Identity Work, Itinerant Careers, and Management Education
Description
I investigate how and where individuals develop, revise and consolidate identity narratives that afford them some degree of self-esteem, a sense of direction and purpose, and social legitimacy, in the context of careers that feature discontinuities, mobility and uncertainty. Specifically, I am interested in the identity development of individuals who no longer expect or desire employing organizations, and perhaps even nation states, to provide them with predictable career trajectories, self-definitions and behavioural prescriptions for a lifetime. My research suggests that management education in general, and whatever goes under the banner of "leadership development" in particular, serve an important if not always conscious social function for this population.
Jennifer Petriglieri and I describe this function as providing an "identity workspace," that is, a social context that sustains the pursuit of identity transition and consolidation projects. Besides enriching participants with knowledge and equipping them with skills, management and leadership programs help them address existential, practical and cultural questions-questions like "Who am I?" "What should I do?" or "What does it mean to manage, lead, and organize?" Researching how this function is performed, developing pedagogies to perform it purposefully, and debating what performing it well means, therefore, are efforts of great significance. Given the roles participants in such courses have or end up taking in influential institutions, the ways they answer these questions have implications not only for their personal and professional trajectories, but also for their organizations and society at large.