The tension between stability and fluidity is also relevant for this study. In identity literature, there has been a longstanding debate on identity stability. One side asserts that identity is stable, durable and coherent, whereas the other views it as primarily fluid, malleable, contested and fragmented.
Stable identity
One crucial theoretical orientation within identity literature quite sharply underlines a discrete and enduring notion of identity. Influenced by social psychological and sociological research, this broad theoretical stance advances the relational and comparative nature of identity (Ybema et al., 2009), that is, identity being mainly defined by ‘to which group I belong’ and ‘who are we/others’. It also accentuates the emotive and cognitive effects, such as in-group-ness, associated with social identity. ‘Social identity theory’ and ‘self-categorization theory’ (Ashforth and Mael, 1989; Tajfel and Turner, 1985; Turner et al., 1987), as well as ‘organizational identity’ and ‘organizational identification’ (Albert and Whetten, 1985; Dutton et al., 1994), are representative and influential theorisations based on this fundamental approach.
In individual identity studies, two types of thematic issues could be traced to deep influence from this stability-oriented view of identity. The first issue is transitions of social identity. The vital investment in social categorisation to produce identity renders individuals highly subject to changes in their membership, such as career transition or organisation change (Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010; Petriglieri, 2011). Thus, they may use narrative construction, such as ‘life stories’, to maintain identity stability and coherence (Gergen and Gergen, 1997; Giddens, 1991; Watson, 2009; Weick, 1995). Moreover, this kind of ontological stability could also be obtained from socially confirmed trustworthiness (Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010; Van Maanen, 2010), which
is reflectively seen by individuals themselves as a token of their consistent commitment to a given social identity.
The second issue is competing demands from the varied identities that one individual may hold. In Ashforth and Mael’s (1989) initial theorisation, it was already postulated that individuals could encounter multiple or contradictory identities, and conflicts could be resolved cognitively by separating, buffering and ordering (p.30) (cf. not dissimilar ideas in Pratt and Foreman, 2000). In organisation or occupation life, this tension could arise when the social group to which individuals belong is overtly distinctive and different from or incongruent with their personal identities. Related literature offers examples of various patterns of engagement with demanding work identities, such as separation and integration of work and personal identity by priests (Kreiner et al., 2006b) and ideological reformulation among ‘dirty workers’ (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999). Despite acknowledging the changes people make in the composition of their entire identity, the underlying assumption of this host of literature is that people’s personal identity and the work identity that they interplay with are both concrete and lasting entities, and a relative stable equilibrium between them is achievable.
Moreover, the application of Foucauldian theorisation in organisation studies also tends to substantiate the stability of identity. This assumption maintains that identity is largely produced as subjectivity of dominant discourses, thus giving limited or little room for creative and transformative identity construction. On the one hand, disciplinary practices are widely adopted to regulate and control identities (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Brown and Lewis, 2011). On the other hand, dominant discourses constitute self-knowledge and set up life trajectories that are appealing to individuals, which colonise their self-construed identity as well as their continuous constructive project (Casey, 1995; Grey, 1994; Thornborrow and Brown, 2009). Hence, identity is stable to the extent that the dominant discursive regime remains stable and unitary.
Therefore, both theoretical perspectives mentioned above hold that social identities are imprinted heavily by macro institutions, which are historically rooted, ‘slow in the move’, and relatively remote and unshakable in daily activities. Accordingly, agentic identity construction is no more than minor-scale modification of a steady and robust social identity.
Fluid identity
In contrast, among a few other theoretical positions, identity is conceived in perpetual flux and, accordingly, identity construction is an eternal open-ended project. One theoretical position is based on the social-psychological and psychoanaltical assumption that paradoxes and reflexivity are inherent in the human mind so that real conditions could always trigger disillusion and existential anxiety (Knight and Willmott, 1989; Roberts, 2005; Voronov and Vince, 2012), and this is exacerbated by radical social changes in the contemporary era (Collinson, 2003).
Furthermore, another group of postmodern-oriented scholars point to the unstable nature of identity, based on the fluidity of social discourses that prescribe identity. Some contend that organisational and social discourses are inherently poly-semantic and fragmented, thus less totalising in compiling individual identity and leaving room for manoeuvring (Davies and Thomas, 2003; Sewell, 1992; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003). Some assert that due to continuous changes in organisational image, meaning and structure, social discourses become unstable, and social identity becomes increasingly vague and precarious (Ainsworth and Hardy, 2014; Collinson, 2003; Down and Reveley, 2009). Some others stress the dynamic competition among discourses that intersect in an individual’s life, and argue that this competition causes individual’s permanent identity construction of reflectively reassembling discourses (Linstead and Thomas, 2002; Thomas and Linstead, 2002; Webb, 2006).
In other words, instead of maintenance and preservation of a core set of identities across diverse situations, the matter of identity construction is more likely to be a temporary and expedient configuration of multiple identity meanings (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003; Ybema et al., 2009). And fundamentally, identity is less of a construct but more of a metaphor or ‘symbolic rallying points’ (Brown, 2006; Ybema et al., 2009).
However, this notion of a decentred identity remains an idealised conception, and normally ‘taken less seriously’ in empirical analysis (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003). Critics maintain that it inflates the malleability of individual identity and ignores the fiction, inertia and insensitivity that impedes such highly adaptive identity construction (Alvesson, 2010; Cohen, 1994; Handley et al., 2006). However, some scholars address this tension by proposing a putative core of self—noted in empirical
studies as the authentic self (Costas and Fleming, 2009), personality (Watson, 2009), and life story (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003)—a notion that constitutes an anchor for individuals grappling with the complex, contradictory and rapidly changing world around them.
This stabilising notion of self, however, differs from the essential self-identity considered in the social identity theoretical camp, in that the self-identity is believed to be constructed socially rather than absolutely internally (Jenkins, 1996; Ybema et al., 2009). For instance, self-narratives that advance a core self are pivotally subject to others’ confirmation (Beech, 2008; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008; Roberts, 2005; Van Maanen, 2010). In particular, when critical incidents prevent existing self-narratives from going on, people will adjust the specific self-meanings to repair and restore a sense of self (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008: 110).
To sum, the theoretical positions reviewed above both assume identity in constant flux, as obstructions to sustaining or reproducing identity in social life constantly require individuals to critically reflect on and recalibrate their identity (Knights and Willmott, 1989; Beech, 2008).