Abstract:

This developmental paper examines how top management and leadership collectives re-imagine a collective identity when familiar interpretive frames no longer provide sufficient guidance in uncertain contexts. We draw on narrative identity scholarship to frame identity as something continually sustained and revised through shared stories, and we focus on narrative reflexivity as the collective capacity to question and re-articulate those stories under uncertainty. Empirically, we compare four longitudinal engagements across different organizational settings, in which we designed and facilitated reflexive episodes to support collective identity re-imagination. Preliminary analysis suggests that these engagements involved different identity objects: role, function, organisation, and professional category, leading to hypothesize of a typology of narrative collective identity work that varies systematically along two dimensions: the focus of identity work (internal coherence vs external legitimacy) and the collective’s boundary conditions (formalised vs dispersed).

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Identity

Keywords: Identity work;Narrative identity;Qualitative;Narrative methods;Action Research

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Mr. Alessandro Biffi