Identity regulation, identity work and phronesis

Thibaut Bardon (), Andrew D Brown and Stéphan Pezé ()
Additional contact information
Thibaut Bardon: Audencia Recherche - Audencia Business School
Andrew D Brown: University of Bath [Bath]
Stéphan Pezé: IRG - Institut de Recherche en Gestion - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: How do corporations attempt to regulate the ways middle managers draw on discourses centred on ‘effectiveness' and ‘ethics' in their identity work, and how do these individuals respond? We analyse the discursive struggle over what it meant to be a competent manager at Disneyland, where middle managers were encouraged to construe their selves in ways that emphasized ‘being effective' over ‘being ethical', and managers responded with identity work that positioned them as searching for the practical wisdom (phronesis) to make decisions that were both effective and moral. The theoretical contribution we make is twofold. First, we analyse processes of identity regulation and identity work at Disneyland, highlighting divergences between corporate injunctions and middle managers' appropriations of them, regarding what it meant to be a practically wise manager. Second, we discuss a phronetic identity narrative template, contestable both by organizations and managers, in which people are positioned as questing for the practical wisdom to make decisions that are both moral and effective, and phronesis as an image by which scholars may analyse identities and identity work. This leads us to a more nuanced understanding of middle manager identities and the scope they have to constitute their selves as moral agents.

Keywords: Effectiveness; Ethics; Middle Managers; Phronesis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in Human Relations, 2017, 70 (8), pp.940-965. ⟨10.1177/0018726716680724⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01442782

DOI: 10.1177/0018726716680724

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().