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ROLE THEORY 1

Role Theory Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future

Applications of Role Theories in Management Research1

Aaron H. Anglin

Texas Christian University

Paula A. Kincaid

University of North Texas

Jeremy C. Short

University of North Texas

David G. Allen

Texas Christian University

Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful for the detailed and constructive feedback from the

reviewers and the action editor, Pauline Schilpzand.

Corresponding author: Aaron H. Anglin, Neeley School of Business, Department of

Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 2900 Lubbock Avenue, Fort Worth, Texas 76109

Email: [email protected]

1Supplemental material for this article is available at http://xxx.sagepub.com/supplemental

ROLE THEORY 2

ABSTRACT

Role theories examine how individual behavior is shaped by prevailing social roles and provide

insights into how behavior is perceived by others in light of such roles. Current movements for

police reform as well as the landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court concerning

the employment rights of LGBTQIA individuals have brought conversations concerning roles

and their potential impact to the forefront of public discourse. Academic perspectives in

management research have aided in building knowledge concerning how roles impact

individuals and organizations in a variety of research domains including entrepreneurship,

human resource management, organizational behavior, and strategic management. While the

utilization of role theory has gained tremendous momentum over the last two decades, its central

tenets are often blurred given that several related but unique perspectives surrounding roles exist

in the literature. We trace the origins and development of specific role theories by defining

central constructs to bring clarity to the conceptual ambiguities between various role theories and

key concepts. Next, we provide an integrative review of empirical role research in management

journals over the past 20 years. Here, we identify the five most prominent research themes in the

management literature: Roles and Identity, Work-Nonwork Interface, Biases and Stereotypes,

Career Lifecycles, and Ethics and Other-Oriented Behavior. Finally, we provide an agenda for

future research that highlights missed opportunities in management research that draws from the

key themes identified in our review.

Keywords: role theory; diversity/gender; identity

ROLE THEORY 3

ROLE THEORY PERSPECTIVES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

APPLICATIONS OF ROLE THEORIES IN MANAGEMENT RESEARCH

Few topics hold the propensity to tap the conscience of individuals as the study of roles

and role influences. A role represents a core set of behavioral expectations tied to a social group

or category that defines appropriate and permitted forms of behavior for group members (Biddle,

1986; Koseoglu, Liu, & Shalley, 2017). Gender roles (e.g., woman or man; Badura, Grijalva,

Newman, Yan, & Jeon, 2018), career roles (e.g., sales, education, financial services; Livingston,

2014), and status roles (e.g., supervisor or subordinate; Matta, Scott, Koopman, & Conlon, 2015)

are all examples of roles that impose behavioral expectations on an individual viewed as a part of

these social groups. To understand how roles shape the lives of individuals, sociologists and

social psychologists developed role theories that explain how individual behavior is influenced

by roles and how individual behavior is judged by others in light of prevailing roles (Biddle &

Thomas, 1966; Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Karau, 2002; Stets & Burke, 2000).

Role theory operates under the key assumption that individuals have various roles that

they play in daily life (Biddle, 1986). These roles affect how the individual behaves and sees

themselves, and how the individual’s behavior is perceived by others. As such, individual

behavior can be understood and predicted if one knows the roles occupied and the corresponding

behavioral expectations tied to that role. Early role theorists used these assumptions to better

understand how role expectations may lead to prejudiced beliefs among adolescents who opposed

the racial integration of schools (Bank, Biddle, Keats, & Keats, 1977) and to examine differences

in how educators interact with students based on a student’s socio-economic status and the

teacher’s age, experience, and ethnicity (Beezer, 1974). The key tenets of role theory have been

ROLE THEORY 4

used to develop extensive theory concerning specific roles, how individuals relate to roles, and

perspectives such as social role theory, role congruity theory, and role identity theory.

