The Glass Slipper: 'Incorporating' Occupational Identity in Management Studies

Academy of Management Review
The Glass Slipper: 'Incorporating' Occupational Identity in

Management Studies
Journal: Academy of Management Review
Manuscript ID: AMR-10-0219-Original.R3
Manuscript Type: Original Manuscript
Identity, Occupations, Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Communication

Keyword:
(Organizational)
Page 1 of 56 Academy of Management Review
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THE GLASS SLIPPER:
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8 “INCORPORATING” OCCUPATIONAL IDENTITY IN MANAGEMENT STUDIES
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13 Karen Lee Ashcraft
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15 University of Colorado Boulder
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17 karen.ashcraft@colorado.edu
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22 Acknowledgments
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24 The author wishes to thank Associate Editor Gerardo Okhuysen and three anonymous reviewers
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27 for their excellent feedback and insightful guidance. The ideas formulated here are the result of
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29 conversations with many people over time and place, and I am most grateful for their thoughtful
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comments and contributions.
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Academy of Management Review Page 2 of 56
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2 Abstract
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4 Management scholars have long separated the study of work and diversity, based on the
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7 assumption that the nature of work itself is not affected by race or gender. Research on
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9 occupational segregation invalidates this assumption, confirming that we judge the nature of
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11 work in large part by the social identities aligned with it. Management theory has yet to digest
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14 this evidence due to a unilateral view of the work-practitioner relation (i.e., people derive
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16 identity from work), which conceals a reciprocal relation (i.e., work derives identity from
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associated people). This paper builds a bilateral view that accommodates available evidence by
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21 theorizing a new glass metaphor—the glass slipper—to capture occupational identity by
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23 association as it yields systematic forms of advantage and disadvantage. The glass slipper
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elucidates how occupations come to appear ‘naturally’ possessed of features that fit certain
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28 people yet are improbable for others. The paper thus contributes to management knowledge by
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30 redefining the current division of scholarly labor as a consequential theoretical problem and
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33 developing the requisite theoretical tools to redress that problem. Through the glass slipper, the
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35 paper theorizes collective occupational identity and its relation to other social identities in a way
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37 that fosters the sustainable integration of work and diversity studies.
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42 Key words: work; diversity; organizational and occupational identity; occupational segregation;
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professionalization; complex work; embodied social identity; gender, race, and other relations of
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47 difference
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2 Management scholars have long split the study of work and diversity. We presume it is
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4 reasonable for ‘mainstream’ research on the nature of work to proceed apart from ‘diversity’
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7 research on the allocation of social groups to certain lines of work (Ridgeway & Correll, 2000;
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9 Weeden, 2002). Although scholars in both areas acknowledge such phenomena as gender- and
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11 race-segregated occupations, we regard these as the purview of diversity studies. Meanwhile, we
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14 assume that the content, value, practice, and administration of work have little to do with issues
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16 like race or gender.
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Yet a profuse interdisciplinary literature on occupational segregation invalidates this
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21 assumption and, with it, our common division of work and diversity studies (e.g., Charles &
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23 Grusky, 2004; Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993). The findings of this research indicate that it is not
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tenable to theorize work and diversity separately because we judge the nature of work by the
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28 gender and race of associated practitioners. To a significant extent, that is, we know the character
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30 of an occupation by the company it keeps.
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33 Management research has yet to acknowledge this critical insight and integrate the study of
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35 work and diversity accordingly. Consequently, our theories of phenomena in which we take keen
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37 interest—such as professional identity and professionalization; contemporary work practices;
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40 work meaningfulness; recruitment, hiring, and promotion; occupational prestige; wage
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42 differentials and the distribution of wealth; and the diversification of occupations and
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organizations—may reflect serious distortions based on the erroneous assumption that so-called
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47 diversity issues play a peripheral, rather than constitutive, role in the organization of work.
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49 This paper seeks to advance available evidence that the nature of an occupation is tied to the
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52 social identities with which it is aligned. I argue that we have yet to incorporate this evidence due
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54 to a dominant unilateral view of the work-practitioner relation (i.e., people derive identity from
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56 work), which obscures a reciprocal relation (i.e., work derives identity from associated people).
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59 To foster a bilateral view, I theorize the glass slipper—a metaphor that encapsulates how
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2 occupations come to appear, by nature, possessed of central, enduring, and distinctive
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4 characteristics that make them suited to certain people and implausible for others. Like similar
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7 metaphors in management science, such as the glass ceiling (e.g., Powell, 1999) or glass cliff
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9 (e.g., Ryan & Haslam, 2007), the glass slipper exposes systematic forms of advantage and
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11 disadvantage, in this case stemming from alignment between occupations and social identities.
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14 The paper thus contributes to management knowledge at the levels of problem re-definition
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16 and theoretical development. I identify our common split of work and diversity studies, though
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conceptually convenient, as a consequential error enabled by our partial view of the work-
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21 practitioner relation. I then formulate the conceptual advances necessary to cultivate the
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23 integration of work and diversity research. Through the glass slipper, the paper theorizes
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collective occupational identity and its relation to other social identities in a way that grows key
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28 insights from occupational segregation scholarship in the context of management studies.
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30 CONVENTIONAL WISDOM OR AVAILABLE KNOWLEDGE? THE CASE FOR
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33 INTEGRATING WORK AND DIVERSITY RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT STUDIES
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35 Conventional wisdom in management studies holds that the nature of work and matters of
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37 diversity at work are independent phenomena that can be studied as such (Ridgeway & Correll,
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40 2000; Weeden, 2002). The resulting division of scholarly labor is enshrined in the Academy of
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42 Management’s demarcation of divisions (e.g., GDO). Yet a wealth of occupational segregation
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research confirms that so-called diversity issues are actually interdependent with the nature of
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47 work. Work is not only divided around social identities like race and gender; the very content,
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49 value, practice, and administration of occupations evolve in relation to affiliated social identities
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52 (e.g., Charles & Grusky, 2004; Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993). In light of this evidence, our
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54 customary split of work and diversity studies is empirically mistaken, albeit analytically
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56 expedient.
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2 Of course, doing scholarship inevitably entails punctuating phenomena in ways amenable to
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4 study and dividing research labor accordingly. Our work demands drawing feasible conceptual
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7 lines; but some of these lines, when reified, become more problematic than others. This section
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9 makes the case that the separation of work and diversity studies is just such a line, creating a
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11 blind spot with major theoretical and practical consequences. I begin by marshaling the
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14 occupational segregation literature to show compelling evidence for what I call a collective-
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16 associative view of the work-practitioner relation. In this view, occupations assume aggregate
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identities by virtue of their alignment with other social identities. Hence, our split of work and
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21 diversity studies is misguided because it rests on counterfactual logic. Next, I explain that the
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23 collective-associative view cannot yet find a foothold in management studies because our current
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conceptual resources support only an individual-independent view, wherein practitioners form
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28 personal occupational identities that are discrete from other social identities.
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30 A collective-associative view: Evidence from occupational segregation research
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33 How do we come to know the nature1 of a line of work? How do we discern ‘mere job’ from
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35 ‘profession’, for example? Larson (1977: 14, original emphasis) explains that professionalization
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37 is a political project that is “inextricably bound to the person…It follows, therefore, that the
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40 producers themselves have to be produced if their products or commodities are to be given a
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42 distinctive form.” In their analysis of accounting, Kirkham and Loft (1993: 508) put the answer
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bluntly: “Whilst the nature and extent of any differences between the required skill, knowledge
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47 or expertise to undertake different accounting tasks remains contestable, such disputes are
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49 frequently resolved by reference to the class of person or persons who undertake them.” In short,
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52 professionalization succeeds by constructing practitioners as precious goods; and practitioners
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54 are constructed—as precious goods and otherwise—by invoking other social identities.
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56 Kirkham and Loft’s (1993) study of accounting vividly makes the point. Treating
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59 occupational identity as the collective essence or personality of a line of work, they trace the
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2 professionalization of accounting in England and Wales between 1870 and 1930. Ultimately,
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4 they demonstrate that gender was used as the primary means to upgrade accounting while
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7 downgrading bookkeeping and clerking. Accountants effectively cast their work as technical and
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9 elite by distinguishing between accounting and women and by feminizing men in nearby
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11 occupations. This research documents arresting institutional developments that followed this
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14 construction, such as the rise of educational systems enforcing professional value and changes in
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16 formal employment classifications, practitioner profiles, and task divisions. The study yields one
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stone in a mountain of evidence that work becomes known in relation to the social identities of
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21 affiliated workers (Arndt & Bigelow, 2005). If we think of occupations as having collective
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23 selves, that is, we are compelled to acknowledge empirical evidence for an associative view of
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the work-practitioner relation, wherein the nature of work is known by the company it keeps.
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28 At first, it may seem a stretch to anthropomorphize occupations in this way—as aggregate
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30 selves with identities—but there is good reason to do so. As elaborated later, this is precisely
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33 how we already conceive of organizational identity (e.g., Gioia, Schulz, & Corley, 2000). We
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35 also already recognize occupations in other collective terms, for example, as formal labor and
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37 professional associations, or as informal occupational communities and cultures (Bloor &
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40 Dawson, 1994; Trice, 1993; Van Maanen & Barley, 1984). Much like organizations, occupations
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42 are distinguished by collective identities, in that we treat lines of work as typified by central,
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abiding, and unique features (e.g., accounting is this, not that). Especially relevant here is
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47 Kirkham and Loft’s (1993: 511) observation that “occupations and activities, as well as people,
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49 have gender identities.” Indeed, forceful evidence that work itself has identity abounds when
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52 medical students of color are routinely mistaken for janitors or maids (Gamble, 2000), or when
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54 Belizean physicist Arlie Petters is presumed a server at a reception (Dreifus, 2003). In sum,
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56 acknowledging that occupations have collective identities means opening our eyes to their social
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59 identities as well.
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2 Though barely referenced in management studies, the massive interdisciplinary literature on
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4 occupational segregation2 (i.e., the division and hierarchy of labor by gender and race) confirms
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7 a collective-associative view, indicating two key forms of work-body association. The first is
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9 physical, or nominal (Britton, 2000), and entails demographic alignment between an occupation
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11 and certain social identity categories (e.g., the sex and race composition of practitioners). At
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14 issue here is who actually does the work, or more exactly, which socially coded bodies (e.g.,
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16 women or men, white or Latino/a). By far, most occupational segregation research documents
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this form of association (Anker, 1998; Charles & Grusky, 2004; McCall, 2001). Weeden (2002),
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21 for example, offers compelling evidence that occupational earnings are more affected by social
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23 closure, the exclusion of particular people, than by knowledge complexity. Tomaskovic-Devey
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and colleagues (Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993; Tomaskovic-Devey, Kalleberg, & Marsden, 1996;
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28 Tomaskovic-Devey & Skaggas, 1999) also find that wage and the labor process—such as degree
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30 of supervision and autonomy, task complexity and routinization, and promotion opportunities—
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33 develop around the race and gender profile of those doing the work. In short, we discriminate
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35 against work, not just people, on the basis of who regularly does it.
