Identity Construction at the Office: How Dutch Soldiers Make Sense of Their Professional Identity in Non-operational Positions

Abstract

Soldiers’ professional identity is developed by means of identification processes (Besharov and Smith in Acad Manag Rev 39:364–381, 2014) through their military training in which strong normative values are central. In the transfer to a non-operational position, soldiers are confronted with another set of norms and values, characterised by the political-bureaucratic environment. This results in the multiplicity of institutional logics at the office, which is also manifested at the identity level of soldiers (Besharov and Smith in Acad Manag Rev 39:364–381, 2014). By means of an ethnographic, multi-method case study, we ask how soldiers make sense of their professional identity in a non-operational position at the Dutch Ministry of Defence. We do so by using identity work (Alvesson and Willmott in J Manag Stud 39:619–644, 2002; Hawkins and Edwards in Manag Learn 46:24–43, 2015; Pratt in Constructing identity in and around organizations. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 21–49) as a theoretical lens, thereby addressing the need for research on micro-processes within institutional theory (ten Dam and Waardenburg in J Prof Organ 7:188–204, 2020). We argue that an identity confirmation takes place if the logics are contested; an identity adjustment takes place when the bureaucratic logic becomes dominant; a loss of identity takes place when the logics become estranged from each other and a new identity is formed when the logics are aligned to each other. The optimal manifestation of the institutional logics and associated identity construction depends on the context and can be politically contested (Skelcher and Smith in Public Adm 93:433–448, 2015).