Ruminating on What You Think of Me: A Grounded Model of Construed Image Work

Abstract

Research on identity has provided key insights into the challenges individuals experience when their professional self-concept is disrupted. But there has been little consideration of individuals’ sense of how they are viewed and defined by others—their construed image—also a key dimension of the professional self, one that is similarly compromised during such disruptive events. As a result, a widespread and theoretically rich phenomenon has received virtually no attention from scholars: construed image disruption and (re)construction. We develop a grounded model of “construed image work” based on qualitative data from former professional athletes. We find that, soon after a career-disrupting event (i.e., voluntary/involuntary retirement at a young age, in this case), individuals encounter cognitive and affective disorientation (or “drift”) that impedes their careers. Our findings reveal that systematic differences in how individuals make sense of causal forces underlying the disruptive event shape the paths they take trying to achieve a new, secure construed image and alleviate the problems of “drift.” Understanding construed image work is an important first step in acknowledging the importance of construed image for our theories regarding self-perceptions in the context of careers. Our grounded process model offers an initial foray into a critical—and foundational—dimension of the professional self-concept, one that has previously been ignored in favor of explorations into identity.