Work Identity - Adamsen, Billy

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Résumé :
At present, 80% of the employees are no longer engaged in their work and capable of performing, while 44% are experiencing work related stress and getting sick from working. A significant increase in time spent on interpretation at work trying to understand what managers and colleagues are saying has been observed too. This book offers a critical view on vocational inventory tests and the development of the work language and the use of it describing work identity. As well as a neurophilosophical perspective on self and work identity, this book provides a plausible neurophilosophical explanation for the negative impact of losing work identity on our work behavior, well-being, and success. Furthermore, the author introduces the innovative Work Identity Pro, the first work identity test to independently measure work identity. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of human resources management, organisation studies and organisational psychology. It will also be of interest to managers and those with an interest in work identity, behaviour and well-being.

Biographie:
Billy Adamsen is Associate Professor and Head of Talent Lab at Zealand Academy of Technology & Business, Denmark. He has published on a variety of subjects including management, talent management, work identity and work related stress, cognition & organization, the psychology of language and political management. In addition to his academic experience, he has worked as a certified stress and work identity coach and as manager and director in national and international companies, as well as having been special advisor for the Danish Prime Minister and Minister for Economics & Business Affairs. ...

Sommaire:

Chapter 1

In the first chapter, I would like to use the story about the telecom company Pacific Bell transformation in the 1980s showing when the labour market and the work culture of the transition from modern society to the late modern society occurred. How it changed the cultural focus on work and work identity to a focus on the individual and personal identity. From having a cultural and individuals focusing on what they are capable of doing, their skills, to a focus on what they are, their persona. How the work language have changed too from being dominated by an objective unambiguously fundamental work language that everyone understood, to be dominated by an ambiguous arbitrary management language, that fewer understand. Changes that has led to organizational inefficiencies and difficulties in understanding each other at work. 

Chapter 2

In this chapter, the scientific advances within different psychological disciplines, such as experimental psychology, psychology of personality, cognitive psychology and social psychology, will be congregated in order to elaborate on the ontology of work identity and the epistemology towards a universal definition of work identity. 

In the third chapter, I will analyze how work identity differs from other identities. I will demonstrate how work identity itself consist of a narratively conscious interpreted work identity, which we are aware of and can tell about, and how it consist of a sensed and an experienced work identity. The latter is for us unconscious and a part of our work identity, we are not aware off, but nonetheless determines whether we feel comfortable and capable of performing while working. 

Chapter 4

Over the course of a century, I will describe and introduce the different vocational inventory tests developed by the three most influential American psychologists, Frank Parsons, Henry Murray and John L. Holland. I will specifically go through their tests, demonstrate how they work, compare them and elaborate on the differences. In addition, I will show the extensive science behind it and explain the reason for being successful as they have been.

Chapter 5

In the fifth chapter, I will show how none of the vocational inventory tests developed by or inspired by Frank Parson, Henry Murray and John L Holland have had any focus on the work identity itself - as an autonomous identity. Hence, the many vocational inventory tests are unable to measure and describe, let alone understand work identity and how it is constructed. I suggest how work identity itself can be measured and how it could be added to the vocational inventory tests. I will also point to some exercises that the reader can do to in order to comprehend the results of the test and regain the awareness of their work identity.

Chapter 6

In the sixth and final chapter I will describe the method and statistics behind the identity measurement (test)