2009/02/24 by Jana Costas, Peter Fleming · 280 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · Psychology · #Management and Organizational Studies #Emotional Labor in Professions #Gender Diversity and Inequality #Alienation #Identification (biology) #Identity (music) #Essentialism #Sociology #Relation (database) #Self #Social psychology #Organizational identification #Epistemology #Psychology #Political science #Gender studies #Aesthetics #Law
paper · doi:10.1177/0018726708101041
published in Human Relations 62(3), 353-378 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2009/02/24 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Dis-identification is now an important research area in organization studies investigating how employees subjectively distance themselves from managerial domination by constructing identities considered more `authentic'. But how should we understand situations where actors become aware that their putative`real' selves are paradoxically unreal and foreign? We draw inspiration from the concept of self-alienation to explain experiences beyond dis-identification, where actors perceive the truth of themselves (`who I really am') as alien. An empirical study of a global management consultancy firm demonstrates how a discursive and non-essentialist understanding of self-alienation might usefully capture this experience of identity. Three causes of self-alienation are proposed and we discuss their significance in relation to identity and authenticity in contemporary organizations.