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This paper explores the alignment of individual and organizational identity management. Two videotaped conversations between adolescents and teachers were analyzed in order to discover the extent to which individuals enact particular strategies to manage both individual and institutional identities. These episodes demonstrate little support for Pratt & Foreman's (2000) identity management strategies of deletion, integration or aggregation. Compartmentatlization, or the separation between conflicting identities, was the most prevalent strategy employed in both conversations. These findings raise questions about individual's positions within organizations and their abilities to enact various strategies and identities. The authors conclude by urging a reconsideration of the term, "identity management."
Identity management is a process through which individuals make choices to enact and negotiate different identities (Carbaugh, 1994; Czariawaska-Joreges, 1994; Harre, 1994; Thoger Christensen & Cheney, 1994; McKerrow & Bruner, 1997). Identity has been described and theorized as (a) one's individually located sense of self, developed over time (Erikson, 1968; Jacobson, 1963); (b) different social roles one enacts (Mead, 1934; Goffman, 1959; Hogg, Terry & White, 1995); (c) one's sense of group membership within, as well as in contrast to other groups (Hogg, Terry & White, 1995); and (d) the way that one represents oneself to others, and the impressions others form as a result (Redhill, 1999; Scott & Lane, 2000; Pfeffer, 1981). In contemporary work in organizational theory, the concept of identity may be applied to organizational, as well as individual, identity; organizations, like individuals, have multiple, often conflicting identities needing management (Pratt & Foreman, 2000; Cheney, 1991; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1994). Czarniawska-Joerges (1994), for example, argues that organizations have come to be thought of as individuals, in both legal rights and obligations.
Researchers in business management in particular (Albert & Whetten, 1985; Cheney 1983; Hogg & Terry, 2000; Scott & Lane, 2000) utilized the concept of identity management to discuss new organizational management strategies. For example, in a recent issue of Academy of Management Review (Jan. 2000) devoted to the topic of identity management, Michael Pratt and Peter Foreman develop four strategies that managers within business organizations can use to effectively regulate organizational identities: (a) compartmentalization, (b) integration, (c) deletion and (d) aggregation. Compartmentalization involves the physical, spatial or symbolic separation of identities in conflict. Integration is an attempt to fuse...