Multiple Work Identities and R&D professionals’ networks

Individual work identity, or the way individuals define themselves in the workplace, is composed of a combination of organizational, professional, and other identities. Such identities, and the related patterns of identification, shape the roles individuals enact and the corresponding ways they behave in the workplace, e.g. their social networks. In this paper, drawing on recent contributions on identity in organizations, we interpret the preference or desire to work on different tasks at the same time (polychronicity) as part of individuals’ work identity and we explore how polychronicity, professional and organizational identification affect the patterns of interactions in the workplace. Specifically, we test a model where the relationship between individual polychronicity and network centrality is mediated by the perception of organizational polychronicity and moderated by the strength of professional and organizational identification. Adopting a mixed methods approach, we collected qualitative and quantitative data on R&D professionals employed in a world-leading company of the alternative energy industry. Theoretical and practical implications, together with future research directions, are discussed.