Mind the gap: personal and collective identities at work

This paper explores three different ways in which workers experience and react to managerial attempts to mould and shape their identities. It provides illustrations of three theoretically-derived identity modalities: ‘dramaturgical selves’; ‘conformist selves’; and ‘resistant selves’. The paper shows how the relationship between personal and collective identities is at the heart of these modalities, and how they are formed as a reaction to management attempts to narrow, maintain or widen the gap between personal and collective identities at work.