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37 But it is not only who literally performs the work that matters. Recent studies demonstrate
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40 the salience of symbolic, or ideological (Britton, 2000), alignment as well. At issue here is who
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42 is discursively or emblematically associated with the work, or what we might call figurative
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practitioners. While studies of physical alignment are largely concerned with actual practitioners
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47 (e.g., 82% of X are white women) and sometimes usual practitioners (e.g., variance aside, X is
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49 normally a white woman) (Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993), studies of symbolic alignment stress
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52 figurative practitioners (e.g., the mythic X exudes young, attractive, vibrant, deferential,
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54 heterosexual, white femininity), or how work is coded through social identities (e.g., the sex-
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56 typing of tasks; see Bradley, 1989; Cohn, 1985). Whereas most research on physical alignment
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59 favors quantitative methods that reduce social identities to bodily variables (e.g., race category or
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2 binary sex), research on symbolic alignment conceives of social identities as evolving historical
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4 constructions that entail embodied performance and bodily imagery.3 This literature shows that
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7 strong discursive links develop between figurative bodies and occupations; and these symbolic
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9 associations can support, run counter to, or summon changes in the physical bodies doing the
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11 work as well as the embodied practices the work entails (Alvesson, 1998; Arndt & Bigelow,
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14 2005; Kirkham & Loft, 1993).
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16 Hinze (1999), for example, examines the social construction of specialty prestige in the
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medical profession. She finds that men and women invoke gender symbolism to explain
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21 specialty complexity and value, such that surgical work linked to forceful hands and sizeable
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23 ‘balls’ ranks above the so-called softer, emotionally delicate work of pediatrics and psychiatry.
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Ely and Meyerson (2010) show how organizational imperatives (e.g., safety initiatives) can alter
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28 such symbolic links, reconfiguring the gender of work in surprising ways (e.g., decoupling
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30 tough, risk-prone masculinity from dangerous work on oil rigs).
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33 As these illustrations suggest, research on symbolic alignment affirms yet also complicates
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35 the relationship between social identities and the nature of work. Specifically, symbolic
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37 association brings the social construction of bodies squarely into the study of social identity,
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40 exhibits a range of ways that bodies real and imagined are invoked as figurative practitioners to
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42 construct the nature of occupations, and affirms the contextual specificity of this process.
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Pulling physical and symbolic alignment together, we can put the collective-associative claim
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47 this way: The identity of work is constructed in relation to the embodied social identities
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49 associated with it, though we are just beginning to comprehend the multiplicity of forms this may
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52 take and the means by which it occurs. I use the term ‘embodied social identities’ to capture
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54 social constructions of the body that yield immediately recognizable categories of people as well
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56 as typifications about those categories, which we negotiate (ascribe, enact, resist, transform, and
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59 so on) as we inhabit and encounter bodies in daily life (Fenstermaker & West, 2002). Studies of
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2 physical alignment stress the ready-made categorizations of people, whereas research on
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4 symbolic alignment accentuates the complex situational negotiation of typifications about them. I
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7 stress gender and race because the preponderance of occupational segregation research is
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9 addressed to these, and especially to the former. But embodied identities stemming from
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11 ethnicity and national origin, sexuality, ability, age, and religion (to name a few) also become
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14 pivotal to occupational identities, as do localized variations and combinations, such as ‘nerd’ and
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16 ‘jock’ or gay, straight, and ‘metrosexual’ strands of masculinity.
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As evident in the latter examples—wherein gender, ability, age, and sexuality intertwine—
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21 relations among social identities are not adequately conceived alongside one another, in terms of
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23 addition or multiplication (i.e., this plus/times that). Rather, from an embodied perspective, they
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are inevitably entangled and mutually dependent, read in light of one another (Monaghan, 2002;
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28 West & Fenstermaker, 1995; Wolkowitz, 2006). Indeed, complex intersections among social
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30 identities serve to organize similar work in radically different ways. Take the case of cutting hair
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33 in the U.S., where ‘high end’ contemporary styling (now aligned with cosmopolitan gay men and
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35 masculinities as well as heterosexual women and femininities) is sharply divided from ‘vintage’
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37 barbering (associated with white heterosexual men and masculinity), both of which are split from
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40 ‘urban’ barbers and beauty shops (typically aligned with Black heterosexual masculinity and
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42 femininity, respectively) (Rich, 2009). Through an embodied lens, what is most interesting is this
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interdependency among social identities—how they associate, or ‘hang out’ with, ‘rub off’ on,
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47 permeate, merge with, and transform one another.
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49 Thus far, I have parsed occupational segregation studies into two established forms of work-
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52 body alignment: physical and symbolic. Together, they affirm what I call a collective-associative
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54 view, in which the nature of work is known by the embodied social identities aligned with it. In
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56 this light, it becomes difficult to justify the continued separation of work and diversity studies.
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2 Sustaining a unilateral individual-independent view against the evidence
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4 Management scholarship has yet to systematically absorb overwhelming evidence that the
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7 nature of work is bound up with the embodied social identities of workers. Here, I contend that
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9 this is because our conceptual root system cannot yet support a collective-associative view,
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11 developed as it is to nourish only a one-sided view of the work-practitioner relation. I call this
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14 unilateral view individual-independent, in that individuals appear to form cognitions about self
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16 and work that retain independence from other social identities. I position the problem in
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management research on identity but also show how nearby literatures collude to steer us away
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21 from a collective-associative view.
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23 Identity at and from work: Research on the relation between work and self. Thus far in
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the large and growing management literature on identity, by far the most attention has gone to
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28 the relation between self and organization, which I distinguish here as identity at work, or that
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30 linked to workplace (Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008; Corley et al., 2007). Most scholars
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33 investigate how individuals relate to group identities (organizational identification; e.g., Elsbach,
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35 1999; Pratt, 2000), how people construct a sense of self at work (identity work; e.g., Sveningsson
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37 & Alvesson, 2003), and how organizations shape individual identities (identity regulation; e.g.,
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40 Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). Many also examine collective notions of who we are and who we
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42 believe external audiences think we are (organizational identity and image; e.g., Corley & Gioia,
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2004; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994; Gioia et al., 2000).
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47 A few management scholars have begun to emphasize identity from work, or the relation
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49 between self and occupation. Van Maanen and Barley (1984) offered an early framework for
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52 studying occupational community in organizations; similarly, Trice (1993) initially drew upon
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54 studies of organizational culture to theorize occupations as cultures. Bechky (2003b) extends
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56 such work by showing how occupational interpretations of task and product collide to complicate
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59 work coordination. Recently, Pratt and colleagues (Pratt, Rockmann, & Kaufmann, 2006)
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2 highlight occupational meanings specific to the self, calling management scholars to investigate
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4 professional identity in organizational life.4 They explain that professional identity merges
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7 questions of ‘who I am’ with ‘what I do’, rather than ‘where/with whom I belong’. Hence,
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9 different issues become salient, yielding distinctive patterns of identity customization.
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11 As this description suggests, some have conceived of occupational phenomena in collective
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14 terms (e.g., community, culture); but we have so far treated occupational identity in only
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16 individual terms. We do not yet have a robust conception of occupational identity as a collective
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self to which people relate. The absence of this construct is odd, given the ready parallel with our
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21 thriving conception of organizational identity as an aggregate self. In other words, we pay much
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23 attention to how people construct the central, enduring, and distinctive characteristics of
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organizations (Corley et al., 2007), yet we show little if any curiosity as to how they do so with
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28 regard to occupations. Is the identity of where/with whom we work somehow more of a
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30 collective identity, more an object of social construction, than what we do?
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33 Upon closer inspection of Pratt et al’s (2006) what-versus-where distinction, we might also
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35 ask a second question: why the authors define organizational identity as the fusion of work place
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37 and associated members (where/with whom I belong), whereas associated members vanish from
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40 professional identity (defined as what I do, rather than the logical parallel, what/with whom I do).
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42 The first omission—our lack of interest in the identity of work itself, or what we do—erases a
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collective view of occupational identity. The second omission—of with whom we do it—erases
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47 an associative view.
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49 Our emphasis on individual occupational identity is also likely due to the fact that the vast
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52 share of management identity research stems from social identity theory (SIT), which stresses
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54 how people form selves in relation to others through cognitive attachments to social categories
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56 (i.e., in- and out-groups) (e.g., Ashforth & Mael, 1989). Although scholars have refined social
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59 psychological models to better capture the fluidity and tension endemic to the social construction
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2 of identity (Ashforth, 1998; Bartel & Dutton, 2001; Haslam & Reicher, 2006), the cognitive
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4 tradition remains dominant and, with it, the tendency to stress how individuals make selves out
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7 of reified ‘targets’ (e.g., organizational or occupational identity) before considering the
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9 construction of so-called targets themselves (Ashcraft & Alvesson, 2007).
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11 Management identity scholars concede that social identities like race and gender can be
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14 relevant to individual selves, but these identities are typically cast in two key ways (see Nkomo,
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16 1992). First, they are framed as mental resources, rather than embodied phenomena (i.e., What is
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important is how I think of my race or gender, not how I maneuver the implications of my body
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21 in social interaction). Second, these identities are framed as additional targets of identification, or
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23 sets of in- and out-groups, which exist alongside and apart from organization and occupation
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(e.g., I identify as a teacher, an elementary school employee, a woman, and white). Notable here
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28 is that multiple targets are typically treated as independent or discrete entities. They are, in other
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30 words, considered in relations of addition and multiplication (this plus/times that) or opposition
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33 (this conflicts with that), but rarely in relations of intersection and interdependence (this in light
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35 of that). In both ways, SIT-based studies depart from the embodied approach to symbolic
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37 alignment between work and social identities developed earlier.
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40 Overall, these habits in the management identity literature—i.e., stressing individual while
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42 neglecting collective occupational identity, and treating relations among social identities as
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independent rather than associative—eclipse the fact that occupations too have social identities
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47 (e.g., grade-school teaching as white women’s work, upper administration as white men’s work)
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49 (Sargent, 2000; Williams, 1992). More to the point, these habits bury the chief conclusion of
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52 occupational segregation studies: that the social identities of occupations shape the content,
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54 value, practice, and administration of work. We thus make profound miscalculations: that the
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56 nature of work can speak for itself, that ‘what we do’ is an obvious activity rather than a
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2 contested site of social construction, that the burning occupational identity question is how
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4 individuals relate to what they do, not how the very nature of what they do is also constructed.
