Abstract
In the competitive world of work, marginalised professionals such as devalued racial and ethnic groups, women, and people with disabilities often struggle to construct a positive work-related identity in corporate organisations. In South Africa, the majority of Black professionals’ identity struggle stems from the conflict between their collective cultural identities and the required advanced, individualistic organisational identities. The concept identity provides an opportunity to understand what it means to be black in the workplace and how Black professionals identify with these organisations. In the present study, the term black includes the Black African, Coloured, and Indian ethnic groups. More specifically, young Black professionals (YBPs) are a critical talent, and are at the centre of the war for talent in South Africa. I chose this critical group as the focus of my study. With respect to this group, my study centred around two key concepts: work-related identity (WRI) and authenticity at work. WRI is a multi-dimensional work self-concept that comprises a combination of personal, role, and social identities that affect a person’s adopted work roles and behaviours in an organisation. In my study, I set out to understand how YBPs configure their WRIs in organisations. Authenticity at work is the fit between a person’s work-related identities (i.e., personal, role, and social identities) and broader vii context. In my study, I set out to understand whether YBPs could operate authentically, and looked at the consequences of this authenticity at work in an organisational context. The unique combination of WRI and authenticity at work is key to understanding the psychological functioning of YBPs in an organisational context. Against the above background, my main research question was: How do young Black professionals construct an authentic work-related identity within an organisational context? Using organisational researchers, Dutton, Roberts, and Bednar's (2010) seminal paper on positive WRI perspectives, I developed the five research objectives (ROs) to investigate the research question in my study. A combination of identity theory and social identity theory provided the theoretical basis for my study. I set out to explore the rich but fragmented identity perspectives in organisations, as espoused in the literature. I developed a definition of WRI which provided insight into identity pathways which individuals may create in the WRI construction to become more authentic. Based on a review of contemporary literature, I developed 13 research propositions (RP1‒13), encompassing personal, professional-role, and social identity pathways. The RPs provided direction to my study in finding structured answers to the research question and meeting the ROs. I adopted a qualitative research design to explore the RPs by hearing directly from participants about their views on the research topic. My research strategy involved a form of ethnography approach, autoethnography, and a single case study research approach. I undertook the case study in the Johannesburg offices of a multi-national company, through in-depth interviews with 15 Black African YBPs (aged 24–34 years), 11 Black people managers, and the HR Director. Thematic data analyses were used to uncover integrated patterns in the data. My broad findings revealed that the participants were most authentic when their WRI consisted of life spheres, virtuous identity attributes, integrated identity construction approaches, identity tactics, and positive identity outcomes. An integration of my findings demonstrated that an authentic WRI did not entirely fit the neat identity pathways postulated in my RPs. Rather, I found that authentic WRI construction was much more complex, systemic, dynamic, and organic than was hinted at in the RPs derived from the current literature. The current functionalist perspective on WRI as the premise of my RPs proved too limiting to build an in-depth understanding of my findings. My pragmatic approach to my study lends itself to combining three theoretical perspectives—social constructionist, complexity/chaos, and critical perspectives—to arrive at a more in-depth and rich understanding of my integrated findings. The three perspectives allowed me to construct and propose an Authentic WRI Conceptual Model. The Model enabled me to make sense of the dynamic, non-linear, and cyclical nature of the construction of an authentic WRI, as reflected in my findings. The building blocks of the Model are made up of the macro context, authentic WRI construction and outcomes, life spheres, and authentic WRI prototypes. I distinguished the three authentic WRI prototypes, based on my proposed Model, namely Authentic, Limited Authentic and Inauthentic WRI Prototypes. The Model confirms the dynamic interaction in the authentic WRI construction between the individual, life spheres, and macro context. The study found the thwarting of this pursuit of an authentic WRI may adversely affect the participants’ psychological well-being and their experiences of the organisational culture and climate...
Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology)