Power, Privilege and Identity at the Margins : Identity Work Transitions of Lower Echelon Managers

Abstract

This study explores the hitherto unexamined role of national, cultural, societal and historical dynamics of power and privilege in the identity work of the lowest level of managers in organisations. This study revealed that so-called ‘post-apartheid’ South African organisations remain sites for perpetuating social injustice through physical vestiges of segregation as well as complex societal-organisational interdiscursive practices that serve to maintain an unequal distribution of power, social oppression and exclusion. Within this context, first level managers expressed their managerialism variously through contested and coercive agentic strategies of power and resistance, while finding themselves implicated and relationally complicit in invidious discursive practices, veiled as post-apartheid speak. Their social location at the ‘power margin’ between management and working classes educed a constant contested process of identity substitution, as they redefined themselves in the face of the loss and gain of socio-political power and privilege. This research contributes to and extends theory on identity work, intersectionality theory and whiteness in management and organisation studies to beyond the boundaries of the organisation, showing that the first level managers’ antipodal constructions of self were responses to the impact of organisational, societal and national political transformations on their variously politicised managerial selves. A particular strength of this study is that it integrates constructivist grounded theory with narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis in a way that privileges the experiences of the participants through their stories about being first level managers in post-apartheid South Africa, while revealing a richly textured theoretical construction of identity work at the margins in the context of significant societal and political change. Ultimately, it is hoped that this study will contribute towards improving working lives in organisations by drawing attention to the everyday struggles of those managers at the lowest level of the management hierarchy in organisations, those at the margins of managerial power, for whom expression of their managerialism and acceptance of their authority as managers is a tenuous process, constantly contested within an organisational context where political power and societal privilege remain dominant mechanisms for influencing organisational behaviour. In so doing this research helps South African organisations to better understand the complex challenges of achieving transformation in the workplace.