Defining Who You Are by Whom You Serve? Strategies for Prosocial-Professional Identity Integration with Clients

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ramarajan, Lakshmi; Yen, Julie
• 署名单位: Harvard University; Harvard University; Boston University; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-8392
• DOI: 10.1177/00018392241238407
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 515-567
• 关键词: DARK SIDE; work; POWER; IMPACT; expertise; image; ORGANIZATIONS; CONSTRUCTION; Occupations; motivation

摘要

Many professionals want to both achieve professional success and contribute to society. Yet, in some professional contexts, these aims are in tension because serving elite clients is considered the pinnacle of professional success, but professionals themselves may view serving this clientele as antithetical to making a societal contribution. Drawing on interviews with 84 architects and designers who self-identify as people seeking to contribute to society-that is, who hold a prosocial identity-we develop theory about how professionals navigate tensions between their prosocial and professional identities and with what consequences for their work with clients. We identified four strategies that professionals used to ease these tensions, all of which gave the prosocially oriented professionals a sense of identity integration. However, these strategies differently shaped professionals' approach to power relations with the client, depending on the client's status and the types of knowledge and skills each professional viewed as central to their work. Professionals with marginalized social identities, such as women and ethnic/racial minorities, were more likely than others to embrace working with low-status clients and to use broader definitions of the knowledge and skills required for their work. Our findings contribute to scholarship on professional identity construction and prosocial work.