Positioning, similarity and difference: Narratives of individual and organizational identities in an Australian university

Abstract

This study looks at a large Australian university at a time of reform in the higher education sector to examine how the identities of individuals working within the university, as well as the university itself, were constructed. By examining the narratives that organizational members told, the study shows how academics, senior executives and general staff members constructed identities through different patterns in the interplay of similarity and difference among actors, doings and perceptions, as a result of which positions were ascribed to and taken up by individual and collective actors. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.