Authenticity and Individuation in the Digital Era: Technology, Authenticity, and Occupational Work

Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023

• Sociology
• Aesthetics
• Psychology

With the increased prevalence of work from home arrangements, and the decline of long-term stable employment, collective norms and conventions that once provided guidance and structure for how work should be structured and who workers should strive to become are weakening. People increasingly expect and are expected to craft their own work selves and career paths, individually and authentically. Simultaneously, ubiquitous digital technology and social media platforms enable and encourage workers to make themselves and their trajectories more visible and knowable to others (i.e., employers, peers, clients). These conditions, together with a broader cultural shift towards individuation, have led to the increased significance of authenticity and individuation in contemporary work, giving rise to new occupational groups, and putting the workers front and center (AOM 2023 theme). However, it is not clear how workers experience and navigate these new expectations in the wake of digital technologies and social media platforms, and how they take on the responsibility of crafting their day-to-day work selves and lives (almost) from scratch, while keeping the results acceptable and desirable to the occupational and organizational communities that they depend on. The papers presented in this symposium and the following discussion aim to spark scholarly conversation about the implications of contemporary occupational dynamics characterized by individuation and technologically enabled visibility and offer actionable insights for workers and managers. Creating Yourself Together: The Construction and Enactment of Self in Creative Work Author: Patrick Reilly; U. of British Columbia The Authenticity Mandate and the Ideal of Enterprising Self Author: Farnaz Ghaedipour; Stanford U. Author: Arvind Karunakaran; Stanford U. Soulfulness: Divider of Work Between Humans and Machines Author: Kevin Woojin Lee; U. of British Columbia Moving Up by Moving Around? Career Distinctiveness, Organizational Advancement, and Inequality Author: Sharon Koppman; U. of California, Irvine Author: Tingting Nian; - Author: Ming De Leung; U. of California, Irvine Author: Richard Lu; U. of California, Berkeley