Reconstructing professional role identities: (Un)Learning and hybridization in a business school program

As social organizations hybridize by adopting business strategies, their professional staff face the challenge of forging a new professional role identity. Hampered by a lack of preparation, knowledge, and guidance, professionals in these hybrid organizations often struggle to establish a coherent professional identity while attending to market and social-welfare logics. Over 47 months, we conducted ethnographic research, following social sector professionals from 20 organizations participating in a business school program aimed at facilitating reflection and capacity-building to support hybridization. We reveal the program’s transformative impact on participants’ collective professional role identity, through a deliberate process of (un)learning as participants systematically loosen entrenched cognitive schemas, dismantle ideological biases, and discard ineffective or outdated practices. Participants acquire a new professional language and a range of management capabilities while developing and launching social businesses. The program exposes them to disruptive ideas, fostering an entrepreneurial mindset and a renewed sense of self-assurance in their work. Interactions with peers break down social sector silos and foster the development of a sentient community. Our work contributes to ongoing discussions of business schools as spaces for identity work and play, and the constructivist aspects of learning a new professional role identity during a process of hybridization.