The study explores a new concept entitled selfergy which captures the process of how we reveal who we are at work while taking on initiatives.
The main research questions concerning the new concept were “Do, at work, we reveal our self when we take on initiatives? What is its relationship with related constructs such as job crafting, authenticity and identity?”
Selfergy is a new concept defined as “the active and unique way of revealing one’s self while being active at work (Paraskevopoulou, 2017)”. Since there is no literature on selfergy, we looked at job crafting, identity and authenticity theory. In addition, we also looked at the philosophical work of Hannah Arendt, who studied human action.
Because there is a lack of empirical research on selfergy we conducted an inductive, interpretive qualitative study to focus on the people living that kind of experience and their interpretation of it. We performed an inductive qualitative study in education, consisted of 13 semi-structured in depth interviews. The selected context, primary school teachers, was intentionally preferred, as it may amplify the focal phenomenon.
Our results confirmed that disclosure of the employee can be expected in the education field. Selfergy is inherent in active behaviors; that means that we can identify selfergy in proactive employees who take on initiatives and bring changes in the workplace. The findings suggested that, selfergy, even related, is differentiated from identity and authenticity but part of the job crafting process.
Thus, our research aims to fill that gap by firstly, elaborating on the theoretical framework of extra role behaviors (such as job crafting and taking initiative), and secondly, by unfolding the concept of selfergy. Finally, we suggest that selfergy should be taken under consideration in order to expand our understanding in active employees.