'ride-along' 118–9, 126, 127 Watson, T 37, 72, 248, 249, 278

Index  293 web scraping, sentiment analysis, and qualitative coding ethics and privacy 270–271 generalizability 269–70 validity 270 Weick, K 3, 14, 22, 23, 132, 133, 201 Whetten, D 2, 56, 59, 60, 61, 65

work identity(ies) impacts of 205 see also self-characterization sketches to explore work identities working hypotheses 74 writing notes, ethnography and 132–3