My career development journey to an authentic work identity

Purpose

This paper describes the author's lived experiences as a marginalised professional. It offers a nuanced understanding of the author's career development journey to an authentic work identity.

Design/methodology/approach

This analytic autoethnography, situated in multicultural, democratic South Africa, describes how historic moments in the country's political evolution influenced the author personally: the author’s sense of belonging and the author’s various roles socially, as well as at work.

Findings

The paper tracks selected stories in the author's professional career journey to an authentic work identity, as indexed by the themes: I am a Black South African; I am a gay professional and so, who am I at work? On reflection, the author realised how the bounded nature of authenticity allowed psychological safety while exploring congruency between the author’s multiple work identities.

Originality/value

The autoethnography demonstrates how multiple accounts by the same author may be a valuable way of contributing to the literature on authentic work identity. This autoethnographic work extends the authentic identity literature of marginalised professionals beyond the narrow authenticity–inauthenticity binary of most organisational studies. The paper introduces limited authentic work identity as an ameliorative self-concept in organisations.

Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of a Measure of Ethnic Identity Among Black South African Youth

The authors examined the dimensionality and psychometric properties of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) among Black South African adolescents (ages = 13-14; 52% female) representing several ethnic groups (Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu) and evaluated the measure for differential item functioning primarily among four ethnic groups (Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa, and Zulu). Results indicated that a two-dimensional model best represented the data, reflecting ethnic search/clarity and ethnic affirmations. Subsequently, we evaluated the equivalence of the MEIM among the four South African ethnic groups and a sample of African American adolescents (Mage  = 15.57 years; SD = 1.22; 51% female). Further analyses revealed that configural and metric models were excellent across the four South African ethnic groups and the African American group. However, scalar invariance (i.e., intercept) was not found; the item intercepts were different for the South African ethnic groups and African Americans. Findings are discussed with consideration for conducting research on ethnic identity among youth in South Africa.

When There Are Only Minorities: Identity and In-Group / Out-Group Orientations of Emerging Adults in Four South African Ethnocultural Groups

Intergroup relation perspectives stem from research in Western contexts with clear distinctions between the dominant and nondominant groups. In South Africa, with at least 13 different cultural groups and 11 official languages, no group is dominant in all life spheres. We examine the relationship between identity and in-/out-group orientation across Black-Zulu, Coloured (mixed racial ancestry), Indian, and White-Afrikaans emerging adults (N = 390; 75% females, M_age = 19.97 years, SD = 2.44). Results indicate that personal identity for all groups and ethnic identity for Black-Zulu, Indian, and White-Afrikaans emerging adults were important for intergroup relations. Black-Zulu, Coloured, and Indian emerging adults distinguish themselves less from others, whereas White-Afrikaans emerging adults are less open to others. Ultimately, the complexity of intergroup relations in South Africa has implications for the effective transformation interventions needed to counter experiences of threat and make group boundaries more flexible for emerging adults.

Investigating interdependent self in post-communist countries: A comparison of two Slovak and Danish generations

Some evidence suggests prevalence of collectivist values and interdependent self in post-communist Europe. However, research on social representations identifies a possible divide between Eastern Europeans' appreciation of their immediate social environment on the one hand and their suspicion toward impersonal collectives on the other. The current study aimed to capture this divide by investigating two types of interdependent self, namely relational and collective. Specifically, we compared self-descriptions in two Slovak samples-"old" with a communist experience (n = 80) and "young" without it (n = 80)-and used a country that has never been communist (Denmark; n = 80 x 2) to control for age effects. Results showed predominance of independent self in all groups, higher relational self in both old groups, and highest collective self among the young Slovaks. This indicates no association between communist experience and interdependent self, but a possible post-communist effect is suggested. Theoretically, the study substantiated the importance of disentangling interdependence.

Resisting and Persisting: Identity Stability Among Adolescent Readers Labeled as Struggling

This phenomenological case study explores the persistence of high school readers labeled as struggling as they described their responses to recurring, consistent, externally originating challenges to positive reading identities growing from their experiences in a Young Adult Literature (YAL) course. Through application of Weinreich’s identity theory, the article examines three challenges that emerged: the home environment, friend influence, and school norms and practices. Findings drawn from student-generated oral reflections gathered through Seidman’s interview protocol suggest that participants possessed the power to dissociate from perceived negative reading identities and enact agency over identities that conflicted with their desired reading identities. However, participants were particularly vulnerable to the influence of school-ascribed reading identities they defined as negative. Given the perceived validity of these ascribed labels, readers were challenged more significantly in their attempts to persist in the self-construal of their desired identity conceptions in response to in-school, rather than out-of-school, challenges.