Authentic Self: Personal Identity Conceptualizations for Leaders and Followers (An Interdisciplinary Study)

Abstract

The current study offers an interdisciplinary review of more than 100 scholarly articles and books on personal identity theories from primarily philosophical, psychological, and philosophical psychology literature to understand how the leader and the follower identities are formed and sustained over time. The study also aimed to bring the literature on personal identity theories and leadership studies together to better conceptualize the dynamic and interconnected nature of identity construct for leaders and followers from interdisciplinary perspectives. The review revealed that personal identity theories had not been fully integrated with or utilized by the interdisciplinary studies of leadership and followership. The study also noticed patterns and themes within identity research that have significant overlap with the leadership studies in the area of process-based understanding of the self and the leadership process. Recommendations are made to more fully integrate the dynamic and process-based identity theories, which steam primarily from process philosophy, with current understanding of process-based leader follower-ship research. This study is limited to the review of person and personal identity theory literature. Due to the magnitude of the task, the role and social identity theories have not been included in this study.