Framing Identity & Change in the Experience of Interns

The definition and framing of identity in scholarly work often focuses how an individual conducts identity work in response to identity regulation in order to construct a coherent self. This study expands upon this framework by illuminating the ways that undergraduate interns frame what identity is and the consequences of their framing for their resulting identity construction (identity work). Based on in-depth qualitative interviews, this study demonstrates how participants either framed identity as a stable entity or fluid construct. This study encourages the exploration and discovery the colloquial ways workers define and discuss identity, so that scholars can understand how identity is communicatively constructed and interacted in everyday talk. Keywords: identity, identity work, identity regulation, identity construction FRAMING IDENTITY AND CHANGE 3 Framing Identity and Change in the Experience of Interns Critical scholars note that organizations’ power no longer lies in the direct orders of a line manager, the rate of an assembly, or the rules of bureaucracy; organizations’ control their employees by influencing and shaping their identities (Barker, 1993; Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007; Deetz, 1992). As control becomes more unobtrusive, individuals aren’t as aware of it, which gives them little to no ability to recognize that regulation is occurring or resist to it (Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007; Wieland, 2011). The subtle ways that organizations shape employees’ identities creates an environment where individuals are unobtrusively molded into ideal workers. As Deetz notes (1992), the place to best see and understand delicate communicative processes such as identity regulation and identity work is at times when they are not normalized, which creates an opening to see them take place as the individual becomes accustomed (Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007). Undergraduate students entering the professional sector for the first time in the form of internships provide an opportunity to see identity regulation and identity work because their professional and personal selves are contested and in negotiation given the liminal position that they occupy. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the ways individuals’ frame what identity is and how this framing affects their resulting identity work amidst organizational regulations of self. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with six undergraduate interns, I consider how the interns discuss the ways that they changed throughout their internship and the consequences of their talk for framing what identity is—how they conceptualize what is part of their selves. Identity in Organizational Contexts In the last two decades, organizational scholars have become more interested in identity as an area of study (Alvesson, 2010; Homer-Nadesan, 1996; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003; FRAMING IDENTITY AND CHANGE 4 Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). Organizational communication scholars have studied the phenomena of identity and offered a wide variety of theoretical contributions to the understanding of identity. Scholars believe that by understanding identity, they will better understand every other aspect of the organizational context (Alvesson, 2010; Homer-Nadesan, 1996; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003; Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). As one of the most popular topics in organizational studies, identity is defined in various ways and these definitions are disputed among scholars. One way to understand and interpret the vast field of identity literature is viewing it as being comprised of three primary theoretical perspectives: funcationalist, interpretivist, and poststructuralist (Alvesson, 2010; Homer-Nadesan, 1996; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). The functionalist conceptualization of identity has and continues to be the dominating perspective within the field of organizational communication. This theoretical conceptualization is represented in the statement made by Collinson (2003) that reads, “human beings as unitary, coherent, and autonomous individuals who are separate and separable from organizations” (p. 523, quoted in Alvesson, 2010). Scholars studying identity from this perspective focus on the individual as having a concrete, coherent, fixed and consistent identity (Alvesson, 2010; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003; Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). The second conceptualization of identity is that of the interpretivist. Interpretivists view identity as both emerging from social interactions and being constructed out of various relational expectations (Prichard, 1999). Mead explains: A person is a personality because he [sic] belongs to a community . he takes its language as a medium by which he gets his personality, and then through a process of taking the different roles that all the others furnish he comes to get the attitude of the FRAMING IDENTITY AND CHANGE 5 members of the community (as quoted in Prichard, 1999, p. 8). According to Mead, identity is constructed through an active, subjective self that drives all that creates an identity (I) and the objective self, which is the compilation of the perspectives of how others view an individual (me) (Prichard, 1999). This theoretical approach, known as symbolic interactionism, is centered on the concept that identity is constructed, and reconstructed through social interactions. Therefore, interpretivists acknowledge the ability of individuals to maintain some agency, yet they are moderated through the concept that identity is formed through social interactions and therefore individuals’ agency is also limited by those that surround them. The interpretivist perspective concludes that individuals do not maintain a concrete identity as assumed by the functionalists. Interpretivists also reject the idea of fragmentation as assumed by the poststructuralist perspective (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). The interpretivist perspective sees the complexity of identity as it is shaped through self, work, and organization (Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008). The third lens to view the theoretical conceptualization of identity is from the view of poststructuralists. As anti-essentialists, they reject the idea that identity lies within the individual in a static sense; rather, they are interested in subject positions that are negotiated and renegotiated constantly in discourse (Homer-Nadesan, 1996; Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). According to Homer-Nadesan (1996), “Poststructuralists locate identity, and the meaning it implies, in language use” (p. 50). By locating identity in language, identities (or subject positions) are seen as multiple, varying, and partial because language holds multiple, varying, and partial meanings in each context. Thus identity from a poststructuralist perspective is never concrete, definite, or complete and is influenced by a multitude of discourses and forces within society. Tracy and Trethewey use the term “crystalized selves” to describe the multiplicity of FRAMING IDENTITY AND CHANGE 6 discourses and facets that each person’s identity contains (2005, p. 170). In defining identity as crystallized, they seek to move away from the idea that individuals have “real” and “fake” identities to instead focus on varying, partial, and multiple identities. Poststructuralists reject the essentialist view of functionalists that assumes individuals maintain a consistent self and identity. Thus, they are more interested in the discourses that shape and routinize subject positions than the individual identity. In this study, I take the interpretivist perspective of identity to understand agency and limitation that young adults maintain over their identities as they enter the professional world and navigate their contested professional and organizational selves (Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). In order to better understand how individuals’ identities are shaped through social interaction, and highlight individuals’ agency over their identities, I will utilize the interpretivist framework of Alvesson and Willmott (2002). According to Alvesson and Willmott, individuals’ identities are shaped within organizational contexts through the process of identity regulation and identity work. In using this framework, I view identity as “the self as reflexively understood by the person” (Giddens, 1991, p. 53). While drawing upon Giddens’ (1991) conceptualization of self, I understand identity as the narrative that individuals’ construct in order to create a coherent, consistent, socially acceptable self (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Giddens, 1991; Wieland, 2010). Identity can include a variety of aspects of an individual such as his or her personality, demeanor, knowledge, skills and background as they are reflexively enacted. In this study, I am interested in both 1) the process of constructing a self through identity work and identity regulation and 2) framing what counts as identity. The former—identity construction—refers to the communicative processes by which one crafts a narrative of the self—an answer the to the question “Who am I? ” The latter—framing identity—refers to FRAMING IDENTITY AND CHANGE 7 socially constructing what identity is and is not. By understanding how they conceptualize identity through framing, I seek to consider the consequences of particular ways of framing identity for their identity work in how they construct self in response to organizational regulations of self. Identity regulation is the intentional and unintentional modality by which organizations control and shape members; identity regulation is accomplished both by individual organizational members (e.g., a manager) as well as by other organizational actors (e.g., written texts) (Alvesson & Willmott). Thus organizational control is aimed at the identities of organizational members and attempts to shape individuals into persons who act beneficently for the company (Alvesson & Willmott). Identity regulation occurs through a variety of modalities that t