IT-driven identity work: Creating a group identity in a digital environment (original) (raw)

A roadmap for research on identity in the information society

Identity in the Information Society, 2008

As research into identity in the information society gets into its stride, with contributions from many scholarly disciplines such as technology, social sciences, the humanities and the law, a moment of intellectual stocktaking seems appropriate. This article seeks to provide a roadmap of research currently undertaken in the field of identity and identity management showing how the area is developing and how disparate contributions relate to each other. Five different perspectives are proposed through which work in the identity field can be seen: tensions, themes, application areas, research focus and disciplinary approaches and taken together they provide a comprehensive overview of the intellectual territory currently being tilled by academia on this subject. This attempt at a coherent overview is offered in the spirit of debate and discussion, and the authors invite criticism, development and improvement. Another purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the range and type of research that the new journal Identity in the Information Society will publish, giving researchers working in the field a clearer idea of the scope of multidisciplinary study that is envisaged.

In Search of Shifting and Emergent Librarian Identities

Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research

This paper argues that while the classical, essentialist conception of identity is appealing due to its simplicity, it does not adequately capture the complexity of professional or individual identity. The appeal to essentialism in librarianship contributes to some serious problems for the profession, such as exclusion and homogeneity in the workplace, high attrition rates of minority librarians, exploitation and alienation of an underrepresented workforce, as well as stereotyping. This paper examines the theoretical landscape with regard to the identity question and proposes a more fitting alternative to essentialism, namely the relational conception of identity, and engages in a philosophical argument for the adoption of the relational account as a theoretical grounding for an understanding of the complex, fluid, and emergent nature of librarian identity within our dynamic profession.

Towards New Perspectives on Digitalization: Developing a Multi-dimensional Work Identity Lens

Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2023

Work identity deals with self-definition in work activities and memberships, which massively affect how employees react to digitalization. In the face of the changing world of work, there is increasing scholarly interest in work identity represented in numerous articles. Research produces several essential insights but appears fragmented in diverse conceptualizations and the investigation of multiple dimensions of work identity. Especially contributions in IS use a 'professional identity' conceptualization, which is fragmented and varies in definition clarity. We synthesize extant literature and offer a comprehensive work identity conceptualization to provide future research with orientation. The proposed conceptualization enables researchers to investigate individuals mutually based on their work-based self-identity, role identity, and social identities. Last, we present and discuss a research agenda that contributes to utilizing work identity as an analytical tool for digitalizing work.

The Antecedents of IT Identity Construction through Social Media Usage

2019

This paper aims to investigate how a dynamic IT artifact as Social Media influences IT Identity construction. Therefore, it considers the intertwinement of the two broad ways to view identity, internal and external, as stated by Carter (2012). Drawing on identity (Becker, 2003; Goffman, 1959; Tajfel & Turner, 2004) and communication literature (Shannon, 1948; Walther, 2008; Westley & MacLean Jr, 1957) we propose a conceptual model to explain its building process.

The Influence of Perceptions of Social Identity on Information Technology-Enabled Change

Group & Organization Management, 2005

Growth in the sophistication of information technology (IT) has led to the increasing importance of information accessibility in the workplace. The pervasiveness of the resultant knowledgebased economy has centered attention on issues of employee group identity. In this article we explore how employee perceptions of group membership guide the change outcomes of an organization implementing new information technology. Using a social identity framework, we investigate the salient intergroup relationships of two groups of employees (management and IT implementation teams) and how employees use their different group memberships to reframe positions of authority or knowledge around technology change. We discuss the extent to which perceptions of social identity legitimate institutional structures already in place despite the potential of new technology.

Identity Work and Organizational Identification

In this paper, I analyse five approaches to identity work - discursive, dramaturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive, and psychodynamic - and show how these are helpful in exploring the ways people draw on their membership of organizations in their constructions of self, processes generally referred to as organizational identification. Collectively, these approaches constitute a distinctive perspective on identities and identifications which suggests that they are ‘worked on’ by embedded social actors who are both constrained and enabled by context. In so doing, I draw attention to issues of agency and process, the always dynamic and complex, often fractured, and sometimes contradictory nature of identities and identifications, and raise a series of issues and questions for further research.