Urban-Andreas Johansson: Professional Narrative Identities of Regional LGBTQ certifiers: Accountability and Resistance in Change Work

Abstract

This dissertation explores the professional narrative identity work of the emerging profession of regional LGBTQ certifiers tasked with changing heteronormative norms and values within healthcare organizations. It  focuses on how these change agents  understand, negotiate and justify themselves as certain kinds of professionals. Previous research has demonstrated how the professional identity work of change agents is shaped by dilemmas, paradoxes and contradictions (Carollo & Guerci, 2017). The dilemmas appear in change agents’ negotiations of societal and organizational norms, values and interests, and in their personal values and morals regarding change and how to challenge status quo within organizations (Blanchard, 2022). 

As a continued exploration into these research areas, this dissertation builds on a focused ethnographic approach (Knoblauch, 2005) including interviews with regional LGBTQ certifiers and observations of these actors’ professional network meetings. The analysis draws on a narrative-as-practice approach (De Fina, 2020) to professional narrative identity, conceptualizing identity as emergent, situational and relational (Mishler, 1999) and focuses on identity positioning in narrative interaction (Bamberg, 2011). 

The results demonstrate how the regional LGBTQ certifiers’ professional narrative identity work is constructed from an activist professional ethos drawing on master narratives of LGBTQ rights as a battle, and on heteronormativity and neoliberalism as a threat. The certifiers make these relevant in relation to healthcare organizations and professionals who are constructed as accountable both for the certification process and for committing to the promotion of  LGBTQ rights. The results show how the certifiers engage in various educational processes aimed to ensure the commitment of healthcare organizations and professionals to the political cause of promoting LGBTQ rights. This sheds light on a moral dimension of the certifiers’ professional narrative identity work which is conducted in relation to the dilemmas of accountability and resistance appearing in the certifiers’ narration of their professional practice. Moreover, the results show how the regional LGBTQ certifiers are constructing and co-constructing their professional narrative identities drawing on a norm critical discourse offering the certifiers guidance in their moral assessments of healthcare organizations and professionals as being in need of guidance and of each other as agents of change.