A Critical Examination of Identity Regulation: The Case of Corporate Real Estate

This thesis adopts a critical management framework to examine identity regulation by exploring the narratives of a group of Australian corporate real estate workers in the Surfers Paradise area of Queensland‟s Gold Coast region. Corporate real estate firms have features that are described in the organisation studies literature as denoting ambidextrous organisations. Identity regulation has not previously been studied in this context. In some real estate settings, the characteristics of ambidextrous organisations, i.e., the presence of different, simultaneous and evolving organisational forms, allow traditional methods of control to operate side-by-side with other less familiar modes. Identity regulation is important as a topic of research as contemporary work and flexible employment practices challenge the ability to use formal modes of control, and even challenge informal controls such as culture change. Identity regulation, endemic to all organisations to some degree, will also pervade real estate work. Real estate employees can be co-opted into the dominant management discourses that are the “markers” of identity regulation and control, despite the nature of the industry and the unconventional ways in which some real estate employees might work. Although the prospect of employees co-creating and regulating their own identities might be seen as a way to escape oppressive constraints, in some real estate contexts identity regulation may not appear to be overtly oppressive or pervasive, and therefore narratives of resistance may be difficult to unearth. However, for particular groups of real estate salespeople, especially those elites accorded special status by virtue of their performance, the setting might give rise to opportunities for them to resist control through new emerging discourses of resistance that re-define their identities. Some might appear to appropriate the organisational identity narratives, but might also negotiate and frame their identities through competing discourses within the dominant discourses that have the potential to resist management‟s identity regulation attempts. These new discursive practices, resistant or otherwise, can arise in response to the fluid and dynamic nature of social interaction. It is these discursive practices that are investigated in this thesis. The key questions that the thesis addresses are: how are meanings of identity regulation framed in the narrative accounts given by individuals working in an ambidextrous organisational context such as corporate real estate? A second question asked is: if there are possibilities for micro-emancipatory practices arising from identity regulation, how might they be manifested in these accounts? Third, do these accounts illustrate novel or previously unexplored forms of resistance in terms of self-identity regulation? And lastly; what does this suggest for re-theorising control in organisation studies? Whereas much of the literature deals with identity regulation as a form of domination, in the critical literature it is also seen as a joint project between management and employees that may be neither overt nor premeditated. However, arguments are emerging that even in non-traditional settings, identity regulation is an intentional and pervasive mode of control. It is possible that certain types of real estate sales people, those working in the environments of ambidextrous organisations, embrace the identities offered by the company as a means to professionalise and legitimise their work to a range of others. However, despite a perhaps willing co-option of management‟s dominant identity discourses (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002, p. 620) by the sales “elite”, there may be other narratives of identity regulation in the identity work of real estate sales people. If new narratives are present, they may indicate new forms of identity work that may, or may not be, expressions of resistance. Innovative identity work may emulate established modes of control, or it may indicate new ways in which employees resist control. Within any narratives of resistance there may be traces of micro-emancipatory possibilities in the way real estate salespeople craft and regulate their self-identity work. New discourses of identity regulation may be an indication of an expanding space for resistance, which may allow particular real estate workers to devise and embrace micro-emancipatory possibilities. In addressing the question of how experiences of identity regulation are represented in the narrative accounts of individuals working in an ambidextrous organisational context such as corporate real estate, several contributions are made. Several possibilities for micro-emancipatory practices arising from identity regulation are manifested in the narratives of the research subjects. These accounts and anecdotes reveal alternative identity discourses which are either novel or might be interpreted as unexplored forms of resistance in terms of self-identity regulation. The thesis invites researchers of individual (self) identity regulation to explore discourses that extend past organisational boundaries, and to pay greater attention to micro-emancipatory practices that might appear in more mundane contexts of everyday work in order to draw on theory that acknowledges the fluid nature of contemporary work. Methodologically, the thesis demonstrates a reflective and reflexive approach which underscores the relevance and contribution that interview research can make to critical studies of identity regulation.

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