Crystallized Identity: A Look at Identity Development through Cross-disciplinary Experiences in Engineering

Engineers seldom work solely within their own discipline, though they are typically trained and educated in their own area of expertise (e.g., civil engineering, agricultural engineering, etc.). As such, the identity formation of engineers throughout their education and career is a rich area of study, and one which has not been explored fully. The current project uses the lens of crystallized identity to examine perceptions of identity in the life of a crossdisciplinary engineer. Results suggest the essential nature of self-identity constructions as well as the importance of interactions with others in a variety of disciplines. Introduction Currently, the professional world values people who have developed a large set of professional skills (Dall’Alba & Sandberg, 2006). While researching the development of the participants’ identities, the authors of this paper saw that the development of a cross-disciplinary identity was far more intricate than a simple accumulation of new skills. We saw that participants’ experiences with cross-disciplinary work left a profound mark on how those individuals saw themselves as cross-disciplinary engineers. People become experts in a field such as engineering by garnering enough situated experiences and emotions from interactions with colleagues in work scenarios helped develop an identity as a professional (see Dall’Alba & Sandberg 2006). Engineers develop their identities from the time that they are students by becoming involved within their own disciplinary worlds, which are defined by the shared vocabulary, tools, and methods (Bucciarelli, 2003). Since engineers are so embedded in this disciplinary world, they develop a strong affinity with others who share in their common practices; however, most problems that engineers are attempting to solve require more than one discipline, which leads to Page 25371.2 multiple vocabularies, tools, and methods. To succeed in solving these problems, the engineer must step outside of his or her disciplinary world and create a common ground with their colleagues. This requires that the engineer develop into something more than their individual concept of “engineer;” they must develop as a colleague who can communicate and function with others from different areas of expertise. Their interaction helps further the development of an engineer’s professional identity, as perceived by the engineer and by others. Individuals engaging in cross-disciplinary work face a multitude of identity-related challenges. These individuals have to work internally in order to enable themselves to adapt to a multitude of situations and epistemologies. Externally, these individuals must handle others’ confusion about the nature of cross-disciplinarity and the identity or identities which can subsist within that space. In order to make sense of the multiplicity of identity in a cross-disciplinary space, the current project employs the lens of crystallized identity in regards to individuals operating in these areas. Literature Review Identity has been examined through innumerable lenses and disciplines, but perhaps the most enticing question is the one which challenges what happens when these lenses and disciplines collide, mix, and overlap. Those in cross-disciplinary spaces are individuals who have found themselves limited by what disciplinary thinking can offer, and feel that in order to address the more complex and higher-level concerns which interest them, they must make bridges between and among tidily outlined disciplines (Latucca, 2001). Individuals in the crossdisciplinary space are challenging what others are comfortable with: the security of being able to pinpoint a person’s identity via their occupation or area of study (e.g., engineer, botanist, etc.). P ge 25371.3 While a traditional notion of identity may be fixed and, more importantly, may be related inextricably to an individual’s occupation or area of study, those in cross-disciplinary work are generally comfortable when confronted with circumstances which seem to be intrinsically unable to mesh. In other words, individuals working in-depth in a cross-disciplinary space are often comfortable with having an amorphous identity, all the while maintaining their disciplinary identity (Latucca, 2001). In this mindset, the individual’s identity is continually morphing while the individual maintains their “home” identity—a situation which may seem chaotic to those not in cross-disciplinary work. In order to deal with the many roles they must occupy in crossdisciplinary work, these individuals find links between and among their identities, a practice which helps them make sense of who they are (Latucca, 2001). Crystallized identity is a notion which challenges the commonly-held definition of identity in the literature by stating that identity is not dichotomous, but multi-faceted (Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). The dichotomous definition of identity argues that there is a “real self” and a “fake self,” particularly in organizational contexts. In other words, an individual is one person while they are engaged with the organization (e.g., an accountant) but a different person when they leave the organization (e.g., a spouse or parent). Crystallized identity, on the other hand, acknowledges that a person is still their own person regardless of the situation or context they are experiencing at a certain moment—that is, a particular “facet” of their identity might be more salient in some situations than in others, but they are still the same person. The paradigm of crystallized identity also argues that the individual is not the only one responsible for their identity formation and, in fact, the organization to which they belong has influence on this process (Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). These concepts align with cross-disciplinary notions of P ge 25371.4 identity, wherein disciplines are viewed as social constructions which are continually changing and thus are problematic sources for identity formation (Klein, 2004; Latucca, 2001). According to the crystallized identity paradigm, organizational discourse and practices contribute significantly to the traditional, dichotomous view of identity. As an example, someone could be in the “financial” department at work, and so they are defined as the “finance guy.” This notion of being the “finance guy” is continually reaffirmed through the way others treat him, the way organizational practices are structured, and finally, through his own behaviors. Further, from both the standpoint of crystallized identity and the view of cross-disciplinary notions of identity, individuals’ identities grow, change, and vary. In other words, identity is not stagnant but is adaptable to the context at hand (Meisenbach, 2008). The adaptable aspects of identity are particularly salient in cross-disciplinary contexts, where individuals must not only adopt different role titles but often must adopt entirely different epistemological approaches depending on their current situation (Spiro et al., 1987). An individual in cross-disciplinary situations must be able to present to, converse with, and work alongside others from a variety of different backgrounds. One can imagine, for instance, the need for someone who has a “home identity” in an engineering field having to explain an engineering-based concept to a group of marketing executives, city planners, politicians, lawyers, and so forth; the presentation the engineer might give to other engineers will not suffice, and so the engineer presenting must adapt. The requisite adaptation those in cross-disciplinary work must go through can be a painful, vague, and humbling process in which individuals have to be comfortable learning from others and living in a liminal space (Giri, 2002). It is not typical to think of oneself as crossdisciplinary, so those individuals who are in this hybrid space are working against the expected norm. Page 25371.5 Although not always alluding to the exact term of “crystallized identity,” research has utilized important aspects of the paradigm in a multitude of ways. It has been argued that what actually exists as an individual’s reality does not matter as much as how that person perceives it or talks about it (Ashcraft, 2005). That is, if someone thinks something is a certain way, that perception is what creates that person’s reality. In studying the declining prominence of the masculinity paradigm within the airline pilot profession, Ashcraft (2005) posits that having a more inclusive work identity (e.g., an identity which includes facets of the individual’s life beyond those created and maintained within the organization) could be both tangibly and discursively beneficial to professions on the individual and group levels. Importantly, others’ perceptions and influences external to individuals’ professions and organizations have an impact on the process of identity construction (Ashcraft, 2005; Norander, Mazer, & Bates, 2011). For instance, some “master narratives” from the societal perspective can call into question external perceptions of the existence of particular identities; that is, if the larger population denies the validity or existence of an identity, that denial can have a significant impact on the identity construction of the individuals in question (Somers, 1994; Tsetsura, 2010). One can refer to the phrase “a real job” to fully understand the impact of these master narratives. Individuals facing external negative perceptions of their identities can have difficulties in articulating their identities and profession to others (Tsetsura, 2010). In order to clearly address these challenges (specifically for the population of engineers working cross-disciplinarily) and to expand on the paradigm of crystallized identity, we posit the following research question: RQ: How can the lens of crystallized identity help us understand the development of individuals pursuing engineering-based cross-disciplinary work? Page 25