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7 To be clear, it is not simply that we have played up some things while playing down others,
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9 in which case the solution might simply be to adjust our focus. Rather, the problem is that our
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11 conceptual apparatus is tailored to the individual-independent view, ensuring its continued
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14 primacy by obscuring if not excluding vital alternatives. Our focus cannot easily shift without
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16 new theoretical resources; and without such resources, we accept serious distortions in our
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knowledge of work identity. Specifically, without (a) an aggregate conception of occupational
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21 identity and (b) an embodied conception of social identities as commingling and mutually
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23 dependent, management identity research lacks the theoretical equipment necessary to
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implement the collective-associative view. Demand for these tools is further suppressed by
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28 related management literatures.
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30 Fortifying the individual-independent view: “Bringing work back in.” Another popular
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33 stream of management research views the work-practitioner relation from a different angle. This
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35 research departs from identity studies by emphasizing occupational practice over practitioner
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37 cognitions. The growing ‘back to work’ movement is best captured in Barley and Kunda’s
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40 (2001) call to theorize contemporary organization by observing the concrete activities of
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42 occupations. Amid a period of intense economic and technological change, they argue,
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management studies drifted toward abstract governance systems, losing sight of how work itself
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47 informs post-industrial and post-bureaucratic organizing. To regain course, we can build
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49 grounded theory of how today’s occupational practice is altering the organizational landscape.
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52 Although Barley and Kunda’s (2001) call is technically open to many occupations, most of
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54 the empirical research highlights work deemed ‘complex’ (i.e., professional, knowledge-
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56 intensive, technical, scientific), especially that of scientists, engineers, consultants, and IT
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59 workers (Barley & Kunda, 2006; Evans, Kunda, & Barley, 2004; Kunda, Barley, & Evans, 2002;
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2 Nelsen & Barley, 1997). This focus reflects the claim that technical occupations play a pivotal
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4 role in the present era (Barley, 1996, 2005; Zabusky & Barley, 1997), that observations of
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7 complex work are “the shop-floor studies of the knowledge economy” (Owen-Smith, 2001: 427).
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9 The technician who tackles intricate tasks demanding creative knowledge adaptation is hailed as
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11 an archetype or “ideal typical occupation” (Barley and Kunda 2001: 83). Like the factory worker
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14 of industrialization, or the manager of administrative bureaucracy, the technician signals new
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16 forms of work coordination and control (Bechky, 2003a; Orr, 1996; Rennstam, 2007).
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At first glance, this approach may appear to depart from the individual-independent view
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21 with its interest in practice over practitioners. As Barley and Kunda (2001: 84) explain,
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23 practitioner sensemaking is less pertinent here because, “…for students of work, ethnography’s
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capacity to generate analytic (or etic) constructs that are removed from the native point of view
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28 may be just as important.” Cross-site observation is crucial, as “insiders are unlikely to have a
29
30 purview that spans multiple types of work.”
31
32
33 The practitioner does not entirely disappear from this aggregate picture, however. Certainly,
34
35 his5 cognition recedes into the wings, while his embodied social identities vanish altogether;
36
37 regularities in who he is and what he looks like become even less germane than what he thinks.
38
39
40 Emerging instead is an abstract composite of the practitioner (e.g., the technician)—a
41
42 disembodied figure whose social identities become invisible, irrelevant to the work he performs.
43
44
45
Little is said, for example, about evident patterns in practitioners’ race and gender identities,
46
47 such as the concentration of white and certain Asian ‘nerd’ masculinities in much IT and
48
49 engineering work.6 Principal interest is in the nature of work as it yields a prototypical
50
51
52 practitioner. No consideration of the reverse—that association with certain practitioners affects
53
54 the nature of technical work—is discernable.
55
56 Despite apparent departure from the individual-independent view, then, ‘back to work’
57
58
59 research emphatically supports this unilateral view of the work-practitioner relation. By insisting
60
14
1
2 (even more loudly than identity research) that work can speak for itself—that the nature of work
3
4 can be discerned, and a summative practitioner inferred, from the doing of work, irrespective of
5
6
7 who is doing the work—it cements the familiar yet faulty assumption that the nature of work is
8
9 immune from workers’ other social identities. Concisely, the tacit mandate seems to be: Observe
10
11 practice without seeing the practitioner. That is, watch what practitioners do while minimizing
12
13
14 what they think and ignoring who else they are. In this way, ‘back to work’ research refuses a
15
16 collective-associative view and bolsters the separation of work and diversity studies.
17
18
As we fan out from identity studies to allied literatures, then, the individual-independent
19
20
21 view stands strong. Flickers of counter-evidence are filtered strictly through its lens. Even when
22
23 research participants overtly link the nature of work to race, for example, it is habitually
24
25
26
interpreted as idiosyncratic sensemaking (e.g., Wrzesniewski, Dutton, & Debebe, 2003: 118-
27
28 119). Thus, the management literature boosts our confidence that people derive identity from
29
30 work but not the reverse. And thus, we continue to rest assured that it is suitable to split work
31
32
33 from diversity studies, even as copious empirical evidence confirms it is not so. Having
34
35 established this problem—that our current division of labor cultivates a disciplined denial that
36
37 distorts our knowledge of work—the remainder of the paper works to rectify it by developing
38
39
40 our theoretical apparatus to support a bilateral view of the work-practitioner relation, wherein
41
42 people derive identity from work and work derives identity from associated people.
43
44
45
THE GLASS SLIPPER: OCCUPATIONAL IDENTITY BY ASSOCIATION AS A
46
47 BRIDGE BETWEEN WORK AND DIVERSITY RESEARCH
48
49 The discussion so far has, first, established the preponderance of evidence for what I call a
50
51
52 collective-associative view of the work-practitioner relation and, second, demonstrated that
53
54 management studies cannot yet digest this evidence, for our conceptual root system feeds only an
55
56 individual-independent view. In particular, management identity research does not yet have the
57
58
59 requisite theoretical tools to explain how (a) occupations, like organizations, assume collective
60
15
1
2 identities and (b) social identities implicate and influence one another. Both developments are
3
4 crucial to the integration of a collective-associative view, yet neighboring research on the work-
5
6
7 practitioner relation further denies the need for these developments, thereby fortifying our
8
9 current unilateral view. Toward a bilateral view, I now formulate the conceptual advances
10
11 necessary to restore (a) the missing identity of work in relation to (b) the missing bodies of work,
12
13
14 especially figurative practitioners. Specifically, I theorize the glass slipper as a means to capture
15
16 the phenomenon of occupational identity by association and thereby foster the durable
17
18
integration of work and diversity studies.
19
20
21 The missing identity of work: A collective-associative conception of occupational identity
22
23 As explained earlier, identity research in management studies emphasizes identity at work
24
25
26
(i.e., self-organization) and has only recently begun to explore individual identity from work
27
28 (i.e., self-occupation). We have yet to examine what we might call the identity of work (i.e., a
29
30 collective occupational self). Occupational identity in this sense is akin to the familiar construct
31
32
33 of organizational identity, which denotes the identity of organization—who we are, or what
34
35 features distinguish this unit as a whole (e.g., Gioia et al., 2000).
36
37 Drawing on Pratt et al.’s (2006) conception, we can begin by observing that occupational
38
39
40 identity differs from organizational identity in that it answers the question ‘who are we?’ by way
41
42 of what we do rather than where we do it. Earlier, I argued that the nature of work is no less
43
44
45
constructed, contested, and consequential than that of organizations. Indeed, interdisciplinary
46
47 research has begun to study occupational identity in just this aggregate way (i.e., as the identity
48
49 of work itself),7 and I build on this research to theorize how the focus on what versus where
50
51
52 distinguishes occupational from organizational identity.
53
54 Most profoundly, the focus on ‘what we do’ challenges a pervasive assumption in the
55
56 management research reviewed above: that “the meaning of work is largely constituted at work”
57
58
59 (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003: 97, original emphasis). Occupational identity clearly exceeds the
60
16
1
2 workplace, forming in and across many sites (e.g., in families, educational institutions, labor and
3
4 professional associations, popular culture). Many have advised management scholars to theorize
5
6
7 how occupational formations beyond the workplace influence work within it (Adler, Kwon, &
8
9 Heckscher, 2008; Bechky, 2003b; Bloor & Dawson, 1994; Fournier, 2000); but the most explicit
10
11 and extensive thinking on the issue to date stems from the study of work, occupations, and
12
13
14 professions. Abbott’s (1988) model of professionalization, for example, yields a helpful account
15
16 of how occupations assume identities that matter.
17
18
Abbott (1988) asserts that professions are made through successful claims to exclusivity—
19
20
21 that is, achieving and maintaining ownership of a work problem (i.e., authorization to define
22
23 tasks, set standards, and regulate practice). Because exclusivity claims are inevitably staked in a
24
25
26
system of inter-occupational relations, the main mechanism of professionalization is the
27
28 jurisdiction contest, wherein occupations vie for control over the meaning of work by advocating
29
30 and disputing the nature of tasks and the expertise they require. Jurisdiction contests are staged in
31
32
33 and among occupational associations, legal and regulatory agencies, educational institutions,
34
35 workplaces, and venues for public and popular discourse. Hence, professionalization is not “a
36
37 simple collective action by a cohesive group” but, rather, “a complex dynamic process with
38
39
40 several levels of action” and “professional localities” (1991: 380).
41
42 Two points are critical to our conception of occupational identity. First, Abbott positions the
43
44
45
nature of work as an open, priceless question—an object of intense social construction precisely
46
47 because the answer on which we settle is so consequential for the organization and valuation of
48
49 occupations. In short, the nature of work does not speak for itself, as maintained in the
50
51
52 management research reviewed above. The task configurations, work practices, and practitioner
53
54 identities we observe at the workplace are enabled by strategic social constructions beyond it. To
55
56 secure professional privileges, an occupation must first construct and control the identity of its
57
58
59 work. A jurisdiction contest is thus a collective identity construction match, and the core activity
60
17
1
2 of professionalization is persuasion. Professionalization, in this view, is a strategic occupational
3
4 identity project—a concerted effort to sway multiple audiences to accept a particular answer to
5
6
7 the question ‘what is this line of work?’ and associated appraisals (e.g., how complex and
8
9 valuable is it?).8 Material forms of authorization, such as the institutional and economic
10
11 arrangements we see at the educational and workplace level, follow and bolster persuasive
12
13
14 identity constructions. Simply put, the battle over occupational identity is a struggle for real
15
16 rights and resources that determine how work transpires in the workplace.
