How Does Paid Employment Affect The Identity - Essay Example

How does paid employment affect your identity? In order to have paid employment exert friendly influences on one’s identity, it consequently becomes highly important to learn all the critical ways to thrive in a career in a very positive and professional manner. This remains a reality that employment heavily interferes with one’s identity, self-esteem, and psychological satisfaction either in a positive or negative way. Also, there definitely exists a direct relationship between a worker’s identity and the amount of salary on which he or she is employed in any organization. Workers getting high salaries tend to be more satisfied with their identities and enjoy high self-esteems in comparison to low-profile workers who get paid poorly and who also consequently, tend to face the pressures of low self-esteems and poor social identities (Waters, 2012). Maintaining the nature of work identity also holds huge importance once a worker enters the workplace and the type of management practiced in that workplace also shares a relationship with whether a worker would be able to maintain his or her identity or not. This paper is primarily based on discussing if paid employment affects the workers’ identities or not, in what ways, and also the factors influencing those identities within the organizational setup. The way a worker perceives his or her identity in response to the type of employment he or she is engaged with influences the organizational behavior displayed by him or her. Various elements in relation to paid employment influencing the identity of workers form the discussion contained in this paper. Much research has been done on workers’ identities, which has effectively changed the way relationship with organizations is perceived presently by the workers. More and more managers these days are seen increasingly focus on the concept of organization culture and trying developing familiarity with organizational culture and the nature of culture-oriented issues helps in proper maintenance of identity. It is mentioned by Grey (2005, pp. 65-66) that a highly professional and concerned approach is required in every organizational setup for addressing various critically important factors like workers’ skills and identity issues. The concept of organizational culture is heavily related with the potential to reformulate the concept of workforce identity, as mentioned in the work compiled by Grey (2005, p. 75). It is discussed by the author in the book that cultural concept got introduced in the American management system earlier in 1980s. Actually, the cultural idea proposes that the organizational practices should be designed in such a way that they would promote the shared values because establishment of shared values ultimately leads to solidifying the workers’ identities, as already discussed. For stable cultural management, it is critically important that the staff should have a firm belief in values instead of going along with the orders of the managers like feeling less automatons. There should remain no distance between individuals’ purposes and those of the organization in which they are employed (Grey, 2005, p. 69). According to the theoretical approach introduced by Willmott (cited in Grey, 2005, p. 75), culture management has the serious potential to reformulate identity in harmony with the managerial doctrine. This theoretical approach professes that culture management should actually be perceived as a powerful tool through which internal world of an organization can be reshaped in terms of identity of people at work. With the help of a historical approach, Grey (2005, p. 66) discusses how Japanese managers laid greater emphasis on motivating the employees in order to commit them to working on united goals during the 1970s and 1980s, so that company output could be enhanced along with customer service. While the American management system was seen more concerned with addressing the issues of organizational structures and building management strategies, the Japanese managers adopted a more beneficial approach of organizational learning by which they satisfactorily attended to people’s skills and preserved their identities by improving their wages and motivating them thoroughly. The importance of organizational learning is huge. “Learning organizations afford people the opportunity to continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire” (Senge, cited in Palmar and Hardy, 2000, p. 198). In short, the Japanese employers have always been seen more concerned with enhancing the shared values within an organizational setup which relate to promoting every worker to communicate with each other regardless of varying cultural or racial backgrounds. It was until the factors like less internal conflict, high level of motivation, and improved company output caught global attention that American companies began to feel the need to adopt the art of Japanese management which laid greater focus on respecting the workers’ identities (Pascale and Athos, cited in Grey, 2005, p. 65). The need to address the concept of shared values holds huge importance because it is critically related with affecting the workers’ identities. When values are shared, there remains less need for the managers to be inquisitive about various issues at every level since shared values lead to building a strong and homogenous culture which fosters harmony among workers and kills cultural conflicts. Reduced managerial involvement consequently leads to empowered workforce, which results in solidifying and improving the workers’ identities and their self-esteems. This remains a fact that a happier and safer workforce has more positive approach towards their identities than a less secure workforce heavily intimidated by the employers and managers. Though power happens to form an essential component of organizational management, still excessive display of power and authority on part of the managers negatively interferes with workers’ identities and even mars them. This is because the unpleasant bossy attitude displayed by the employers causes the workers to abstain from protecting their identities which results in negative organizational behavior and cultural conflicts. The workers who do not want to be bossed as a result of poor and strict leadership style tend to alienate themselves from the organizational objectives. Such violent superiors like Hitler and Stalin who like to lead people by means of violence are not actually leaders but “tyrants working solely for their own benefit and depending on threat, violence and intimidation” (Bolden, 2004). According to Marxist theoretical approach, “changing personal awareness, social structure, and social consciousness concurrently can result in lessening alienation” (Gemmill and Oakley, 1992, p. 113). It is a reality that ultimate use of power leads to corrupting the workforce most definitely. It is unfortunate that many employers and managers around the globe regularly forget to sensitively address the sensitive line between exercise of power on workers coming from different cultural backgrounds and work ethics, as discussed by Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis (2005, p. 153). Though exercise