How Meaningfulness and Professional Identity Interact in Emerging Professions: The Case of Corporate Social Responsibility Consultants

Although interest in meaningfulness is mounting the growing stream of research dedicated to how professionals experience it, has only just begun investigate complex relationships between search for and constitution professional identity emerging groups. This paper investigates interacts with formation enactment identity, focusing on group corporate social responsibility (CSR) consultants. Relying interviews 39 CSR consultants, we induce two mechanisms bridging namely ‘meaning-making through self-identification’ socialization’. Our results explain these produce distinct, potentially contradictory, identities which themselves enable contrasted forms enactment. The study advances by clarifying self–other tension played out revealing gendered nature meaningfulness. also contributes studies specification meaning-focused formation, ultimately micro-CSR offering a nuanced approach involved production work