17
18
Second, Abbott positions occupational identity as a diffuse, multi-sited phenomenon in
19
20
21 which many constituents participate. To some extent, management scholars acknowledge
22
23 multiple stakeholders in organizational identity, by drawing a distinction between organizational
24
25
26
identity (i.e., internal collective identity constructions, or ‘who we are’) and image (i.e., external
27
28 collective identity constructions, or ‘who they think we are’) (e.g., Dutton & Dukerich, 1991;
29
30 Dutton et al., 1994). Arguably, this distinction becomes more blurry for occupational identity.
31
32
33 In professionalization, for instance, the occupational identity project (what is it that we do?)
34
35 merges with occupational image (what do we want them to think that we do?) and often entails a
36
37 corresponding overhaul of individual practitioner identity (who am I?), as when commercial
38
39
40 airline pilots were reborn from working-class playboys to elite, reliable transport professionals
41
42 (Hopkins, 1998); or when programmers became nerdy ‘bad boys’ wielding incomprehensible yet
43
44
45
critical expertise (Ensmenger, 2010); or when massage therapists sought a makeover as medical
46
47 technicians instead of sex or leisure workers (Sullivan, 2007). In this sense, we might better
48
49 conceive of professionalization as ‘occupational branding’ (Ashcraft, Muhr, Rennstam, &
50
51
52 Sullivan, in press), akin to corporate branding (Hatch & Schultz, 2008)—the strategic production
53
54 and ‘sale’ of occupational identity to various internal and external constituents.
55
56 Discerning internal agents from external audiences, as implied by the identity-image
57
58
59 distinction, becomes further complicated the more that diverse constituents, with a range of
60
18
1
2 investments in identity outcomes, are active in occupational identity construction (e.g.,
3
4 practitioners, their competitors, employing organizations, regulatory agencies, clients, the
5
6
7 general public, even filmmakers or museum curators depicting occupations). In the case of
8
9 professionalization, occupational identity construction tends to be highly strategized, tightly
10
11 organized, and rigorously controlled by practitioner associations. But there are many occupations
12
13
14 whose character unfolds in a more embryonic fashion—informal, emergent, and distributed
15
16 among multiple agents. Moreover, the character of work can take on a life of its own regardless
17
18
of practitioner efforts (e.g., pejorative jokes about the ‘sleazy’ work of ‘ambulance chasing’,
19
20
21 used car sales, or massage therapy); and these occupational images profoundly affect collective
22
23 and individual occupational identity (e.g., Tracy & Scott, 2006). It thus seems prudent to avoid
24
25
26
assuming that insiders (i.e., practitioners) are the most active and pivotal identity producers,
27
28 whereas external constituents are comparatively passive consumers.
29
30 In sum, Abbott’s (1988) model of professionalization supports the integration of a collective-
31
32
33 associative view by explaining how occupations, like organizations, assume identities that are
34
35 deeply consequential. At the same time, his model marks significant differences between
36
37 occupational and organizational identity: Whereas both evolve over time to tangible effect, the
38
39
40 former is (a) spatially dispersed and (b) involves multiple occupational, organizational, and
41
42 societal constituents. Mindful of the related complications outlined above, we can hold ‘identity-
43
44
45
image’ and attendant ‘internal-external’ distinctions lightly, as matters for empirical
46
47 investigation. We can stay open to all active constituents by approaching occupational identity as
48
49 a co-construction of what we and/or they do.
50
51
52 To support a collective-associative view, however, Abbott’s ideas about the nature of work
53
54 need fine-tuning. His model depicts occupational identity as an answer to the sole question: what
55
56 is this line of work? And yet, occupational segregation studies confirm that another question is
57
58
59 inevitably bound up with this one: namely, with whom (i.e., with what embodied social identities,
60
19
1
2 actual, usual, and/or figurative) is this work associated? In this light, occupational identity can be
3
4 defined as an evolving, co-constructed answer to two questions resolved in relation to one
5
6
7 another: what is this line of work (e.g., accounting), and who does it (e.g., accountants)?
8
9 Returning to the specific case of professionalization, we can therefore add that jurisdiction
10
11 claims about the nature of work invariably entail constructions, however subtle, of practitioners.
12
13
14 Professional jurisdiction is made by forging ties among an occupation, its work, and the social
15
16 identities of associated workers—not only between an occupation and its work, as Abbott
17
18
portrays it. We must therefore underscore the phrase with whom, present in Pratt et al.’s (2006)
19
20
21 definition of organizational identity (as where/with whom we work) but strangely dropped from
22
23 their definition of professional identity (as what we do). It is not enough to say that occupational
24
25
26
identity answers who we/they are by what we/they do, for the latter question is always resolved
27
28 in relation to with whom we/they do it.
29
30 Practitioners remain central to this conception of occupational identity, albeit in multiple
31
32
33 ways—not merely as subjects or agents who construct personal and collective selves (i.e., who
34
35 am I, or are we, as accountants?), but also as objects of social construction whose embodied
36
37 social identities ‘rub off’ on the identity of their work (i.e., many constituents know accounting
38
39
40 by the figurative company it keeps). As conceptualized here, occupational identity provides a
41
42 first theoretical foundation for a collective-associative view of the work-practitioner relation.
43
44
45
The missing bodies of work: Formulating the glass slipper
46
47 Our second task is to theorize interdependence among social identities—precisely, the
48
49 relationship between occupational identity and the embodied social identities of associated
50
51
52 practitioners. I begin by situating that relation on a landscape familiar to management scholars.
53
54 By now, glass has become a familiar metaphor in management studies for capturing subtle
55
56 power processes and outcomes related to social identities like gender and race. Few would fail to
57
58
59 recognize the notion of a glass ceiling, the formation of an invisible barrier beyond which many
60
20
1
2 women and men of color struggle to climb in organizational hierarchies (e.g., Powell, 1999). The
3
4 related glass cliff, wherein women and men of color who manage to shatter glass ceilings are
5
6
7 appointed to high-risk leadership positions that intensify the probability and visibility of failure,
8
9 has also found recent traction in management studies (e.g., Ryan & Haslam, 2007). The concept
10
11 of a glass escalator situates occupational identity within organizational hierarchy to capture how
12
13
14 white men in many lines of so-called women’s work experience a swift and smooth ride into
15
16 managerial roles (e.g., Williams, 1992).
17
18
The utility of glass metaphors lies in their capacity to name and evoke systemic patterns that
19
20
21 are otherwise elusive. They provide tangible abbreviations or proxies that redirect us from
22
23 individual explanations (e.g., willful prejudice) to institutional accounts, surfacing hidden
24
25
26
dynamics at work that call for further exploration. The glass ceiling stimulated an explosion of
27
28 research on corporate hierarchy, which exposed, among other things, conflicting norms of
29
30 leadership and femininity (‘think executive = think male’) and exclusionary informal networks.
31
32
33 Likewise, the glass cliff is fast becoming shorthand for the pervasive tendency to ‘think crisis =
34
35 think female’ and men of color. The glass escalator sparked a similar surge in comprehension by
36
37 surfacing invisible forms of privilege, not only discrimination.
38
39
40 Parallel to these developments, I propose a glass slipper9 metaphor to encapsulate the
41
42 phenomenon established by occupational segregation studies: occupational identity by
43
44
45
association. Specifically, the glass slipper refers to the alignment of occupational identity with
46
47 embodied social identities, as it yields systematic forms of advantage and disadvantage. For
48
49 several reasons, the glass slipper is an apt metaphor for the ways that occupations come to appear
50
51
52 possessed of inherent characteristics that render them a ‘natural’ fit for some and a stretch, if not
53
54 an impossibility, for others.
55
56 First, the glass slipper metaphor (a) captures how the identity of work is a naturalized
57
58
59 invention. Much like Cinderella’s shoe, occupational identity is an artifact manufactured through
60
21
1
2 artifice. As many theorists attest with regard to professionalization, invested constituents ‘wave
3
4 wands’ of persuasion (Abbott, 1988; Freidson, 2001; Larson, 1977). Yet the ‘magic’ behind the
5
6
7 making of occupational identity quickly fades into presumption of authenticity. The invention
8
9 becomes forgotten as such, received instead as an accurate description of what an occupation
10
11 entails. As the invention takes hold, the idea that ‘inherent’ work features (e.g., accounting is
12
13
14 complex computational work, as opposed to simple bookkeeping) might instead reflect a
15
16 strategic division of labor designed to ensure the elite status of work and workers (e.g., the
17
18
elimination of bookkeeping from accountants’ work; see Kirkham & Loft, 1993) begins to seem
19
20
21 preposterous.
22
23 Second, just as the fabled glass slipper privileged young women of dainty physique, so the
24
25
26
metaphor (b) captures the central role of embodied social identities in constructing the identity of
27
28 work. Consistent with my earlier conception of embodied social identity, the metaphor summons
29
30 not only the expected categories (e.g., gender and race), but also intersections among categories
31
32
33 (e.g., age, sexuality, physical ability), and even localized identity markers (i.e., shoe size). It is
34
35 not just that Cinderella is a woman, or a white woman, but that she embodies a particular kind of
36
37 white femininity. In short, the glass slipper invites analytical sensitivity to embodied social
38
39
40 identities, the tangled relations among them, and unanticipated contextual twists.
41
42 Third, the glass slipper (c) captures how the identity of work may draw attention to features
43
44
45
that favor certain practitioners but have little to do with the actual work. As an occupational
46
47 identity is taken for granted, it supplies seemingly reliable criteria for gauging aptitude for the
48
49 work. Yet these criteria are often disconnected from the actual work of an occupation. Or if the
50
51
52 work appears to demand them, this may be precisely because it was strategically configured to
53
54 foster a preference for those exhibiting the criteria. Why, after all, is the size of one’s shoe
55
56 elemental to the princess role? Cinderella’s tiny foot only hails her as the best candidate because,
57
58
59 out of many possible definitions, the job was defined around a shoe that was made for her.
60
22
1
2 Faulkner (2000) illustrates the point in her analysis of engineering identity, which shows how
3
4 depictions of engineering are far more gendered than the actual work, bolstering men’s and
5
6
7 diminishing women’s identification with the occupation but with little bearing for real tasks.
