Exploring the Registers of Identity Research

• Date: 01 July 2017
• Author: Sandra Corlett,Peter McInnes,Mathew Sheep,Christine Coupland
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12149
• Published date: 01 July 2017

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 19, 261–272 (2017)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12149

Exploring the Registers of Identity

Research

Sandra Corlett, Peter McInnes,1Christine Coupland2and Mathew Sheep3

Northumbria University, UK, 1Strathclyde University, UK, 2Loughborough University,UK, and 3Florida Gulf Coast

University, USA

Corresponding author email: sandra.corlett@northumbria.ac.uk

As the lead, introductory, contribution to this special issue ‘Exploring Registers of

Identity Research’, this paper offers a view of three different ‘registers’ that might be

seen to characterize identity research and which feature, to a greater or lesser extent,

in the selected papers. First, the paper offers a means to understand the different the-

oretical traditions used to explain what constitutes identity and howit might be known.

Second, it considers the relationship between different levels of identity – individual,

group, professional, organizational and societal. Third, it reviews the methodologies

used to understand identities and examines key theoretical assumptions which feature

in academic debates, and in the selected papers, around identity theorizing. Drawing

on the papers included in this special issue we offer a framework as a heuristic device

that might guide scholars looking to enter the field of identity research and enablethose

already familiar with particular theoretical traditions, levels or methods to explore

possibilities for extending their research. As an enticement to tackle the challenges

extension across-registers can present, we again turn to the special issue articles to

examine – through a series of ‘gets’ – the different tactics authors might use to access

the rich potential offered by cross-fertilization between registers. Our contribution

then lies in advancing the potential for dialogue betweenregisters of identity research.

Introduction

As originally conceived, this special issue was in-

tended to provide a broad-based review of where re-

search on identity within organizations had reached

and, in acknowledging the different traditions from

which this research is undertaken, explore the poten-

tial for these to inform future efforts. To this end we

introduced the term ‘registers of identity’ to suggest

the potential for harmony (in the sense of different

vocal registers coming together), while also connot-

ing the discrete disciplines (in the sense of bureau-

cratic registers of formal records) in which scholar-

ship proceeds. The papers within this special issue

can certainly be said to inform our understanding

of the latter, and this paper builds on this in or-

der to consider the former. Specifically, this paper

offers a framework that may act as a heuristic de-

vice to help scholars conceptualize and theorize iden-

tity, and to appreciate the potential intersections of

different theoretical traditions at different levels of

identity – individual, group, professional, organiza-

tional and societal. The significance of this frame-

work, and its discussion of associated research

methodologies and methods, lies in providing a more

holistic interpretation of the identity field. It may,

then, facilitate exploration of the potential – where

it exists – for cross-fertilization between theoretical

traditions, levels and methods. The expressed,b ut ul-

timately unfulfilled, aspiration of the selected papers

to achieve dialogue leads us to reflect on our de-

sire for harmony within and across different regis-

ters. Appropriating from the work of Roland Barthes,

we suggest that our aspiration to encourage harmony

might miss the generative potential of engaging with

the ‘enigma’ posed by the otherness of and persistent

tensions within each register. The future of identity

studies, then, might not so much be dialogue between

registers, as critically engaging with the assumptions

which constitute our own.

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