Logan, Catherine B. (2020) Professional identity on the high street: investigating identity work of company pharmacists, navigating commercial, professional and public service identities. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

In my case study, the historical experience of healthcare professionals practising within public and private spheres, extends understanding of identity issues that affect twenty-first century professionals, particularly those positioned within the mixed economy healthcare sector.

My study contributes to professional identity research by providing insight into “high street” professionals, whose identities are infused with a combined ethos of commercialism, professionalism and public service. Specifically, I determine how company pharmacists operating within a corporate framework, use different types of identity work - buffering, bridging and blending - to dissipate tensions that manifest in their changing professional identity and practice. My research also contains a temporal dimension as it investigates long-term identity change in which dynamic mechanisms and outcomes of identity work are visible over a thirty-year period. This reveals a new dynamic within hybrid identity where single aspects of identity are boosted in response to exogenous change.

My research makes a methodological contribution by using visual images, analysed through the lens of humour, as a springboard into my research data; an innovative use of sampling device in research design. Secondly, I use ‘archival ethnography’ to combine the close observational methods of ethnography with the interpretative skill of historical research. This presents a novel method for scholars to use business archives ethnographically, to study issues over the long-term relying not on secondary source material but on primary sources that present protagonists’ ‘real time’ voices. The intra-disciplinary nature of my research with its archival ethnography methodology and its use of cartoons as data sources, also contributes to organizational history by looking at identity through the lens of humour.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor R Medicine > RS Pharmacy and materia medica
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Pharmacists, Identity (Psychology), Pharmaceutical services -- Great Britain
Official Date:	February 2020
Dates:	Date Event February 2020 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Warwick Business School
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Currie, Graeme
Sponsors:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain)
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	321 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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