Contributions of the Life Story Method for Studies on Identity: the example of study about female professors in management positions

Abstract

Recently, the Life Story Method has been used in the area of Business Administration as an important methodological strategy in qualitative research. The purpose is to understand groups or collective bodies based on individual paths of life. Thus, the goal of this study was to show the contribution of the life story method in understanding the identity dynamics of female professors managing a public university, by means of an example derived from an empirical study. It was observed from the reports of four female professors involved in management that recovery of past memories, as well as of values, facts, standards and occurrences connected with the primary and organizational socialization of the interviewees, contributes to understanding of their identity dynamics. Some categories of analysis emerged that express relationships between life story and identity, e.g., discontinuity, subjectivity and the importance of allowing an individual/subject to speak; the individual and the social sphere and socio-historical transformations, a dynamic interaction in construction of identities; and temporal analysis in construction of identities.