Role theories provide indispensable perspectives in management, with work spanning

major disciplines such as organizational behavior, human resource management,

entrepreneurship, and strategic management. A review of this burgeoning literature is needed for

two primary reasons. First, while role theories have similar origins, ties to specific theories and

related concepts have become blurred in the literature. For instance, our review suggests that the

concepts of role salience (readiness to act out a focal identity) and role centrality (relative

importance placed upon a focal identity) are often used interchangeably even though they are

conceptually distinct and should be treated as such (Greer & Egan, 2012; Stryker & Serpe,

1994). Likewise, the role theory literature includes a variety of interrelated concepts where

clarifying distinctions can be useful. For example, role conflict (where one role conflicts with

another role) and role enrichment (where one role enhances the experience in another role) may

appear to be two ends of a continuum. However, these concepts are theoretically distinct with

distinct measures, where conflict focuses on the strain from incompatible role demands (e.g.,

Carlson, Kacmar, & Williams, 2000; Siu et al., 2010) and enrichment examines how engagement

in one role betters the experience in another (Carlson, Kacmar, Wayne, & Grzywacz, 2006). This

review helps to bring clarity to prominent role-related concepts and boundaries of each theory.

Second, role theory work adopts two schools of thought with untapped potential. In the

structural-functional perspective, roles are viewed as ‘rules’ that govern a larger social system or

society that impose behavioral expectations on role occupants, who generally cannot change or

escape the purview of such ‘rules’ (Vandenberghe, Bentein, & Panaccio, 2017). This perspective

provides a valuable tool to understand how expectations tied to broadly held social roles, such as

ROLE THEORY 5

gender or race, influence important outcomes for individuals. Our review suggests that the

management literature adopting a structural-functional perspective overwhelmingly examines

how traditional gender roles shape outcomes for those in functional roles, such as leader, board

member, or entrepreneur (e.g., Lee & Huang, 2018; Oliver, Krause, Busenbark, & Kalm, 2018;

Rosette, Mueller, & Lebel, 2015). However, virtually all management disciplines give

considerably less attention to other important social roles such those tied to race, age, sexual

orientation, and nonbinary gender roles. Our review highlights the need to expand structural-

functional role research beyond the purview of traditional gender roles.

The symbolic-interactionist perspective places emphasis on how individuals interpret

their in-role and extra-role experiences, and treats roles as flexible and negotiated (Ashforth,

2000; Sluss, Van Dick, & Thompson, 2011). Scholars adopting this perspective frequently

examine individuals’ relationships to work roles and the intersection among work and nonwork

roles. This perspective appears prevalent in the OB and HR literatures but quite infrequently in

others—particularly strategy and entrepreneurship. For example, the transition from the role of

employee to entrepreneur is a pivotal process, and entrepreneurs must frequently transition

between roles as a business grows. However, the concept of role transitions—moving from one

role to another or changing the orientation toward a currently held role (Ashforth, 2000)—found

in the symbolic-interactionist perspective only appears rarely in the entrepreneurship literature

(e.g., Mathias & Williams, 2018) and treats the transition from employee to entrepreneur as a

business-minded transition (Hoang & Gimeno, 2010). Such research ignores how other role

dynamics, such as those related to family, influence this transition. Thus, some management

disciplines would benefit from adopting a symbolic-interactionist perspective.

ROLE THEORY 6

Our integrative review of role theory research provides three contributions. First, we

describe role theories’ main concepts, define key constructs, and delineate predictive

relationships by tracing the origins and development of specific role theories. Here, we clarify

conceptual ambiguities in role theories and role concepts to allow scholars to best select the

theoretical lens suited for their research. Second, we review empirical research that has leveraged

role theory perspectives in management journals over the past 20 years (2000-2020), focusing on

the five most prominent themes identified in our review. To do so, we use role related terms,

such as “role congruity”, “role identity theory”, and “role salience”, to identify relevant papers in

management journals that leverage role theory perspectives (see the Current Trends in Research

on Role Theories section for full search criteria). By integrating research across disciplines into

key themes, we provide a platform for scholars to learn from other management domains that

may spark insights in their own research. Third, we draw from these key themes to provide an

agenda for future research that highlights missed opportunities in management research.

