Identity

Conceptual Overview

The study of identity has a long history in organization studies, with an intellectual lineage that traces back, inter alia, to George Herbert Mead's symbolic interactionist studies of self-making, the functionalism of Talcott Parsons, the development of role theory by Robert Merton, the dramaturgical sociology of Erving Goffman, and Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodological studies of how social membership is achieved through talk.

Alison Pullen argues, after Garfinkel, that identities are changing but relatively stable, and moves toward the recognition of identity construction as a form of first order accounting that is characterized by paradox, fluidity, inconsistency, and constant emergence. However, in agreement with Hugh Willmott, it can be suggested that because of subjects' “equivocal positions,” identity construction is not a matter of resolving ambiguity and making clear-cut choices, but is characterized by confusion and conflict within the individual, including how those identities constructed relate to the organizational context. Identity formation in and around organizations is not only embedded in the demands of the present, but is constructed in terms of the conjunction of past and future. Identities are [Page 631]formed through an explanation of previous events (as episodes in an unfolding narrative) in a way that positions the constructor of the account advantageously for future episodes—indeed it may be a rehearsal for them.

Goffman reminds us that identities can be seen as masks that are actively used, manipulated, and created as resources for participation in the performance of an ongoing masquerade. Within this process are particular events that significantly affect the shaping of identity and that may change its course dramatically. Identities as masks are created and/or mobilized as resources in a project of becoming. They are outfits for participation in an ongoing masquerade—a masquerade that protects and shelters their lack and/or loss. Masks are a resource for people to work out who they are and what they need to do to become it. Masks can also give prominence to certain characteristics so as to showcase and define the face. Masks are therefore simultaneously false representations of identity, and essential parts of the creation of selves. Masks, however, do not just protect and conceal the face but over time take the shape of the face. The natural features of the face die and give way, dissolving into the permanence of the mask—and one can question, after Pullen, whether this leads to both the death and resurrection of the self.

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