In most of the scholarly articles, research on identity constructs is seen to focus on traditional organizations and not coworking ones. The literature on traditional organizations offers a variation of identity constructs. In this study, the term ‘traditional bureaucratic organizations’
is defined as an organization that focuses on strict regulatory culture, where professional organizational behaviour such as dress code, structural organizational values come into play.
While in identity studies, Tracy and Trethewey (2005) suggests that the separation of identity and image is the real self and impressions are somehow less genuine, fake selves. It may seem that this is even more evident especially in traditional bureaucratic organizations where emphasis on identity regulation (Wieland 2010).
46
In traditional organizations, the assumption of the term “identity regulation” is achieved through organizational control where the emphasis on corporate rules and regulatory conformance is acquired through structural formulation, procedures and measures and targets of the organization (Barley & Kunda 1992; Casey 1995, 1996, 1999; Deetz 1992; Kunda 1992; Ray 1986). Barnard (1968) states that the key defining element of any organization was the necessity of individuals to subordinate, to an extent, their own desires to the collective will of the organization. In other words, in order for an individual to be successful in the workplace, it is essential for them to surrender a part of themselves to the organization (Chester 1969). It is because of the statement above, regulation and control has always been a debate in organizational literature. Coworking literature has always rejected the notion of traditional regulatory structure that is found within traditional organizations. In contrast with a traditional organization, they strongly encourage on the freedom of expression in terms of being ‘who you are’ as well as being part of the community. This makes me question whether
‘being who you are’ may conflict with the identity portrayed within the community. What happens if your identity doesn’t match up to the community’s?
In his book, Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a high tech organization, Kunda’s (1992) ethnographic journey through a high tech organization brought about discovery of how cultural artifacts are used explicitly in an effort to control employee behaviours and compel their commitment to the organization’s goals. Kunda finds that the employees resist these efforts in multiple ways where it leads to individual struggle between the distinction of their self-identity and corporate identity. He later found that it came to a point where they start fighting against their self-identity and start to create the ‘appropriate organizational self’, which led to employees becoming cynical and alienated. He mentions that, “under normative control, it is the employees’ self – that ineffable source of subjective experience- that is claimed in the name of corporate interest (pg. 11).”
47
In addition, Alvesson and Willmott (2002) mention that regulation and control are not necessarily negative connotations as to what people generally assume and that it does not work outside nor pull away from the individual’s quest for self-definition within the organization. They argue that “identity regulation is a significant, neglected and increasingly important modality of organizational control, especially perhaps in larger corporations and those that are more readily located in the New E-conomy in addition to the longer established province of the professional service sector (pg. 621).” They also mention that the use of
“organizational control is fused/interacted with the individual’s self, indicating that ‘the self- identity, as a repertoire of structured narrations, is sustained through identity work in which regulation is accomplished by selectively, but not necessarily reflectively adopting practices and discourses that are more or less intentionally target at the insides of employees including managers (pg. 627).” In other words, identity control can be understood as a critical element of the employment relationship through the processes of induction, training and corporate education (e.g. in-house magazines, posters, etc.)
In another study by Brown and Lewis (2011), where they analysed routine practices within a law firm, mention that through the use of routines, the lawyers were able to fashion their selves into autonomous professionals. They were able to take the ‘mundane, every day, repeated patterns of lawyer activity’ and incorporate it into their sense of self. (Brown, AD &
Lewis 2011). To a certain extent, the need for organizational regulation and control is essential in managing and maintaining structure in an organization. However, an over excess of control may lead to managers seducing their subordinates into calibrating their sense of self with a restricted catalogue of corporate-approved identities bearing strong imprints of managerial power. This corporate regulation of self may also be constituted as a kind of
‘invisible, identity cage’ (Collinson 2003), which ultimately leads to the need for either conformity or resistance by the individual.