Sammy Toyoki

Identity Work and Legitimacy

We analyse the relationships between identity work and internal legitimacy. Based on an in-depth case study of prisoners in Helsinki Prison, we focus on how their identity work affirmed and contested three kinds of institutional legitimacy – pragmatic, moral and cognitive. The research contribution we make is to show that some forms of identity work are also a form of internal legitimacy work, and how this identity talk constructs organizations as more (or less) legitimate. This is important because it demonstrates that identity work is an intrinsic (though often overlooked) aspect of processes of organizing.

Stigma, identity and power: Managing stigmatized identities through discourse

We analyse how men incarcerated in Helsinki Prison managed, through talk, their stigmatized identities as prisoners. Three strategies are identified: ‘appropriation’ of the label ‘prisoner’; claiming coveted social identities; and representing oneself as a ‘good’ person. The research contribution we make is to show how inmates dealt with their self-defined stigmatized identities through discourse, and how these strategies were effects of power. We argue that stigmatized identities are best theorized in relation to individuals’ repertoires of other (non-stigmatized) identities that they may draw on to make supportive self-claims. Prisoners, like other kinds of organizational participants, we argue, often have considerable scope for managing diverse, fragile, perhaps even contradictory, understandings of their selves.

Bringing the Body Back into the Study of Time in Consumer Research

Abstract Purpose This conceptual chapter explores the role of embodiment in phenomenological experience of lived time, and the implications it may hold for studying consumption. Methodology/approach Conceptual chapter. Findings We argue that though consumer research scholars have become increasingly cognizant of the embodied foundation of temporal experience, the relation between embodied experience of time and consumption activity still remains under-theorized and researched. Through a phenomenological perspective we are able to understand the consumer as temporally directed toward the world where value is realized emergently through embodiment of affordances. Originality/value of chapter We build an existing work in consumer research to open up a possibility for a phenomenological experience of consumption that is, to a great extent, precognitive, temporal, and based on the ability to experience lived time.

Serving time: Organization and the affective dimension of time:

In this article, we explore the affective dimension of human temporality. Drawing on the work of Michael Theunissen in his Negative Theologie der Zeit (Negative Theology of Time), we suggest that understanding time as affect may help shed light on how people in organizational settings are influenced by and react toward time, once it comes to appear as an obstacle, rather than a resource to the unfolding of life. To capture such situations, we introduce the notion of ‘chronopathic experience’ and proceed to explore such experiences empirically among men incarcerated in Helsinki Prison. Here, we identify chronotelic behavior as a modality of activities directed toward dealing with the affective pressure exerted by time, as it comes to appear given, external, and meaningless. We argue that the affective dimension of human temporality can be drawn upon in other organizational contexts to clarify the notion of time pressure and to better understand temporality-related institutional pathologies like stress, boredom, and depression.