David M. Sluss

Identity Dynamics in Occupational Dirty Work: Integrating Social Identity and System Justification Perspectives

Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) documented how workers in so-called “dirty work” occupations were able to overcome threats to their social identities by engaging in the cognitive tactics of ideology manipulation and social weighting. This paper expands Ashforth and Kreiners work in three ways. First, we move beyond an exclusive focus on intense dirty work occupations by mapping the broader landscape of stigmatized work. Second, we examine how system justification theory and social identity theory---typically cast as competing mechanisms by which individuals and groups perceive their places in a social structure---can complement each other to tell a more complete story of how individuals and groups deal with stigmatized identities. Third, we consider how stigmatized workers experience identification, disidentification, and ambivalence as a result of conflicting occupational and societal influences.

How Relational and Organizational Identification Converge: Processes and Conditions

Separate research literatures focus on the individuals identification with relationships, groups, organizations, and other workplace targets. We propose that identification with one referent may converge with or extend to another, thus suggesting the potential for more parsimonious perspectives on identification. We illustrate this argument by examining how the subordinates identification with the subordinate-manager role relationship (“relational identification”) (RI) may converge with the subordinates organizational identification (OI). We propose that convergence occurs through cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms, including social influence, anthropomorphization, personalization, affect transfer, and behavioral sensemaking. We also propose that convergence is conditioned by task interdependence (inherent in the role relationship) and prototypicality (of the relational other). We discuss the implications of our convergence model for future research on multiple identifications.

Curiosity adapted the cat: the role of trait curiosity in newcomer adaptation.

Using longitudinal data from 123 newcomers across 12 telemarketing organizations, we examined the role of 2 forms of trait curiosity (specific and diversive) as antecedents of proximal adaptation behaviors (information seeking and positive framing) and more distal, in-role and extra-role behaviors (job performance and taking charge). Results suggest that specific curiosity predicts information seeking behaviors, whereas diversive curiosity promotes positive framing. Results also support the relationship between positive framing and performance and the extra-role behavior of taking charge. Overall, the study validates the role of curiosity as a multifaceted individual difference that serves as an antecedent to newcomer adaptation.

SOCIALIZATION AND SOCIAL EXCHANGE: LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE AS MEDIATOR BETWEEN TACTICS AND ATTACHMENT.

The article examines how new employees are socialized in the workplace, Over two-hundred new hires at a dozen U.S. telemarketing firms were surveyed, once two weeks after completion of their formal training and again six weeks later. Results indicate that a new worker’s relationship with his or her supervisor plays a key role in adjusting to the workplace. Additionally, a strong link was found between job satisfaction and “serial socialization” whereby a supervisor provides guidance and advice, and serves as a role model.

Relational Underpinnings of Identity: How Interpersonal Interactions Shape “Who I Am” & “Who We Are”

This presenter symposium explores in greater depth the means by which relational forces at the interpersonal (as opposed to the collective) level shape and influence individuals’ identity developme...