of power by the superiors holds importance for making the employees comply with the organizational rules, still absolute use of power cripples identity and many important elements of organizational behavior like motivation, commitment, and professionalism. Also, it mars the concept of shared values and prevents it from expanding within an organization. Although the post- World War II research conducted on organization theory and management by scholars like Bennis, Berkowitz, Affinito, and Malone (cited in Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis, 2005, p. 153) approved the exercise of absolute power based on their concepts derived from bureaucratic authoritative structure, more recent research based on factual case studies implies that people tend to resist formal authoritative forces operating in an organization because they fear they would interfere with their individual identities in a very devastating way. It is indirectly proposed by (Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis, 2005, p. 154) that for nearly one-third period of our adult lives, people don’t happen to be in control of our identities having passed on that control to the superiors at an organization. It then becomes the duty of the managers to “conduct the business in accordance with their desires” (Collins, 1994). It is then them who are in control of managing and regulating the workers’ identities either in a positive or negative manner. By passing on the control to others at the organizations or firms, workers gradually enter into many complex workplace scenarios underlined by power and authority in which they may be frequently asked to do things they may not prefer to do. Though bureaucratic leadership style has its advantages, it also has many unintended consequences like deteriorating personal freedom of the workers due to which Weber (cited in Wilson, 2010, p. 262) went as far as labeling bureaucracy as an iron cage in which the workers may get confined. “Bureaucracy can threaten individual freedom” (Wilson, 2010, p. 262). Discussing identity in relation with organizational power, Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis (2005, p. 178) refer to the 1987 movie titled “Full Metal Jacket” which is based on stripping and reshaping identities of the people working at US Marines boot camp through organizational means. It is shown in the movie how workers got stripped of their real identities and consequently, were remade and given new identities by tough discipline and tedious exercise. The workers got stripped of their individual characteristics at the price of physical violence so that they could be tamed into obedience. It is professed by (Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis, 2005, p. 167) that while the corporate culture was detested and resisted by the workers who perceived it as bullshit and propaganda, the practice of awarding bonuses and increased cash to the workers by the superior authorities at workplace made them more economically oriented towards work in an effort to secure themselves in this particular identity rather than being treated as objects of contempt by the management. (Haslam and Reicher, 2008) lay stress on the negative role tyranny plays in an organizational setup and which badly influences the workers’ identities as well. Not only does the element of tyranny in leadership remodels the personalities and minds of workers but it also makes them feel absolutely nothing yet work mindlessly. While positive leadership styles focus on bringing out the best in a worker and motivating them to participate in nearly every important activity going on in an organization, tyranny lays emphasis on oppressing the workers by means of verbal and physical violence in an attempt to intimidate them into obedience. Such tyrant superiors rip off the workers of their true identities sadly leaving them with nothing but certain orders they have to obey at all costs. “There is a widespread consensus amongst psychologists that tyranny triumphs either because ordinary people blindly follow orders or else because they mindlessly conform to powerful roles” (Haslam and Reicher, 2008, p. 16). This remains a fact that many workers around the globe are ripped off of their individualities by many faithless tyrants. Tyranny leads to snatching away the sense of freedom from the workers and feeding the continuous feeling of boredom in them because tyrant leaders do not appreciate if any worker happens to introduce any brilliant or creative idea for the organizational betterment. That is exactly why Jackson and Parry (2008, p. 8) lay great stress on learning the leadership concepts and discuss why studying leadership matters in the first place. According to them, leadership is actually about preserving the identity instead of reshaping it in an oppressive way. Good leadership is about encouraging the employees to share ideas and engaging in meaningful discourse with their superiors. “Leadership is a fundamentally important human experience that can have a very significant bearing on the conduct and the quality of our everyday lives” (Jackson and Parry, 2008, p. 8). This proves that effective leadership can readily boost a worker’s identity and prevent his or her self-esteem or dignity from propelling down. Summing up, this much remains clear from the above discussion about the impacts of employment on identity that employment should not be made close to imprisonment for the workers, rather it should be a way of sharing ideas and values between individuals and the organizations. If it happens so that a worker gets to be employed in a kind of organization where he or she is promoted to share his or her ideas and talents and those ideas get to be appreciated by the superiors regardless of biased notions, then the identity of that worker flourishes with pride, growth, and achievement. If it happens otherwise and power tool is excessively employed on the grounds of bureaucratic authoritative doctrine, identity weakens to the point of experiencing negative emotions stemming from low self-esteem. References: Bolden, R 2004, What is Leadership?, viewed 10 January, 2012, < http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/file.php/213/Bolden_what_is_leadership.pdf> Clegg, S, Kornberger, M, and Pitsis, T 2005, Managing Power and Politics in Organizations, Sage Publishers. Collins, JW 1994, Is business ethics an oxymoron? - Editorial - Cover Story, viewed 10 January, 2012, < http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1038/is_n5_v37/ai_15859236/> Gemmill, G and Oakley, J 1992, Leadership: An Alienating Social Myth?, Human Relations, vol. 45, p. 113. Grey, C 2005, A Very Short, Fairly Interesting And Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Organisations, London: Sage Publishers. Haslam, A and Reicher, SD 2008, Questioning the banality of evil, the psychologist, vol. 21, pp. 16-19. Jackson, B and Parry, K 2008, A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Leadership, Sage Publishers. Palmar, I and Hardy, C 2000, Thinking about Management, London: Sage. Waters, I 2012, Occupation and Employment's Effect on Identity, viewed 09 January, 2012, Wilson, F 2010, Organizational Behaviour: A Critical Introduction, Oxford University Press. Read More