Identities, Digital Nomads, and Liquid Modernity

This chapter explores the identity implications for people who inhabit the liquid world of organizations. It draws upon Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of liquid modernity and suggests that traditional conceptions may constrain new ways of thinking about identity and identity tensions in increasingly liquidly modern organizational contexts. The authors focus on literature that discusses identity tensions in the workplace and the responses of individuals as they seek to negotiate and/or manage these tensions. In so doing, the authors draw attention to how the nature of liquid modernity challenges existing conceptions of identity work and raise issues and questions for further research.