FUNDAMENTALS OF ROLE THEORIES

Actors in the theater often play a defined ‘role’ derived from a script dictating the

qualities of the character they portray. Using the theater metaphor, sociologists and social

psychologists observed that social life could frequently be distilled into observable roles ‘played’

by individuals that carry predictable, context-specific behaviors tied to that role (Biddle &

Thomas, 1966; Merton, 1957). Understanding these roles is useful to explain why individuals are

expected to behave in certain ways and how such expectations shape their own behavior or

judgments of others’ behavior (Biddle, 1986). Role theories emerged from these observations as

powerful theoretical perspectives to explain and predict human behavior. Broadly, these theories

work by identifying an observable role (e.g., woman, doctor, or child). Observation of this role

ROLE THEORY 7

communicates expected qualities tied to that role (Dierdorff, Rubin, & Bachrach, 2012). An

individual’s characteristics, actions, or behaviors are often then judged in light of the qualities

associated with that role—both by themselves and others.

Role theory work has typically adopted a structural-functional or a symbolic-interactionist

perspective (see online Appendix A for a comparison of assumptions). The structural-functional

approach to roles (Merton, 1957; Parsons, 1951) is rooted in the macro-oriented structural-

functional perspective in sociology that views society as structured according to set of

interconnected rules and laws that bring order to society. Here, roles “represent the building

blocks of social systems that engender behavioral expectations that transcend role occupants”

(Vandenberghe et al., 2017: 2092). It is assumed that roles and corresponding expectations are

part of a broader social fabric, tend to be relatively fixed, and guide the behavior of, and response

to, certain groups. Role expectations are generally uniformly imposed, irrespective of individual

differences. In contrast, the symbolic-interactionist perspective adopts a micro-oriented approach

to studying the subjective meanings that humans impose on objects, behaviors, and events

(Stryker, 2001). The symbolic-interactionist perspective is concerned with how individuals

interpret their in-role and extra-role experience (Sluss et al., 2011) and with relationships among

roles. Roles are assumed to be flexible and negotiated as well as come in sets (e.g., teacher-

student, leader-follower). Here, roles may be made or unmade through social interaction. This

approach is typified by the role identity literature that places a much greater focus on the

individual’s relationship with a role. The figure in online Appendix B summarizes both

perspectives’ approach to roles, specific role theories rooted in each tradition, primary

applications in management research, and key outcomes addressed by each approach.

Key Concepts

ROLE THEORY 8

We briefly review the primary concepts (summarized in online Appendix C) used in the

role literature and provide insights regarding how each as used in management research.

Role. The most fundamental concept of role theories is the role. Roles can be defined

broadly as a set of behavioral expectations placed on individuals based on their position in a

social structure (Biddle, 1986; Rizzo, House, & Lirtzman, 1970; Tubre & Collins, 2000). A role

is typically a noun referring to a position (woman, manager) with behavioral expectations

describing role characteristics. The behavioral expectations of the role are naturally applied to

that role and serve as social standards, or norms, to evaluate the appropriateness of behavior,

often resulting in the future conditioning of such behavior (Rizzo et al., 1970). Roles may also

influence an individual’s self-concept and help shape an individual’s identity (Chreim, Williams,

& Hinings, 2007). For instance, the female gender role, represented by femininity and family role

salience, may explain why women show stronger preferences than men for socio-emotional

career satisfiers, such as supportive coworkers and working for a company that puts people first

(Eddleston, Veiga, & Powell, 2006). The salience of roles may be elevated or lessened due to

contextual factors, such as periodic/temporal concerns related to clock hours, physical context

(office, home), or activity (participating in a wedding or watching a football game). Finally, while

roles are generally viewed as positional, and the bulk of role research in management examines

positional roles, it is important to recognize the presence of ‘social type’ roles. These are defined

as a bundle of associated behaviors that reflect society’s values (Biddle, 1979). Examples of such

roles are ‘hero’, ‘vigilante’, or ‘fool’. We only found one example of management work

examining social type roles. Specifically, DeCelles and Aquino (2020) develop a theory of

workplace vigilantes who monitor for and punish deviance without the formal authority to do so.

