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11 - Resolving conflicts between status and distinctiveness in individual identity

A framework of multiple identity displays

from Part V - Status in the workplace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Kimberly D. Elsbach
Edited by
Jone L. Pearce
Jone L. Pearce
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Summary

In this chapter I discuss how a person might respond to conflicts between status and distinctiveness in individual identity. In particular, I look at how one might affirm an individual identity that is status-enhancing but distinctiveness-threatening on one level (e.g., being categorized as an “attorney” is high status, but not distinctive) and is distinctiveness-enhancing but status-threatening on another level (e.g., being categorized as a public defender for the poor in rural South Dakota is distinctiveness-enhancing, but low in status). I begin by examining the concept of individual identity and extant research that suggests how such identity may be threatened.

Individual identity and identity threats

Researchers of individual identity in organizations have suggested that a person’s self-concept may be defined by the categories chosen to define himself or herself. As Hogg and Abrams (1988, pp. 24–25) define it:

The self-concept comprises the totality of self-descriptions and self-evaluations subjectively available to the individual. It is not just a catalogue of evaluative self-descriptions, it is textured and structured into circumscribed and relatively distinct constellations called self-identifications … [where] self identifications are essentially self-categorizations.

Type
Chapter
Information
Status in Management and Organizations , pp. 304 - 330
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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