Managing "Who I Am": An Exploration of Chinese Employees' Identity Tension Management Strategies in MNCs

This exploratory qualitative study aims to examine Chinese employees' identity tensions in multinational companies (MNCs) in China, more specifically, how Chinese business professionals communicate to organize various identities while managing identity tensions from a cultural insider's perspective. Guided by a grounded theory approach, 20 in-depth individual interviews with Chinese employees in MNCs revealed four identity tensions: work-life identity tensions, task-relational interrole tensions, friend-professional interrole tensions, and cultural-professional tensions. It was through defining, communicating, and organizing these identity tensions that Chinese participants displayed one of two identity structuring models: holistic (interdependent) and kaleidoscope (independent) models. This study contributes to identity and communication literature with its cross-level examination of identity tensions and the identity structuring models in multicultural organizational communication. The findings suggest that MNCs and global teams should focus more on navigating identity clashes in global collaborations with institutional communication training moving beyond cultural awareness exercises.