Subroto, Gatot;
(2025)
Fear in identity regulation: A study of fear experiences and identity creation of project practitioners in the government sector.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Abstract
This thesis explores the role of the basic emotion of fear in identity regulation which still receives little attention in organization studies. Attending to a particular group of project practitioners that have a crucial role in managing government projects in Indonesia, known as Commitment-Making Officials (CMOs), this study draws on the identity creation model by Watson (2008). This thesis employs Gioia methodology to organize and analyze qualitative data collected from interviews with 62 respondents. The findings show that fear plays a catalytic role in the formation and transformation of identity. Fear was perceived to have been harnessed by the organization (in the regulation of workplace social-identities) and was catalytic for individuals (in working on their self-identity). More specifically, this study suggests that fear is contained within discourses, which constitutes the workplace social-identity of the project practitioners, and accompanies the individuals when engaging in identity work. Data analysis and discussion explore three discourses (i.e., legal compliance, accountability in state finance spending, and definition of success) that contain and infuse three distinctive types of fear, namely (1) organizational, (2) occupational, and (3) professional fear, which shape and augment corresponding workplace social-identities of (1) obedient civil servants, (2) accountable state treasurers, and (3) successful project managers. Organizational fear arises as the most pervading and, therefore, determines obedient civil servants as the most central social-identity. Furthermore, fear accompanies the identity work process as it drives and shapes the strategies with conformist, appropriation, and feigning tactics. Fear also plays the catalytic role by compelling individual project practitioners to engage in self-reassertion in which they narrate themselves as insecure self. The reconciliation of the internal self-identity of the insecure self with the perceived, external discursive social-identity results in feigned selves of obedient civil servants as the core identity for the project practitioners to maintain a level of ontological security in a fearful work atmosphere. Overall, the subjective experience of project practitioners in the government sector is essentially fear-based identity regulation, emphasizing that fear washes over social processes of identity creation, imprinting the overwhelming impact of fear on the individual and leading to the emergence of discursive fear.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Fear in identity regulation: A study of fear experiences and identity creation of project practitioners in the government sector |
| Language: | English |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208880 |
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