“We are one thing to one man and another thing to another.”
- Mead (1934), pg. 74
The role of personal agency and individualization in identity formation is the key to understanding the construction of social relationships. The foundation of Mead’s (1934) ‘me’
and ‘I’ theory provided future researchers a basic theoretical framework that led to the establishment of present day identity work theory. Mead’s theory of the ‘self’ and
‘generalized other’ represents the very basis of the relationship between the self and society.
He suggests that most of a person’s ‘self’ is portrayed through social interactions with others through symbolic communication, and what determines the amount of ‘communicated self’ is through social experience (Mead 1934). Mead also established the differentiation between the
‘I’ and ‘me’ in his theory of ‘self’. The ‘I’ represents the instinctive and creative aspect of a person, which is unpredictable and volatile as it is dependent on the individual’s meaning of the world through personal life experiences. On the other hand, the ‘me’ is the representation of an individual’s external self-influenced by others in the social world; it is now society that dominates the individual and is a source of social control. In other words, individuals seek to form the structure of their relationships through the process of social interaction.
The representation of Mead’s theory of self and other is clearly mapped out in today’s theory of identity work where the identification of internal and social identity can be mapped through Mead’s theory of self and other. While the ‘self’ represents our self-perception of the world, our ‘generalized other’ seeks to perform and externalize the characteristics adopted through group membership and societal norms. According to Mead (1934), “both aspects of
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the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ are essential to the self in its full expression (pg. 199).” In other words, both the community and our individual autonomy are deemed necessary towards the formation of one’s identity as a whole.
The Social Construction of Individuals within an Organization
An individual adopts multiple identities in different social environments. It is the ‘generalized other’ that allows individuals to adapt to social norms, rules and regulations which indefinitely alter the way we act in different social events (Mead 1934). Social constructionist theory has taken Mead’s ideas further to suggest how the supposed objective facts about social selves are socially constructed in terms of our embedded social relations (e.g. Berger and Luckmann 1966, Hatch 1997, 2002, Cunliffe 2008, Alvesson 2013). The formation of individual identities is based on the capitalization of social interactions and human relationships (Berger & Luckmann 1966; Cunliffe, Ann L. 2008; Hatch & Schultz 2002).
Through a social constructionist lens, the world is contextual and dependent on the ways humans construct the meaning behind action. The key to the construction of meaning are through the power of symbols and language. Social theorists have determined that language and symbols are key determinants to the construction of knowledge and social behaviour, where individuals can gather symbolic meanings through the use words and actions in social contexts. Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) theory of externalization, objectivation and internalization best summarizes how the use of social interaction, language and symbolic meanings constitute the production of one’s identity.
Berger and Luckmann (1967) suggest that through externalization, objectivation and internalization, we are then only able to identify the identities of others and our own individual identity. Externalization, seen as the bigger picture, seeks to explore “the world as it already is” where the construction of behavior and characteristics has been formed by those
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before us. We seek to identify more of our “self” through objectivation (where we head out to learn about previously formed actions and behaviors) and internalization (where the breakdown of past mannerism allows us to find personal meaning towards our inner selves).
Berger and Luckmann (1966) argue that only when we become conscious of our identity as a
“generalized other”, that we become an “effective member of society and in subjective possession of a self and a world” (pg. 137). The world is only identified when we are able to interpret meanings of events and other subjectivities and in doing so we take on the world, the identity of others and therefore our own place and identity (Berger & Luckmann 1966;
Cunliffe, Ann L. 2008).
Social constructivists seek to identify how knowledge and meanings are socially constructed.
They have collectively agreed that the way people constantly readjust themselves is dependent on both the social setting and interactions. The key aspect of social construction is derived through the interaction between individuals (agencies), which allow us to self- construct the type of relationships we desire within an organizational setting. In other sense, the use of social constructivism provides a potential mechanism for us to self-create the type of organizational structure we want through social relationships. Research by Abaza and Fry (2007) has determined that when the identity constructed by members within an organization is more congruent to the identity constructed outside the organization, it is more likely that the institution will achieve its specific goals faster and more efficiently. However, in the world today, majority of the organizations impose their structure upon individuals, which ultimately suppresses our internal identities in an organizational environment (boyd 2001;
Brown, AD 2001) which will be further discussed later in the chapter.