ROLE THEORY 9

Role consensus. Role consensus reflects shared agreement concerning the behavioral

expectations tied to a role (Biddle, 1979). Terminology such as ‘role expectations’, ‘prescriptive

norms’, or ‘social norms’ are frequently used as synonyms. These terms generally refer to

broadly shared expectations concerning behaviors that are desirable, proper, or expected of a

person in a particular role and behaviors people in that role would ideally portray. This concept is

critical to the structural-functional view: for a role to have broad influence to sway behavior,

expectations must first be shared by a group of people (organizational members, society). A

substantial body of literature has used this concept to examine how conformity to broadly held

role expectations tied to social roles, particularly gender, intersect with expectations tied to

functional roles (e.g., leader, entrepreneur) to influence outcomes. For instance, broadly held

gender role expectations reduce the ability of female entrepreneurs to raise money in light of the

masculine connotation ascribed to entrepreneurs (Kanze, Huang, Conley, & Higgins, 2018), make

delegating tasks more difficult for female managers (Akinola, Martin, & Phillips, 2018), and

shape perceptions of leadership effectiveness such that women who advance to top leadership

roles may be perceived as having exceptional abilities (Rosette & Tost, 2010).

Role conformity. Role conformity is concerned with how closely one adheres to role

expectations (Biddle, 1979). Rooted in the structural functionalist perspective, this concept is

important because whether an individual appears congruent with broadly held role expectations is

a critical driver of how others perceive and act toward that individual. Those who appear not to

conform often receive sanctions or are otherwise penalized, while those that do conform are

rewarded or at least not penalized. Role conformity is related to role consensus as conformity is

often judged in light of consensus role expectations. Thus, research on conformity also often

examines how prevailing role expectations tied to certain social groups (e.g., those related to

ROLE THEORY 10

gender or race) shape outcomes when group members occupy a functional role (e.g., leader,

entrepreneur). For instance, leadership roles are often viewed as White and male, creating a

‘double jeopardy’ for Black women in the workplace because they appear inconsistent with

leader role expectations on two fronts (e.g., Berdahl & Moore, 2006; Rosette, Koval, Ma, &

Livingston, 2016). As another example, cultures that require strong conformity with gender roles

often experience lower rates of entrepreneurship, generally considered a ‘masculine’ endeavor

(Shinnar, Giacomin, & Janssen, 2012). Examining conformity with widely held role expectations

highlights how discrepancies between traditional gender roles and functional roles with a

masculine connotation, such as entrepreneur, leader, or CEO, may influence outcomes (often

adversely) for women. More recently, management literature has begun to incorporate additional

social roles (e.g. race, LGBTQ). For example, Anglin and colleagues (in press) show that women

of color may attract more crowdfunding when fundraising for a social (as opposed to

commercial) venture because their status as a women and person of color is dually congruent with

the role of social entrepreneur.

Role identity. Role identity is rooted in the symbolic interactionist perspective (Stryker

& Serpe, 1994) and refers to the meaning prescribed to a role by oneself (Burke & Tully, 1977).

Thus, while a role is attached to a structural position, role identity determines how an individual

interprets that role and corresponding expectations (Sluss & Ashforth, 2007; Sluss et al., 2011).

Information and meaning attached to roles are stored as cognitive schema and provide an internal

framework for interpretation of role expectations. Further, while roles are often viewed as

structural, thus relatively fixed, microprocesses at the individual level allow for the social

construction and negotiation of behavioral expectations and create a more dynamic view of roles.

