Work Identity

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. 
Chapter 3



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

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.