8
9 This discussion signals a fourth feature of the glass slipper, to which the infamous ‘ugly
10
11 stepsisters’ attest. The metaphor (d) captures the difficulty of fitting or faking when the identity
12
13
14 of work was made against you, or at least not for you; simultaneously, it captures natural fit as a
15
16 synthetic privilege. To the extent that one’s own embodied social identities do not readily align
17
18
with those used to construct the identity of work, the case is one of plausible rather than natural
19
20
21 fit—a case that becomes harder, if not impossible, to make the greater the deviation. Recall again
22
23 the accounting example, in which professional status was formed against feminized bookkeepers
24
25
26
and clerks (Kirkham & Loft, 1993). The example puts a point on Abbott’s (1988) assertion that
27
28 jurisdiction claims are made amid inter-occupational relations; and as it does so, it raises the
29
30 question: How can feminized figures credibly integrate into a profession defined as such through
31
32
33 their exclusion? More precisely, then, we can say that occupational identity evolves through
34
35 alignment with and distance from embodied social identities. That is, ostensibly excluded
36
37 embodied social identities are actually included as the silent Other, the foil against which an
38
39
40 occupation becomes a profession (Arndt & Bigelow, 2005; Ashcraft et al., in press; Davies,
41
42 1996; Hearn, 1982). For those whose embodied social identities fit the foil, the case for
43
44
45
plausibility is a paradox, not merely an uphill battle.
46
47 But this is not the end of the story. As revealed by the glass escalator effect (Williams, 1992),
48
49 discrimination begets privilege, in that a barrier for some is a boost for others. Hence, the easy
50
51
52 occupational fit enjoyed by certain embodied social identities is a manufactured match. There is
53
54 nothing ‘natural’ about slipping comfortably into a shoe designed exclusively for your foot.
55
56 All shoes are not created equally, of course. The glass slipper effect grants certain social
57
58
59 identities ‘natural rights’ to an occupation, which may at first seem like indisputable advantage
60
23
1
2 for those able to embody said identities. But it is precisely on the grounds of that association that
3
4 the identity of work is known and assessed and, eventually, the actual work configured (e.g.,
5
6
7 salaries and job quality determined; see Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993; Weeden, 2002). Hence, a
8
9 fifth feature emerges: The metaphor (e) captures how advantage and disadvantage extends
10
11 beyond individual practitioners to the occupation as a whole, such that one may be the
12
13
14 ‘beneficiary’ of a glass slipper into highly undesirable work—domestic service, for example,
15
16 rather than royalty. Put another way, we discriminate against and privilege work itself on the
17
18
basis of the company it keeps.
19
20
21 Finally, and significant for the sake of social change, the glass slipper (f) captures not only
22
23 the invisible quality of advantage and disadvantage incurred in constructing the identity of work,
24
25
26
but also the potential transparency and fragility of occupational identity. Clearly, the metaphor
27
28 stresses how privilege and discrimination are encoded in occupational identity, as the identity of
29
30 work is constructed in relation to embodied social identities. But equally important, the metaphor
31
32
33 implies that other ‘magic’ is possible—that the ‘wands’ of persuasion can be waved to different,
34
35 and better (i.e., more socially just), effect. However naturalized, however institutionalized,
36
37 occupational identities are contrived; and this means they could be otherwise.
38
39
40 Theorizing from the glass slipper: A novel explanation of work-body alignment
41
42 The glass slipper supports a bilateral view of the work-practitioner relation, and thereby
43
44
45
merges work and diversity studies, by encapsulating the suppressed side of a reciprocal relation
46
47 (i.e., work itself derives identity from associated practitioners). Armed with this new metaphor,
48
49 we are poised to formulate a novel theory of how work-body alignment comes about. Earlier, we
50
51
52 saw that occupational segregation scholars distinguish between physical (nominal, demographic)
53
54 and symbolic (ideological, discursive, emblematic) forms of alignment. Here, I delve into that
55
56 distinction further to distill three common stances from the occupational segregation literature:
57
58
59 (a) practitioner bodies determine the nature of work; (b) the nature of work determines
60
24
1
2 practitioner bodies; and (c) practitioner bodies and the nature of work exist in a relation of
3
4 mutual influence. All three explanations of work-body alignment stem from research on physical
5
6
7 association and neglect the insights of symbolic alignment studies. With its attention to figurative
8
9 practitioners, the glass slipper enables us to re-read the three stances through a symbolic lens and
10
11 articulate a fourth, overarching stance: (d) the relation between the nature of work and embodied
12
13
14 social identities is mediated by occupational identity, an undetermined object of social
15
16 construction. The four stances are summarized and compared in Table 1.
17
18
Stance 1: Practitioner bodies determine the nature of work. In a pioneering essay,
19
20
21 Phillips & Taylor (1980: 85-86, original emphasis) argue that skill is “saturated with sex,” and
22
23 that “the sex of those who do the work, rather than its content …leads to its identification as
24
25
26
skilled or unskilled.” As male workers have resisted deskilling, “craft has been increasingly
27
28 identified with masculinity…Skill has been increasingly defined against women—skilled work
29
30 is work that women don’t do.” Similarly, others show how men’s trade unions defended their
31
32
33 skilled status by opposing the twin threats of automation and female labor reserves (e.g.,
34
35 Armstrong, 1982; Cockburn, 1983; Coyle, 1982). Concurring that designations of skill stem from
36
37 who performs the task, Hearn (1982) revisits the rare historical instances when men took on so-
38
39
40 called women’s work en masse and finds that the associated tasks were dubbed “professional.”
41
42 In a different twist, Witz (1992) and Arndt and Bigelow (2005) show how the sex composition of
43
44
45
medical specializations affected access to and success with professionalization resources.
46
47 Together, these works position the social classification of actual practitioner bodies as a causal
48
49 force; that is, the ready markings of the body (e.g., sex and race categorizations) influence the
50
51
52 meaning of tasks as well as professionalization possibilities.
53
54 Stance 2: The nature of work determines practitioner bodies. Charles and Grusky’s
55
56 (2004) recent appraisal of the occupational segregation literature builds an ambitious, multi-
57
58
59 dimensional model. They argue that the gender division of labor is not “a residual that is destined
60
25
1
2 to wither away under contemporary egalitarian pressures” but “an organizing feature of modern
3
4 economies” (4), especially durable due to cultural faith in gender difference. In this view, tasks
5
6
7 possess features (e.g., heavy lifting, client pacification) that are readily perceptible as masculine
8
9 or feminine. Hence, “the task content of new occupations is a principal determinant of their
10
11 initial sex composition” (17). Not “unidirectional and determinist” (17), the work-body relation
12
13
14 can be mediated by cultural and economic forces, like employer and institutional discrimination,
15
16 informal networks, and postindustrial developments. Nevertheless, Charles and Grusky reverse
17
18
the direction of influence posited by the first stance. Instead of actual practitioner bodies
19
20
21 determining task meaning, the opposite becomes the general rule. In short, tasks mostly speak for
22
23 themselves, such that “nurturing occupations are more likely to become female-dominated” (17).
24
25
26
Stance 3: Practitioner bodies and the nature of work are mutually influential. A third
27
28 view is exemplified by Tomaskovic-Devey (1993), who suggests two recursive processes by
29
30 which embodied identity categories like race and gender influence work and vice-versa: (a)
31
32
33 Status closure denotes how social classifications of the body determine access to valuable
34
35 positions, whereas (b) status composition refers to the development of job quality around usual,
36
37 rather than actual, incumbents. As he explains the latter,
38
39
40 Jobs can take on a gendered or racial character that is independent of their incumbent and
41
42 that influences how such jobs are concretely organized—their level of complexity,
43
44
45
autonomy, authority over other jobs, the manner in which they are controlled, and their level
46
47 of earnings. Specifically, the status composition of a job—that is, the extent to which it is
48
49 typically filled by males or females, whites or blacks—is intrinsically part of the labor
50
51
52 process as well as the reward structure of the organization (12).
53
54 Discrimination thus occurs against bodies (closure) and jobs (composition), and the dialectical
55
56 relation between these processes maintains or intensifies both. That is, we discriminate against
57
58
59 work based on its usual practitioner, and we discriminate against people by discriminating
60
26
1
2 against work. Weeden (2002) takes a similar spin on cycles of mutual influence; she identifies
3
4 specific ways that work is arranged in order to exclude certain embodied social identities as a
5
6
7 means of securing occupational rewards. Stance 3 thus explains occupational identity by
8
9 association as a product of bi-directional influence between socially marked bodies and the
10
11 material organization of work.
12
13
14 Stance 4: The work-body relation is determined in discursive struggle. The three stances
15
16 offer variations on physical alignment, as they take a demographic view of bodies as reducible to
17
18
social identity categories. The glass slipper suggests an alternative stance that honors recent
19
20
21 research on symbolic alignment. As noted earlier, symbolic studies do not deny the importance
22
23 of actual or usual practitioner bodies but, rather, situate physicality as one among other bodily
24
25
26
resources for constructing the identity of work. As Hinze (1999) shows with medical specialties,
27
28 work may be known and organized through figurative practitioners—bodily imagery like manly
29
30 hands and ‘balls’ or soft, feminized tissue—regardless of who performs the work.
31
32
33 The glass slipper intervenes in the ‘chicken and egg’ debate (i.e., are bodies and/or work
34
35 properties the causal force?) among the three stances with this critical insight: The debate cannot
36
37 be resolved because it fails to acknowledge discursive struggle over occupational identity (i.e.,
38
39
40 what is this line of work, and who does it?) as a constitutive process that produces and mediates
41
42 the relation between embodied social identities and the organization of work.
43
44
45
My own (e.g., Ashcraft, 2007; Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004) research on professionalization
46
47 among U.S. airline pilots provides a useful example, condensed here and elaborated in Table 1.
48
49 By the late 1920s, the faltering commercial aviation industry faced grave liabilities posed by
50
51
52 competing occupational identities: constructions of flying (a) as difficult, daring labor reserved
53
54 for rugged, manly heroes and (b) as the safe and simple pastime of graceful ‘ladyfliers’. The
55
56 latter was created by the general aviation industry, which used this ‘ladybird’, personified by
57
58
59 Amelia Earhart and a host of long-forgotten female pilots, to sell private planes and lessons.
60
27
1
2 Instructed by promoters to behave in a hyper-feminine fashion (e.g., to primp in public),
3
4 ladyfliers were deployed to shame men into flying; the explicit message was, if she can do it,
5
6
7 flying must be easy and secure (Corn, 1979). However, as the public of the 1920s romanticized
8
9 the ladybird figure, commentators began to muse whether flying was all that difficult anyway,
10
11 whether it was in fact women’s work. Ladyfliers thus threatened the status of commercial pilots,
12
13
14 whereas the contrary notion—that one must be a daring superman to risk flying—dampened
15
16 passenger ticket sales. It was amid this sea of encumbering symbolism that airlines collaborated
17
18
with the budding pilot union to reconstruct the identity of flying as complex work demanding
19
20
21 well-trained experts. Against the ‘flighty’ ladybird, a new figurative practitioner—the reliable,
22
23 technical, professional airline pilot—was strategically reborn; and the ladyflier fell from cockpit
24
25
26
to cabin stewardess.
