Is organisational coaching a form of identity regulation or a form of resistance to it?

Identity regulation is a concept that describes key means by which organisations exert control over their employees’ identities, and organisational coaching is often commissioned as one such means. However, there are types of coaching that act in support of resistance to identity regulation. Moreover, there is now empirical evidence for this situational paradox through description of what is actually discussed in coaching, which means that the intended purpose and actual usage are diametrically opposed. This conceptual paper explores what makes this situational paradox possible by considering some discourses that shape organisational coaching and by differentiating the explicit and implicit ways of resisting identity regulation. Among the implications of this study is a concern that what enables organisational coaching to support resistance to identity regulation is currently under threat from the replacement of human coaches with AI alternatives.