scholarly journals To Co-Opt or To Be Co-Opted? The Role of Professional Elites in Strengthening Professional Control Vis-à-Vis Clients

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanna Eklund

This article studies how professional elites, as exemplified by first teachers (FTs)—a new prominent position for teachers in Sweden—respond to clashes between market and professional logics, and how this affects professional control vis-à-vis clients. Based on a collaborative ethnography, findings suggest that the professional elites use different responses to the clashes between the logics. Professional control can be strengthened by FTs co-opting the market logic strategically in the interest of the profession. However, FTs sometimes also succumb to cliental influence, becoming co-opted themselves by the market logic, which weakens professional control. Tentatively, context needs to be highlighted in order to understand why different responses are used, and in this identity work and relationships to managers seem essential to create a foundation for FTs to respond in ways that increase professional control vis-à-vis clients.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esethu Monakali

This article offers an analysis of the identity work of a black transgender woman through life history research. Identity work pertains to the ongoing effort of authoring oneself and positions the individual as the agent; not a passive recipient of identity scripts. The findings draw from three life history interviews. Using thematic analysis, the following themes emerge: institutionalisation of gender norms; gender and sexuality unintelligibility; transitioning and passing; and lastly, gender expression and public spaces. The discussion follows from a poststructuralist conception of identity, which frames identity as fluid and as being continually established. The study contends that identity work is a complex and fragmented process, which is shaped by other social identities. To that end, the study also acknowledges the role of collective agency in shaping gender identity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146735842199389
Author(s):  
Aaron Tham ◽  
Vikki Schaffer ◽  
Laura Sinay

This study probes the ethics of intrusive technologies for experimental research in tourism, through the lens of collaborative ethnography. Amidst the increasing uptake of technology to assess participant responses, the role of ethics in an experimental setting has received scant attention in tourism and hospitality. While intrusive technologies such as eye tracking, skin sensors and neuroscience headgear become more ubiquitous, the ethical boundaries of using such equipment are increasingly blurred and inconsistently approved. Seeking convergence of ethics concerning intrusive technologies is complicated when framing political spaces, target audiences and management of data obtained. Rather than view the role of intrusive technologies as a dichotomous outcome of ethical or unethical approaches, this paper argues that ethics needs to be contextually embedded with increased collaboration and co-creation in the application preparation and approval process.


2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joëlle Moret ◽  
Kerstin Dümmler ◽  
Janine Dahinden

AbstractBased on ethnographic material, this article explores how three groups of apprentices negotiate masculinities in the specific setting of a male-dominated vocational school in Switzerland dedicated to the building trades. We use an intersectional and relational perspective to highlight how the institutional setting of the school—mirroring wider social hierarchies—influences these young men’s identity work. The apprentices use three discursive dichotomies: manual vs. mental work; proud heterosexuality vs. homosexuality; and adulthood vs. childhood. However, the three different groups employ the dichotomies differently depending on their position in the school’s internal hierarchies, based on their educational path, the trade they are learning and the corresponding prestige. The article sheds light on the micro-processes through which existing hierarchies are internalised within an institution. It further discusses how the school’s internal differentiations and the staff’s discourses and behaviours contribute to the (re)production of specific classed masculinities, critically assessing the role of the Swiss educational system in the reproduction of social inequalities.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482095812
Author(s):  
Tiana Gaudette ◽  
Ryan Scrivens ◽  
Garth Davies ◽  
Richard Frank

Since the advent of the Internet, right-wing extremists and those who subscribe to extreme right views have exploited online platforms to build a collective identity among the like-minded. Research in this area has largely focused on extremists’ use of websites, forums, and mainstream social media sites, but overlooked in this research has been an exploration of the popular social news aggregation site Reddit. The current study explores the role of Reddit’s unique voting algorithm in facilitating “othering” discourse and, by extension, collective identity formation among members of a notoriously hateful subreddit community, r/The_Donald. The results of the thematic analysis indicate that those who post extreme-right content on r/The_Donald use Reddit’s voting algorithm as a tool to mobilize like-minded members by promoting extreme discourses against two prominent out-groups: Muslims and the Left. Overall, r/The_Donald’s “sense of community” facilitates identity work among its members by creating an environment wherein extreme right views are continuously validated.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (12) ◽  
pp. 1685-1708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joëlle Basque ◽  
Ann Langley

There has been growing interest in the rhetorical use of history to express organizational identity claims. Yet the evolving role of the founder figure in managerial accounts has not so far received specific attention. In this study, we examine how the founder figure is used to articulate, enact, stretch, preserve or refresh expressions of organizational identity, drawing on an 80-year magazine archive of a financial cooperative. We identify five modes of founder invocation, and show how distance from founding events leads to increasing abstraction in linkages between the founder and organizational identity claims. The paper offers a dynamic perspective on the mobilization of the founder in organizational identity construction as well as an understanding of how and why founders may remain established identity markers long after their demise.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-49
Author(s):  
Neva Bojovic ◽  
Valérie Sabatier ◽  
Emmanuel Coblence

This qualitative study of a magazine publishing incumbent shows how organizational identity work can be triggered when organizational members engage in business model experimentation within the bounded social setting of experimental space. The study adds to the understanding of the strategy-identity nexus by expanding on the view of business models as cognitive tools to business models as tools for becoming and by understanding the role of experimental spaces as holding environments for organizational identity work. We show how an experimental space engages organizational members in experimental practices (e.g. cognitive, material, and experiential). As firms experiment with “what they do,” organizational members progressively confront the existing organizational identity in the following ways: they engage in practices of organizational identity work by coping with the loss of the old identity, they play with possible organizational identities, and they allow new organizational identity aspirations to emerge. In these ways, experimental spaces act as an organizational identity work space that eventually enables organizational identity change. We identify two mechanisms (i.e. grounding and releasing) by which an organizational identity work space emerges and leads to the establishment of a renewed organizational identity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-226
Author(s):  
Sanna Inthorn

This article investigates the role of radio in older women’s everyday lives. Based on interviews with listeners in Britain and Germany, it argues that patriarchy structures women’s radio listening into old age. The women who participated in this study accommodated their radio listening to their role as housewives, deliberately choosing content that does not distract from their work and making sure they do not invade their husbands’ space with radio sound. Across their radio day, older women move in and out of different forms of listening, characterized by different levels of attentiveness. They enjoy radio as background noise to domestic labour, but they also use radio as a resource for identity work and a critical engagement with gender politics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 746-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hila Lifshitz-Assaf

Using a longitudinal in-depth field study at NASA, I investigate how the open, or peer-production, innovation model affects R&D professionals, their work, and the locus of innovation. R&D professionals are known for keeping their knowledge work within clearly defined boundaries, protecting it from individuals outside those boundaries, and rejecting meritorious innovation that is created outside disciplinary boundaries. The open innovation model challenges these boundaries and opens the knowledge work to be conducted by anyone who chooses to contribute. At NASA, the open model led to a scientific breakthrough at unprecedented speed using unusually limited resources; yet it challenged not only the knowledge-work boundaries but also the professional identity of the R&D professionals. This led to divergent reactions from R&D professionals, as adopting the open model required them to go through a multifaceted transformation. Only R&D professionals who underwent identity refocusing work dismantled their boundaries, truly adopting the knowledge from outside and sharing their internal knowledge. Others who did not go through that identity work failed to incorporate the solutions the open model produced. Adopting open innovation without a change in R&D professionals’ identity resulted in no real change in the R&D process. This paper reveals how such processes unfold and illustrates the critical role of professional identity work in changing knowledge-work boundaries and shifting the locus of innovation.


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