27
28 As Table 1 explicates, neither the social classification of the actual bodies doing the work
29
30 (stance 1) nor inherent task content (stance 2) can adequately explain this case. In the late 1920s,
31
32
33 men and women were flying in the public eye; and the social coding of flight ranged wildly—
34
35 from risky, physically and technically demanding labor to an artful, sensitive, intuitive hobby.
36
37 Neither did status closure nor institutional occupational closure (stance 3) precede campaigns to
38
39
40 control the identity of flight and flier. Instead, as the glass slipper construct suggests, the
41
42 construction of figurative practitioners—the professional airline pilot against the foil of the
43
44
45
hyper-feminine ladybird—enabled such developments, which then bolstered faith in the veracity
46
47 of the construction (see also Arndt & Bigelow, 2005; Davies, 1996; Ensmenger, 2010; Hearn,
48
49 1982; Kirkham & Loft, 1993). In such instances, professionalization occurs through segregation,
50
51
52 but this is only made possible by a social construction battle over the work-body relation.
53
54 Put differently, and beyond professionalization in particular, the social construction of
55
56 occupational identity determines how physical bodies, work properties, and their complex
57
58
59 relationship will play out in any given case. Because this construction is ongoing and plays out
60
28
1
2 on many (organizational) stages, it is quite possible, as Ely and Meyerson (2010) and Alvesson
3
4 (1998) show, for surprising de- and re-couplings to occur in particular contexts. Consequently,
5
6
7 Britton (2000: 428) muses with regard to gender:
8
9 Does it still make sense to say that law, as an occupation, is gendered? I think it does, but
10
11 without attention to the settings in which this occurs, we run the risk of reifying gender in an
12
13
14 organizational and occupational context, and become unable to identify ways in which these
15
16 environments might become less oppressively gendered.
17
18
In sum, the glass slipper construct facilitates a new, overarching stance (stance 4) on how
19
20
21 work-body alignment occurs. This stance holds that the specific form association will take is not
22
23 self-evident and never fully settled. It is temporarily fixed through discursive struggle; but it can
24
25
26
make predictable, surprising, and contradictory turns, and it is always more or less indeterminate
27
28 or ‘up for grabs’. Put simply, the glass slipper is both solid and fragile; it can be shattered and
29
30 refashioned, even as it resists new ‘magic’. Accordingly, the directional claims posed by the first
31
32
33 three stances are subsumed and re-framed as discursive resources invoked in specific contexts,
34
35 not as causal forces in the abstract. The guiding question becomes: How is the work-body
36
37 relation constructed in particular occupational systems and toward what effects? And the first
38
39
40 three stances yield sensitizing foci:
41
42 (a) Socially classified physical bodies: Who is doing the work, and how does that shape the
43
44
45
construction of tasks, skills, and knowledge?
46
47 (b) Task features: How is task content constructed, and how does this invoke bodies?
48
49 (c) Material organization of work: How do occupational configurations (e.g., labor process,
50
51
52 earnings) interact with bodies?
53
54 Reframing work-body alignment in this way—as an inevitable yet also open, empirical
55
56 relation—carries the final advantage of resisting a priori claims about which embodied social
57
58
59 identities count. Diversity research draws criticism for stressing the ‘big three’ (gender, race, and
60
29
1
2 class) and for doing so in isolation or presuming one as primary (see related discussions in Adib
3
4 & Guerrier, 2003; Allen, 2003; Bottero, 1992; Calás, 1992; Fenstermaker & West, 2002). In
5
6
7 response, scholars increasingly call for the study of interplay among gender, race, class, nation,
8
9 religion, sexuality, and so on (Acker, 2006). But this too creates dilemmas, like deciding in the
10
11 abstract which social identities matter most. By insisting on the indeterminacy of work-body
12
13
14 alignment and examining particular contexts, the glass slipper suspends judgment as to what
15
16 bodily aspects will matter and how they will interact in any given case. Constructing airline
17
18
flying, for instance, called on the body in terms of gender, class, sexuality, race, age, and ability
19
20
21 (Ashcraft, 2005, 2007; Davey, 2004; Mills, 1998, 2006).
22
23 Stance 4 exemplifies how the glass slipper metaphor yields new theoretical explanations
24
25
26
from a collective-associative view. As shown in Table 1, stance 4 builds on insights from stances
27
28 1-3 but asserts that work-body alignment happens through discursive struggle over occupational
29
30 identity; it is not over-determined by actual or usual practitioners and/or intrinsic work features.
31
32
33 Stance 4 maintains interdependence among social identities, keeping an eye on the usual suspects
34
35 (e.g., gender, race) as well as an eye out for situational surprises. The final section brings this
36
37 stance home to the context of management studies.
38
39
40 Illustrations of promise: Revising old habits to enable new explanations of professional
41
42 identity and professionalization
43
44
45
Mindful that all glass slippers are not created equally, we can grasp the potential of the glass
46
47 slipper metaphor for management studies by starting with the esteemed occupations on which we
48
49 already set our sights: those deemed ‘complex’, or knowledge-intensive, professional, scientific,
50
51
52 and technical. Recall, for instance, how ‘back to work’ researchers observe technicians at work
53
54 while ignoring their social identities, yielding a disembodied composite of the technician—or
55
56 how emerging research on professional identity disregards the significance of with whom one’s
57
58
59 work is associated (Pratt et al., 2006). How can theorizing from the glass slipper help us
60
30
1
2 understand and remedy such disciplined habits? How can it disrupt our persistent assumption
3
4 that the nature of work is immune from the embodied social identities aligned with it?
5
6
7 Scholars generally agree that knowledge abstraction (i.e., the objectification of expertise,
8
9 apart from concrete practitioners) is vital to the rise of complex work, and abstraction as an
10
11 institutional achievement has drawn much interest (Abbott, 1988; Macdonald, 1995). Less
12
13
14 common is curiosity about knowledge abstraction as a discursive achievement, yet this is
15
16 precisely the sort of symbolic maneuvering that the glass slipper calls out, like so: To be
17
18
persuasive, claims of knowledge abstraction must minimize the bodies that inevitably exercise
19
20
21 knowledge; they must isolate and elevate the mind, as if freed from its embodied trappings.
22
23 Consider the usual association of professional work with mental as opposed to manual labor. As
24
25
26
disembodied expertise appears possible, practitioner bodies start to seem irrelevant. Presumably,
27
28 any sufficiently credentialed person could host said knowledge. By now, the irrelevance of
29
30 practitioner bodies has become a taken-for-granted feature of so-called knowledge work, such
31
32
33 that jurisdiction claims can activate this apparent ‘fact’ with no justification.
34
35 Seen through stance 4, this generic ‘disembodied professional’ (invoked, for example, in
36
37 abstract composites of the technician) is a core social construction—a fundamental waving of the
38
39
40 wand—on which is perched the identity of complex work. Erasing ‘bodies of knowledge’, so to
41
42 speak, is how such work comes to appear larger than life. In other words, as already established,
43
44
45
occupations assume identity in relation to associated bodies (i.e., what is this line of work, and
46
47 who does it?); but in order for an occupation to be identified as complex work, associated bodies
48
49 must also be expunged from its knowledge, or at least fade from view. This paradoxical
50
51
52 endeavor—aligning work with certain embodied social identities while denying their
53
54 relevance—is an impressive occupational identity feat, the achievement of which requires effort.
55
56 Returning to an earlier example vividly illustrates the point. During the infancy of U.S.
57
58
59 aviation, prevailing constructions of pilots (e.g., the ‘intrepid birdman’ of air shows, the tough
60
31
1
2 airmail pilot, the daredevil ‘barnstormer’, the dashing Hollywood flier) placed the pilot’s body
3
4 on display, drawing adoration for his potent physicality but also fear of flight as the perilous
5
6
7 hobby of supermen (Corn, 1979). As noted earlier, commercial airlines and the nascent pilot
8
9 union thus colluded to transform the pilot into a dependable professional (Ashcraft & Mumby,
10
11 2004). What was not stressed earlier is that the transformation entailed a full-body makeover to
12
13
14 diminish his physicality with the cloak of professional regalia, modeled after that of a ship
15
16 captain—an officer’s uniform complete with symbols of rank, a navigation kit housing technical
17
18
manuals and resembling a briefcase, and an intercom system broadcasting the invisible voice of
19
20
21 authority (Hopkins, 1998). Recall that this overhaul occurred against the excessive body of the
22
23 ladybird, paraded to exude a dizzy femininity that soon morphed into the stewardess.
24
25
26
Particularly ironic is how all of this fuss over the pilot’s body was designed to make it
27
28 disappear. Theorizing through the glass slipper metaphor catches that design and de-naturalizes
29
30 the disappearance, exposing it as an elaborate vanishing act that verifies the importance of
31
32
33 embodied social identities to professional identity precisely in its painstaking refusal of the
34
35 body’s relevance. In this way, the disembodied professional is like the ‘natural look’ in women’s
36
37 cosmetics: It takes a great deal of work to make it look like none is needed.
38
39
40 Theorizing from the glass slipper also reveals how constructing the disembodied professional
41
42 depends on the heightened visibility of nearby bodies (e.g., stark contrast between professional
43
44
45
pilots and ladyfliers), underscoring Davies’ (1996) claim that professionalism “requires, but
46
47 denies it requires, the Other” (672). By interrogating this dependence, stance 4 refuses the
48
49 natural (in)visibility of certain bodies and re-embodies the disembodied professional, compelling
50
51
52 us to see the significance of its physical and symbolic particularity (e.g., how white, upper-
53
54 middle-class, clean-cut, heterosexual, paternalistic, officer masculinity was strategically utilized
55
56 to professionalize airline pilots).
57
58
59
60
32
1
2 Interestingly, Abbott (1998: 431) once mused that “the conceptual difference between
3
4 profession and semi-profession probably has more to do with the difference between men and
5
6
7 women than with anything else.” The glass slipper transforms such passing comments into a
8
9 powerful analytical device that can generate new explanations of professionalization and, more
10
11 broadly, how work becomes designated as ‘complex’. As a starting point, the metaphor suggests
12
13
14 that such elite designations and their attendant privileges are founded on interdependent relations
15
16 with other embodied social identities, not coincidentally accompanied by such associations.
17
18
Lest there be any doubt of the profound difference this point makes to management studies, it
19
20
21 annuls axioms like the following, so received as fact that they scarcely need support:
22
23 Professions, such as medicine, law, and accounting, arise when an organized group possesses
24
25
26
esoteric knowledge that has economic value… Because of their unique knowledge and skill
27
28 sets, society grants professionals higher levels of prestige and autonomy than it grants non-
29
30 professionals (Pratt et al., 2006: 235).
