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Introduction
Individuals strive to define their identity, i.e. a clear sense of “who I am,” in the different contexts of their lives and, in particular, in the workplace (Ashforth and Schinoff, 2016). Extant literature (e.g. Dutton et al., 2010; Gecas, 1982; Ibarra, 1999; Petriglieri et al., 2018; Petriglieri and Petriglieri, 2010; Pratt, 2000; Pratt et al., 2006) has paid significant attention to the processes through which individuals define and build their work identities – i.e. the values, belief, and attributes they use to define themselves in the workplace (Ibarra, 1999) – as work identities are closely related to how individuals behave and perform as workers (Alvesson et al., 2008; Koppman et al., 2016).
Until recently, researchers have studied the “world of work” (Ashford et al., 2018) mainly in terms of stable employment relationships and career transitions within or between organizations, in accordance with the times of job security and economic stability that have characterized many Western Countries for almost half a century. Consistently, existing identity literature has often explored organizational contexts (e.g. companies, NGOs, public organizations), showing that organizations offer their employees values, tools and resources to support the development of a coherent sense of self (Ashforth and Schinoff, 2016), and to foster organizational-coherent behaviors (Alvesson et al., 2008; Ashforth and Schinoff, 2016; Pratt, 2000). Nonetheless, over the past few decades, given extensive economic and technological changes, career trajectories have become less linear as individuals not only change jobs more frequently, but also engage more in independent or temporary work (Ashford et al., 2007; Connelly and Gallagher, 2004; Hollister, 2011; Stone et al., 2015). Consequently, scholars have started to question the validity and applicability of existing management theories to explain the behavior of workers in the new world of work (Ashford et al., 2018; Cappelli and Keller, 2013; Furnham, 2006; Sparrow, 2000; Spreitzer et al., 2017), where people often experience uncertainty and reside “in between” organizations, occupations and other communities (Carton and Ungureanu, 2018; Ibarra and Obodaru, 2016).
Since the uncertain conditions that workers experience in new labor markets are strongly intertwined with how they define and perceive themselves as professionals (Ibarra and Obodaru, 2016), in this paper, we intend to address scholarly concerns...