Engineering identity in a Japanese factory

This is a most unusual paper. It is based on 11 months of ethnographic studies in a Japanese high-technology company. It investigates the structuring process of identity creation in organization. The authors painstakingly detail how the technologies of production, routinization and spatial order combine into daily mutual dependencies, joint sensemaking and the formation of an intense social order to the exclusion of other obligations. The findings have important implications for team based organizations and for the maintenance of a collective identity beyond the control of the individual.