31
32
33 Especially worth noting is how this axiom justifies the definition of professional identity as
34
35 ‘what I do’, rather than ‘what/with whom I do’, by denying that embodied social identities play a
36
37 constitutive role in the professionalization process. It is precisely this sort of routine conceptual
38
39
40 move, which severs our knowledge of work from matters of diversity over and over again, that
41
42 the glass slipper interrupts. It exposes how “society” knows “esoteric knowledge” and “higher
43
44
45
levels of prestige and autonomy” by who is associated with the work. It explains how so-called
46
47 diversity issues become part of the very constitution of work.
48
49 Importantly, theorizing from the glass slipper not only uncovers the ‘magic’ behind
50
51
52 professional identity; it also implicates the ‘magicians’. Stance 4, for example, can expose both
53
54 how the wand is waved and who waves it. The ‘natural look’ of the disembodied professional,
55
56 for example, is a collaborative effort among professional associations and individual
57
58
59 practitioners, employers, clients, and the public. As illustrated by the Pratt et al. quote above,
60
33
1
2 management scholars are also key constituents. In one sense, we are a consuming audience who
3
4 tends to hold up a flattering mirror rather than probe professional self-representations. Van
5
6
7 Maanen and Barley (1984: 318) put the critique bluntly: “Too often researchers simply accept a
8
9 profession’s own definition and image of itself without examining what uses are to be found
10
11 behind such definitions and images.”
12
13
14 In another sense, we are more than mere audience. As practitioners of a classic profession of
15
16 the mind, we are invested in constructing the disembodied professional. Trained to check our
17
18
own bodies at the door of the academy, we are not inclined to see those of the professionals we
19
20
21 study. In other words, we tend to reproduce the disembodied professional in and through our
22
23 own mental labor; and because that labor carries the stamp of science, it lends seemingly neutral
24
25
26
evidence. We thus corroborate, not merely consume, the claim that associated practitioners do
27
28 not affect, much less explain, the character of work. Consequently, occupational segregation
29
30 becomes a peripheral diversity issue—an unfortunate hangover of historical bias, perhaps, but
31
32
33 surely not integral to the nature of work itself.
34
35 Beyond our own occupational hazards and blinders, another motive for our participation in
36
37 erasing bodies from knowledge ironically stems from the diversity literature, which shows how
38
39
40 many women and people of color at work struggle to avoid being seen as problematic bodies,
41
42 excessively emotional, sexual, and otherwise ‘undisciplined’ or ‘unprofessional’ (e.g., Acker,
43
44
45
1990; Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007; Trethewey, 1999). For many of us, the upshot seems to be that
46
47 it is risky (i.e., sexist and racist) to see the body at all, safer to look away.
48
49 The glass slipper calls us to a radically different course of action. Rather than recoiling from
50
51
52 all bodies because some are ‘overseen’, it re-interprets those overseen as the foil, the excess—in
53
54 a word, the Others—on whose backs the disembodied professional is built. It thus becomes
55
56 incumbent on us to see those ‘bodies of knowledge’ made invisible at Others’ expense. This
57
58
59 begins with awareness that “even knowledge workers dwell in their bodies” (Styhre, 2004: 110),
60
34
1
2 followed by interrogation of how that obvious point routinely escapes our notice. In short, the
3
4 glass slipper induces a reversal of the usual gaze: away from the typical Others and toward those
5
6
7 “whose body never appeared to matter” (Witz, 2000: 20, original emphasis). As initiated in this
8
9 analysis of the generic disembodied professional, we can further investigate how such
10
11 disappearing acts are accomplished in other contexts and with what consequences.
12
13
14 Ultimately, then, we can best explicate the glass slipper effect by commencing related theory
15
16 and research in the context(s) of ‘complex’ work. Such inquiry seeks to leverage, rather than
17
18
perpetuate, the disembodied professional, turning the gaze back onto bodies denied as such. Just
19
20
21 as embellishing the sexuality of feminized and racial bodies is a learned habit—just as watching
22
23 technicians work without seeing their bodies is a cultivated skill—so we can use the glass slipper
24
25
26
to retrain ourselves to see embodied social identities and their significance to work anew.10
27
28 CONCLUSION
29
30 At its core, this paper challenges and revises our habitual separation of work from diversity
31
32
33 studies—specifically, our assignment of the creation and valuation of new labor forms to
34
35 ‘mainstream’ scholars, and the segregation and stratification of work to ‘diversity’ scholars
36
37 (Ridgeway & Correll, 2000; Weeden, 2002). This division is premised on what I have shown
38
39
40 here to be a faulty assumption: our enduring conviction that the nature of work itself is unscathed
41
42 by the social identities associated with it. I began with evidence from occupational segregation
43
44
45
research that shatters this assumption, confirming that the very nature of an occupation is
46
47 discerned and organized around social identities like gender and race. This research supports
48
49 what I call a collective-associative view of the work-practitioner relation, wherein occupations
50
51
52 assume aggregate identities by virtue of their alignment with embodied social identities. From
53
54 this view, the usual split of work and diversity studies is not sustainable. Yet the collective-
55
56 associative view cannot yet find a foothold in management studies because our current
57
58
59 theoretical resources foster a unilateral individual-independent view, in which practitioners form
60
35
1
2 personal occupational identities that retain independence from other social identities. The
3
4 unilateral view builds false confidence that work itself does not derive identity from associated
5
6
7 people; and based on that assumption, we make profound theoretical miscalculations. A first
8
9 contribution of the paper, then, is the formulation of this consequential problem: the disciplined
10
11 denial fostered by our common division of scholarly labor.
12
13
14 The second half of the paper works to rectify this problem, cultivating a bilateral view of the
15
16 work-practitioner relation, in which people derive identity from work and work derives identity
17
18
from associated people. To revive the latter, suppressed side of this reciprocal relation, I
19
20
21 theorized the glass slipper as an evocative way to capture the phenomenon of occupational
22
23 identity by association. Like similar metaphors in management studies, the glass slipper calls
24
25
26
attention to systematic patterns of disadvantage and advantage, in this case stemming from
27
28 interdependence among occupations and embodied social identities. The metaphor dissolves the
29
30 separation of work and diversity studies by illuminating the very blind spot created by that
31
32
33 division. The formulation of the glass slipper is thus a second major contribution of the paper.
34
35 In particular, theorizing from the glass slipper renders a novel stance on how work-body
36
37 alignment comes about (see Table 1). This new stance departs from available explanations of
38
39
40 occupational segregation as determined by practitioner bodies, work properties, or their
41
42 interaction. Extending recent studies of symbolic alignment, it identifies discursive struggle as a
43
44
45
constitutive mechanism: Work-body alignment is an inevitable yet open relation that becomes
46
47 temporarily fixed through the social construction of occupational identity, which establishes the
48
49 enabling conditions for the material formations that subsequently support it. This explanation
50
51
52 subsumes previous stances as signaling key discursive resources, which provide important
53
54 sensitizing foci for management inquiry.
55
56 Such inquiry is best commenced in the very contexts that already command our attention:
57
58
59 those of ‘complex’ work. It is here that the power of the glass slipper is most immediately
60
36
1
2 evident, as it counteracts the routine conceptual reflexes (e.g., reproducing the ‘disembodied
3
4 professional’) whereby we stifle a collective-associative view, such that new theoretical
5
6
7 positions—on professional identity and professionalization, for example—can emerge. For
8
9 instance, the ‘back to work’ movement holds that new organizational forms and prototypical
10
11 practitioners arise from the nature of work, specifically, technical work in a knowledge economy.
12
13
14 Theorizing from the glass slipper reveals a contrasting proposition: The nature of technical tasks
15
16 and the organizational forms that crop up around them depend on the figurative practitioners
17
18
with whom such work is aligned. Amplified for effect, we might say that the construction of a
19
20
21 prototypical practitioner yields the nature of work, rather than the reverse, as currently presumed.
22
23 As Ridgeway and Correll (2000: 112) explain, “at the edge of change in society, where new
24
25
26
types of jobs are developing, new technologies being introduced, and new forms of social
27
28 organization are emerging,” people fall back on familiar identity triggers like gender and race to
29
30 organize and interpret practice, yet these remain in the background “as a kind of ghost.” The
31
32
33 glass slipper illuminates that ghost, exposing how discursive struggle over work-body alignment
34
35 is endemic to, even constitutive of, changes in the nature of work.
36
37 Such an illustration only scratches the surface of where and how we might take the glass
38
39
40 slipper forward to challenge, revise, and enrich management theories of the work-practitioner
41
42 relation. Other likely candidates include management studies of work meaningfulness;
43
44
45
recruitment, hiring, and promotion; occupational prestige; and wage differentials and the
46
47 distribution of wealth—to name a few.
48
49 In this paper, I have emphasized contributions to management identity research and,
50
51
52 especially, to theories of professional identity and professionalization. Referring back to its title,
53
54 the paper ‘incorporates’ occupational identity into management studies in a dual sense. First, it
55
56 develops a collective conception of occupational identity that is missing from the management
57
58
59 literature: a focus on the aggregate identity of work itself, which parallels yet also differs from
60
37
1
2 the established concept of organizational identity (e.g., Gioia et al., 2000). Second, it includes
3
4 ‘the corporeal’ in this collective conception of occupational identity. It highlights how
5
6
7 occupations too have social identities by redefining occupational identity as an answer to the
8
9 entwined questions: what is this line of work, and with whom is it associated? As it theorizes
10
11 interdependence among social identities, this embodied lens challenges the tendency of SIT-
12
13
14 based research to treat social identities as discrete ‘targets’ that exist alongside one another in
15
16 relative independence. Together, these two theoretical developments temper the dominant
17
18
individual-independent view of the work-practitioner relation with a reciprocal collective-
19
20
21 associative view. From this vantage point, we can see that professional privileges are premised
22
23 on embodied social identities, not simply haunted by circumstantial affiliations. Simply put, we
24
25
26
begin to see how so-called diversity matters matter deeply to the very constitution of work.
27
28 As this suggests, the glass slipper carries significant implications for how we go about
29
30 diversifying occupations and organizations. It serves a caution to management theory and
31
32
33 practice aimed at integrating marginalized people into lines of work from which they have been
34
35 excluded. Such efforts—to increase women in male-dominated occupations, for example (e.g.,
36
37 Davies, 1996)—overlook the social identities of occupations themselves and, thus, the decline in
38
39
40 occupational character that tends to accompany diversification (Calás & Smircich, 1993; Cohn,
41
42 1985; Garrison, 1972-3, Winter; Reskin, 1990; Touhey, 1974). The glass slipper metaphor
43
44
45
anticipates and prompts novel explanations of such decline, correcting the mistaken assumption
46
47 that the nature of an occupation is secure apart from the embodied social identities aligned with
48
49 that it. By theorizing from the glass slipper, we stand to generate new possibilities for strategic
50
51
52 social and organizational change, starting with the realization that we construct, privilege, and
53
54 discriminate against the nature of work itself, not only categories of people.
