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I describe findings from a qualitative study of toy car designers that shows how creative workers may develop and express `signature styles' through their work. The display of these signature styles — that were not advertised, stamped on products, or even recognized in official corporate marketing communications — allowed designers to affirm their creative, professional identities while designing commodity products within the practical constraints of a corporate context. Findings further revealed that creative workers used signature styles, primarily, to affirm the identity categorizations of `idealistic' and `independent'. I discuss how these findings extend our understanding of `identity work' among creative workers, and may improve our ability to effectively manage these workers in corporate settings.

I used qualitative methods to explore why some employees working in a newly created, non-territorial office environment perceived that their workplace identities were threatened and used particular tactics to affirm those threatened identities. Findings suggest that the non-territorial work environment threatened some employees' workplace identities because it severely limited their abilities to affirm categorizations of distinctiveness (versus status) through the display of personal possessions. Categorizations of distinctiveness appeared to be most threatened by the loss of office personalization because of three characteristics: (1) their absolute, rather than graded membership structure, (2) their high subjective importance and personal relevance, and (3) their high reliance on physical markers for affirmation. In affirming threatened identity categorizations, employees chose different tactics, in terms of the amount of effort required and their conformance with company rules, based on the acceptability and importance of affirming the threatened categorization.

We examine how both automatic and motivated modes of categorization are integral to understanding momentary perceptions of organizations, including perceptions of organizational identity and legitimacy. We begin by discussing how extant organizational research has relied, primarily, on single modes of categorization to describe how we form momentary perceptions of organizations. These 'single-mode' frameworks have explained momentary organizational perceptions as the result of either automatic categorization (i.e. driven by unconscious cognitive processes) or motivated categorization (i.e. driven by individual needs and desires). While these frameworks explain much about momentary organizational perceptions, we provide some notable examples that do not follow the paths they predict. To more fully explain momentary organizational perceptions, we present a framework grounded in psychological research that considers how both motivated and automatic modes of categorization influence these perceptions. In doing so, we illustrate how such a 'dual-mode' framework might better account for organizational perceptions that seem counter-intuitive when viewed through a single-mode lens. We conclude by outlining some theoretical and practical implications of our framework, and presenting an agenda for future research on organizational categorization and perception that may capitalize on our dual-mode framework.

In explaining why constituent groups often vary in their perceptions of the most salient aspects of an organization's identity, existing research has drawn, almost exclusively, on social identity research and self-enhancement motives. This research suggests that when different organizational identity categorizations are enhancing to some groups but not others, variation in organizational identity perceptions arises. In this paper, by contrast, we explore the role that unmotivated or "spontaneous" cognitions may play in influencing variation in constituents' organizational identity categorizations. Based on data from a study of U.S. business school constituents, we develop a dual-path model through which both motivated and spontaneous processes influence the different organizational identity categorizations constituent groups find to be most salient. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

pt. 1. Introduction, history, and context of qualitative methods -- pt. 2. Innovative research settings -- pt. 3. Innovative research designs -- pt. 4. Unique forms of qualitative data -- pt. 5. Unique data collection methods -- pt. 6. Innovative forms of analysis -- pt. 7. Multimethods approaches -- 8. Challenges and opportunities in qualitative methods

Through two studies of fans who identified with the collective known as NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing hereafter referred to as Nascar), we examine why stakeholders identify with collectives that are perceived as only moderately prestigious (given that high prestige has been shown, empirically, to be the primary predictor of collective identification because it enhances identifiers' self-esteem). Our findings indicate that identifiers did not perceive Nascar to be high in prestige (compared to other similar collectives) and that their identification was predicted, primarily, by "Perceived Opportunity for Authentic Self-Expression" with Nascar. In addition, across both studies, we found that "patriotism"—a personal value that was difficult for fans to affirm elsewhere—was the most important value that fans perceived they could "self-express" when interacting with Nascar. These findings suggest that individuals may identify with moderate prestige collectives because they provide rare opportunities to express values that are part of their authentic selves, and thus, satisfy these individuals' "needs for authenticity."