As Sluss and colleagues suggest, “the role of manager may possess more or less institutionalized

ROLE THEORY 11

behavioral expectations such as allocating resources, providing rewards, giving performance

feedback but the nuances, content, and focus of these behaviors are still negotiated by those

occupying the role (e.g., manager) as well as the counter-role (e.g., subordinate, senior manager,

peer manager)” (2011: 507). The concept of role identity has been pivotal in furthering a micro-

oriented, individual level understanding of the influence of roles, and developing an

understanding of how individuals respond to the demands placed on them when facing multiple

sets of role expectations. For example, individuals with stronger home role salience (actively

prioritizing one’s home life over one’s work life) have a greater need to detach from work when

returning home and doing enhances their cognitive liveliness once returning home (Sanz-Vergel,

Demerouti, Bakker, & Moreno-Jiménez, 2011). Another takeaway from this literature involves

understanding how situational factors influence the development of role identities that then shape

individual actions. For example, perceived higher coworker creativity expectations, increased

self-views of creative behavior, and greater exposure to U.S. culture may lead to a stronger

creative role identity among Taiwanese employees (Farmer, Tierney, & Kung-Mcintyre, 2003).

Role salience and role centrality. Role salience and role centrality are rooted in the

symbolic interactionist perspective and often treated as synonyms (Carr, Boyar, & Gregory,

2008) to refer to the importance people give to roles central to their life and identity (Carlson &

Kacmar, 2000; Greer & Egan, 2012). The original conceptualization of these constructs suggests

they are related and complementary, but distinct (Greer & Egan, 2012; Murnieks, Mosakowski, &

Cardon, 2014). Stryker and Serpe note that role centrality refers more to “what a person regards

as desirable or preferred from his or her own point of view” (1994: 19), while salience is “defined

as a readiness to act out an identity as a consequence of the identity's properties as a cognitive

structure or schema” (1994: 18). Thus, centrality assumes a level of self-awareness, while

ROLE THEORY 12

salience does not. Further, Stryker and Serpe (1994) suggest studies should consider both

concepts as each may uniquely contribute to behavior. A notable example in the management

literature is Murnieks and colleagues (2014) who show that centrality of the entrepreneur role is

positively related to entrepreneurial passion, while controlling for entrepreneurial identity

salience, which did not predict entrepreneurial passion. In reviewing the literature, we noticed

considerable conceptual ambiguity in the use of these constructs with a lack of clarity regarding

which concept was actually being used as well as studies treating the two concepts as one in the

same. We urge management scholars researching these topics to take care to conceptually and

empirically distinguish the two concepts. More generally, a key insight from the literature is that

greater levels of salience and/or centrality influence when and why individuals choose to engage

in role related tasks. Greater levels of centrality or salience in work-related roles may increase

motivational characteristics such as passion, aspirations, or commitment for a given job or career

(e.g., Seibert, Nielsen, & Kraimer, 2020; Tripathi, Zhu, Jacob, Frese, & Gielnik, 2020). However,

when the salience or centrality of non-work roles, notably family related roles, is stronger, this

may lead to role conflict at the work-family interface and disengagement from work roles (e.g.,

Carr et al., 2008; Michel, Kotrba, Mitchelson, Clark, & Baltes, 2011).

Role conflict and role ambiguity. Role conflict and role ambiguity are two related

concepts with a prominent place in the role theory literature. Role conflict occurs when

individuals have multiple roles and the behavioral expectations of one role are incompatible or

inconsistent with those of another (Anicich & Hirsh, 2017; Biddle, 1986; Ebbers & Wijnberg,

2017). The conceptualization of roles related to these terms lies in the structural-functional

tradition; however, these concepts arose from Turner’s (1962) criticism that previous

conceptualizations had been too ridged and role work should recognize an individual’s personal

ROLE THEORY 13

reaction to their given roles. Role conflict is often used in research examining competing

demands in functional roles. For example, middle managers experience role conflict because they

are often confronted with differing performance expectations from superiors and from

subordinates (Anicich & Hirsch, 2017; Floyd & Lane, 2000). Another common role conflict

arises from conflicting work and personal expectations. For example, Bolino and Turnley (2005)

find that individual initiative may increase work-family conflict as individuals are more likely to

go beyond the call of duty at work—an effect that is stronger for female than male employees.

