From lone wolves to members of the pack: Exploring interpersonal identity work within identity workspaces
基于意大利社区医院医护人员的质性研究，揭示了无法实现理想工作自我的个体如何共同创建身份工作空间，并通过人际身份工作解决冲突、实现自我扩展。
Summary Individuals can experience the urge to realize their desired work selves, inspired either by the “roads not taken” in the past or positive images of the self in the future. Based on a qualitative study of healthcare professionals working in Italian community hospitals, we develop a process model of how communities of individuals who are unable to enact their desired work selves in their current occupations create new entities to act as identity workspaces to host their identity work. They may do so even if they hold different desired work selves, engaging in interpersonal identity work. The processes of identity work and collective creation of an identity workspace are intertwined since the identity work of one individual is in an ongoing dynamic relation with the identity work of other individuals. People converge to play out their desired work selves in an identity workspace which is supportive. However, the heterogeneity of the desired work selves involved can lead to the individual's identity work encroaching on the identity work of the others, and this heterogeneity results in impasse. This impasse is resolved only when individuals engage in interpersonal identity work, through mutual exploration and enactment of expanded work selves in an enabling identity workspace.