55
56 While the mind and, increasingly, the heart of practitioners draw the interest of many
57
58
59 management scholars of work, the rest of the body awaits notice, as observed in a diverse range
60
38
1
2 of recent calls (Heaphy & Dutton, 2008; Wolkowitz, 2006). This paper answers these calls with
3
4 the distinctive contention that embodied social identities are not a remote concern, the sole and
5
6
7 peripheral jurisdiction of diversity scholars, and that we can theorize how they influence the
8
9 nature and organization of work by explicating the glass slipper effect.
10
11 Reading between the lines, then, this paper is a jurisdiction claim on behalf of diversity
12
13
14 studies, put forth in an interdisciplinary community of management scholars, all of whom seek to
15
16 distinguish their knowledge as best answers to shared work problems, and who do so by
17
18
exhibiting their analytic capacities while suppressing their bodies. Is it tenable for management
19
20
21 science to confront its own investment in embodied social identities, our own glass slipper
22
23 effect? At the very least, this essay lays bare the cost of not trying. At best, it paves the way for
24
25
26
new explanations of work as we know it.
27
28
1
29 I use variations on the term ‘nature of work’ to capture widely shared understandings of an occupation’s essence or
30
31 fundamental character (i.e., our reflex responses to such questions as: what sort of work is this, how complex and
32
33 important, how logically arranged, performed, and managed?). The nature of work thus refers to its content, value,
34
35 practice, and administration. I argue that these are malleable matters whatever their material existence; that is, the
36
37 nature of any line of work could be socially constructed and actually configured in ways other than it is. As I soon
38
39 explain, occupational identity is an evolving co-construction of the nature of work, which reflects the embodied
40
41 social identities of associated practitioners, and which shapes the configuration of work in the real world.
42 2
43 Research on occupational segregation has a long and abundant history, which remains almost entirely separated
44
45 from the context of management studies (Ridgeway & Correll, 2000; Weeden, 2002). For exceptions in the critical
46
47 management studies literature, see Collinson and Knights (1986) and Morgan and Knights (1991). For sample
48
49 reviews of the immense interdisciplinary literature on occupational segregation, see Anker (1998), Ashcraft (2006),
50
51 Charles and Grusky (2004), Jacobs (1999), McCall (2001, 2005), Scott (1994), and Tomaskovic-Devey (1993).
52 3
53 This literature emanates from organizational discourse and communication as well as feminist and critical
54
55 management studies. For a fuller review, see Ashcraft (2006).
56 4
If we seek consistency with the current vocabulary of management identity research, the subject of Pratt et al’s
57
58
(2006) project is arguably professional identification and identity work. As noted earlier, these are the concepts most
59
60
39
1
2
3 management scholars use to capture, respectively, individual affiliation with collective targets and the individual
4
5 construction of self in interaction. Professional identity would be reserved for reference to an occupational
6
7 collective, parallel to organizational identity.
8
5
9 Pronoun intended.
10
6
11 For example, contrast the gender and race analyses found in Jorgenson (2002), Mellström (1995), Misa (2010), and
12
13 Reitman (2006) with Barley’s (2005) review of technical work, which remains silent on such matters.
14 7
15 Despite claims to the paucity of research (Pratt et al., 2006), there is a large interdisciplinary literature on
16
17 occupational and professional identity beyond the scope of management studies. This research is fragmented in
18
19 location and orientation; and case studies tend to address the concerns of specific professional audiences (e.g.,
20
21 Kirkham & Loft, 1993; Miller, 1998; Misa, 2010). I thus focus my efforts here on translation—that is, rendering this
22
23 literature’s conception of occupational identity ‘user-friendly’ for management scholars. For a fuller sampling of this
24
25 vast work, see Ahrens and Chapman (2000), Ashcraft (2005), Brewis and Linstead (2000), Casey and Allen (2004),
26
27 Cohen et al. (2005), Greene et al. (2002), Hermanowicz (1998), Inwood and Reid (2001), Jorgenson (2002),
28
Kirkham and Loft (1993), Leidner (1991), Miller (1998), Roderick (2006), Solari (2006), Sotirin and Gottfried
29
30
(1999), and Tracy and Scott (2006).
31
32 8
For more on professionalization as a political project, see Macdonald’s (1995) review of related literature.
33
34 9
That the metaphor originates from the evolution of an ancient gendered fairytale presents opportunity for
35
36
theoretical play and irony, as this section is meant to illustrate.
37
38 10
Challenges in doing so arise in some of the very works supporting this proposal, which tend to restrict their
39
40 examples to bodies already visible (e.g., flight attendants, as in Witz, Warhurst, & Nickson, 2003; Wolkowitz, 2002)
41
42 instead of calling out the “embodied dispositions” (Witz et al., 2003: 49) of disembodied labor.
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
40
1
2
3
TABLE 1: COMPARISON OF STANCES ON WORK-BODY ALIGNMENT
4
5
6 Theories of Direction of View of Body View of Work Sample Explanation: Airline Flying Implications for Change
7
8 Work-Body Influence
9
10 Alignment
11
12
13 Stance 1 Practitioner bodies→ Physicality as Occupations (i.e., a Because most early pilots were white men Shifts in the social identity
14
15 Nature of work socially marked in taken-for-granted of means, flying was promptly designated profile of an occupation’s
16
17 stable gender and/or collection of tasks) skilled labor, and pilots enjoyed access to actual practitioners will likely
18 The character of an
19 race categories (e.g., with indeterminate professionalization resources. Thus, change how we evaluate the
20 occupation is based on
21 African-American features until airline flying became known as the character of that occupation.
22 the social identity of
23 men) assigned to certain complex work of professionals.
24 its practitioners.
25 bodies
Focus on actual Problem: Many early, well-known pilots
26
27
practitioners were white women of means (Corn, 1979).
28
29
30
31
32
33 Stance 2 Nature of work→ Physicality as Occupations (i.e., a Flying has been (perceived as) physically Shifts in (perceived) task
34
35 Practitioner bodies socially marked in taken-for-granted demanding, high-risk labor; a military features will likely change the
36
37 stable gender and/or collection of tasks) skill; and a complex technical task. social identity profile of an
The (perceived)
38
39 race categories defined by intrinsic Cultural reflexes link all of these features occupation’s actual
inherent character of
40
41 features that are to white masculinities, first of a blue-
42
43
44
45
41
46
47
48
1
2
3 an occupation Focus on actual readily associated collar hue, and later, a white collar. Thus, practitioners.
4
5 summons practitioners practitioners with certain bodies airline flying became and remained white
6
7 with certain social men’s work, despite a change in its class
8
9 identities. identity.
10
11
12 Problem: In the early days, flying was also
13
14 (perceived as) a delicate, artful, and
15
16 intuitive pursuit (Ashcraft & Mumby,
17
18 2004).
19
20
21 Stance 3 Practitioner bodies ↔ Physicality as The organization of Because most early pilots were white men The material organization of an
22
23 Nature of work socially marked in tasks into of means, airline flying developed as an occupation and the social
24
25 stable gender and/or occupations with occupation with high job quality. identities of its usual
The character of an
26
27 race categories predictable job Concurrently, airline flying was reserved practitioner are mutually
occupation forms
28
29 quality—e.g., work for white men only (e.g., the pilot union supportive. Changes in one
around its usual Focus on actual and
30
content, labor expressly prohibited women as well as will likely induce changes in
31 practitioner, and usual practitioners
32
process, men of color members) as a way to ensure the other, but the momentum
33 valuable occupations
34
institutionalized high job quality and maintain it over time. created by their recursive
35 are reserved for
36
evaluations of relation makes it increasingly
37 certain social Problem: The high job quality of airline
38
complexity and difficult to change either.
39 identities. flying and the formal exclusion of female
40 status, earnings
41 and non-white pilots were created as part
42
43
44
45
42
46
47
48
1
2
3 of a campaign to persuade the public that
4
5 pilots were elite professionals (Hopkins,
6
7 1998). In short, status composition and
8
9 status closure were invented as supporting
10
11 evidence that airline flying was indeed
12
13 professional work. The calculated
14
15 construction of figurative practitioners—
16
17 the disembodied professional airline pilot
18
19 against the embodied ladyflier—is not
20
21 accounted for.
22
23
24 Stance 4: Determined in A key resource for A key resource for In their quest for viability, commercial Occupational identity produces
25
26 Theorizing from discursive struggle discursive struggle, discursive struggle, airlines faced a mire of conflicting and mediates the relation
27
28 the glass slipper over occupational conceived as conceived as claims symbolism, especially constructions of between the nature of work
29
30 identity embodied social about inherent task flying as difficult, high-risk labor or an and embodied social identities:
31
32 identity—i.e., social features (stance 2) easy, safe, artful pastime. Pilot Figurative bodies, which
Multiple constituents
33
34 constructions of the as well as the physicality—that of the rugged hero-pilot interact but may not
in/across multiple sites
35
36 physical body that material and the ladybird, respectively—figured correspond with actual or usual
clash over answers to
37
38 yield ready-made organization of tasks prominently in these constructions. practitioners, are used to
the entwined
39
40 categories of people into occupations Airlines and the pilot union discerned that create, justify, and naturalize
questions: What is this
41
42
43
44
45
43
46
47
48
1
2
3 line of work, and who and typifications with predictable job a different construction—that of flying as occupational content, value,
4
5 does it? Clashes may about them, which quality (stance 3) complex, technical labor performed by practice, and administration.
6
7 be periodically we negotiate in reliable, professional officers—served This results in a glass slipper
8
9 explicit and intense context as we their mutual interests and joined forces to effect, which (dis)advantages
10
11 (e.g., professional experience bodies institutionalize it. They created the the occupation as a whole and
12
13 jurisdiction contest), and maneuver conditions for knowledge abstraction by those who can(not) embody
14
15 but are also ongoing bodily symbolism erasing the airline pilot’s physicality (i.e., figurative social identities.
16
17 (e.g., in evolving by invoking the disembodied Diversifying occupations
18 Focus on figurative
19 representations of professional), against the hyper-femininity begins with creative
20 practitioners and
21 occupations). of the ladybird-turned-stewardess. reconstruction of the identity
22 their relation to
23 of work itself.
actual and usual
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
44
46
47
48
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The Glass Slipper: 'Incorporating' Occupational Identity in Management Studies

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Identity, Occupations, Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Communication

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