Past, Present and Future Research on Multiple Identities: Toward an Intrapersonal Network Approach

Psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers have long recognized that people have multiple identities -- based on attributes such as organizational membership, profession, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and family role(s) -- and that these multiple identities shape people's actions...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Academy of Management annals Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 589 - 659
Main Author Ramarajan, Lakshmi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Briarcliff Manor Academy of Management 01.01.2014
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Summary:Psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers have long recognized that people have multiple identities -- based on attributes such as organizational membership, profession, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and family role(s) -- and that these multiple identities shape people's actions in organizations. The current organizational literature on multiple identities, however, is sparse and scattered and has yet to fully capture this foundational idea. I review and organize the literature on multiple identities into five different theoretical perspectives: social psychological; microsociological; psychodynamic and developmental; critical; and intersectional. I then propose a way to take research on multiple identities forward using an intrapersonal identity network approach. Moving to an identity network approach offers two advantages: first, it enables scholars to consider more than two identities simultaneously, and second, it helps scholars examine relationships among identities in greater detail. This is important because preliminary evidence suggests that multiple identities shape important outcomes in organizations, such as individual stress and well-being, intergroup conflict, performance, and change. By providing a way to investigate patterns of relationships among multiple identities, the identity network approach can help scholars deepen their understanding of the consequences of multiple identities in organizations and spark novel research questions in the organizational literature.
ISSN:1941-6520
1941-6067
DOI:10.1080/19416520.2014.912379