Role ambiguity occurs when individuals are not clear about role boundaries and exists on a

continuum with role clarity (Ebbers & Wijnberg, 2017; Rizzo et al., 1970; Tubre & Collins,

2000). Role ambiguity is typically applied to individuals in a particular functional role (e.g.,

manager, employee) where role expectations regarding are unclear, and is frequently used in

studies of satisfaction, absenteeism, and job performance (Tubre & Collins, 2000). This concept

differs from role consensus because it relates to an individual’s understanding of their own

functional role, not widely held beliefs that exist as part of a social structure. Indeed, role

ambiguity often occurs when day-to-day job roles are not well defined. For example, employees

may display more citizenship behaviors (OCB) to enhance their self-image when their specific

job role is not clearly defined because or ambiguity in how to get ahead otherwise (Yun,

Takeuchi, & Liu, 2007). Role conflict and role ambiguity are often intertwined as role ambiguity

can increase the chances of role conflict due to the uncertainty between how individuals believe

they should behave and actual behavioral expectations from others (Ebbers & Wijnberg, 2017).

Both role conflict and role ambiguity have been shown to result in tension between employees,

higher turnover, individual anxiety, and lower employee performance (Michel et al., 2011).

ROLE THEORY 14

Role accumulation and role enrichment. Role accumulation refers to obtaining and

occupying multiple roles at once (Sieber, 1974). An individual may occupy the roles of woman,

mother, racial minority, and CEO simultaneously. While stemming from structural-functional

conceptualization of a role, this concept underscores the importance of examining individual

reactions to roles and challenges the idea that accumulating more roles always leads to strain and

conflict (Sieber, 1974). Departing from the concept of role conflict, where multiple role demands

increase strain or tension, role accumulation considers benefits that may accrue from occupying

multiple roles. For instance, role accumulation in women managers can lead to greater life

satisfaction, self-esteem, and self-acceptance (Ruderman, Ohlott, Panzer, & King, 2002). A

closely related concept is role enrichment. Role enrichment explains how experience in one role

may improve the quality of experience in another (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006), with work

investigating how performance in a work role (e.g., leader, entrepreneur) may be enhanced by

occupying other nonwork or work roles. For instance, skills learned from motherhood (planning,

multitasking) may enable women to succeed in the role of entrepreneur more readily as these

skills can be applied when launching a new venture (Powell & Eddleston, 2013). A key takeaway

from this literature is that the work-family interface, often viewed as source of role conflict, can

be a source of role enrichment under the right conditions. Organizations that seek to build a

workforce with high self-efficacy as well as provide employee support, prioritize communication,

and allow for autonomy can create environments to foster enrichment between work and family

roles (Parker, 1998; Wayne, Casper, Matthews, & Allen, 2013; Westring & Ryan, 2010).

While role conflict and enrichment may appear to be opposite ends of a continuum, they

are generally treated as different concepts with distinct measures. For instance, Westring and

Ryan (2010) examine how core self-evaluations influence school-family conflict and school-

ROLE THEORY 15

family enrichment using distinct scales. Siu and colleagues (2010) suggest that work-family

enrichment and work-role conflict have different roots, i.e. the former is driven more by role

demands, whereas the latter is generated from personal experiences in work and family roles.

Thus, a lack of role conflict does not imply role enrichment or vice versa.

