Polyphony and the sense of self in flexible organizations

SummaryGrowing research suggests that work identity should be understood as multiple dynamic. This paper seeks to add nuance to this discussion by introducing the notion of polyphony to the analysis of identity (Evans, 2004, Rowan and Cooper, 1999 and Sidorkin, 1999). Firstly, drawing on the work of Bakhtin, 1984 and Bakhtin, 1986, it argues that understanding self as polyphonic helps account for its complexity, multiplicity and ambivalence. Secondly, it explores polyphonic identity as an experience and as a demand placed by modern organizations: Kondo's ethnography, it is argued, provides rich personal narratives wrought with ironies and contradictions, while Boltanski and Chiapello's work (2005) can be read as an examination of how modern organizations place complex and ambivalent demands on individual identities.