Role transitions. Role transitions refer to the psychological, and sometimes physical,

change between or among roles, including the process of disengaging from one role and engaging

in another (Ashforth, Kreiner, & Fugate, 2000) and are often linked to temporary or permanent

shifts in identity (Ashforth, 2000; Nicholson, 1984). Role transitions can be considered macro-

transitions or micro-transitions. Macro role transitions refer to changes between sequentially held

roles, such as organizational entry or exit, promotion, or change from employee to entrepreneur

(Ashforth, 2000). Because macro role transitions embody major change, they may be

accompanied by substantial changes in an individual’s identity (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010). For

example, Maurer and London (2018) argue that the identity transition from individual contributor

to leader may range from an incremental shift to a radical shift, with organizational processes

such as training, resources, encouragement, and support facilitating the degree of identity shift.

Micro role transitions refer to movement between simultaneously held roles (Ashforth, 2000). For

instance, over the course of a day, an individual may begin in a parental role, shift to a manager

role at work, and return to a parental role in the evening. As an example of research on micro role

transitions, Jachimowicz and colleagues (2021) suggest commutes can be an opportunity for

meaningful role transitions — employees who engage in thinking about the upcoming work role

(i.e., role-clarifying prospection) are less likely to be negatively affected by long commutes, and

individuals who experience high levels of work-family conflict benefit the most from role-

clarifying prospection. While macro role transitions may lead to changes in identity, one’s

ROLE THEORY 16

identity influences how the individual deals with micro role changes. For example, Delanoeije

and colleagues (2019) show that employees experience less work-to-home conflict but more

home-to-work conflict on teleworking days compared to non-teleworking days. However, those

who highly value protecting their home from work interruptions experience more work-to-home

conflict when teleworking than those who have a lower home protection preference.

THE EVOLUTION AND ADVANCEMENT OF ROLE THEORIES

Role theories began to take hold in the 1950’s and can be found in management research

beginning in the 1960’s. Early work in management provided a foundational understanding of the

key concepts described above and primarily investigated how formalized, professional roles, such

as managerial or leadership roles, were constructed and perceived (e.g., Delbecq, 1964; Elbing,

1970; Jermier & Berkes, 1979). During the late 1980’s and into the 2000’s, management scholars

broadened their horizons to focus on the intersection of roles within and outside the organization.

This research is typified by work examining the work-family interface (e.g., Carlson & Kacmar,

2000; Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992). Management scholars produced an impressive body of

work that sought to understand how pressures at work influenced pressures at home and vice

versa. For instance, Duxbury and Higgins (1991) highlight how women experience greater work-

family conflict, noting there had not been a redistribution of roles within the family to match

increased role responsibilities outside the home, while Netemeyer and colleagues (1996)

proposed and validated what came to be widely used measures of work-family and family-work

conflict.

Advancing Role Theories from a Structural-Functional Perspective

During the 1980’s, social psychology and micro-sociology provided notable extensions to

the structural functional perspective of role theory that now wields substantial influence. Online

ROLE THEORY 17

Appendix D summarizes these advancements. In the 1980’s, Eagly (1987) applied role theory

concepts to a contentious debate in psychology concerning behavioral differences between men

and women. Social psychologists sought to understand the origins and impact of sex differences

by focusing on cultural stereotypes, while evolutionary psychologists focused on biological

explanations related to the early survival of humans (Archer, 1996; Eagly, 1997). Likewise, while

role theory had recognized sex differences in a variety of behaviors, no definitive explanation for

why such differences emerge and persist had been reached, and the malleability of gender roles

had been largely ignored (Eagly & Wood, 2011). Against this backdrop, Eagly (1987) proposed

the social role theory of sex differences and similarities, frequently called social role theory.

Social role theory contends that sex differences in social behaviors arise from the

distribution of men and women into social roles (Eagly & Wood, 2016; Eagly, Wood, &

Diekman, 2000). Consistent with evolutionary psychology, social role theory recognizes that

physical differences contribute, but differences in behavior also result from a confluence of

economic, technological, ecological, and cultural processes (Eagly & Wood, 1999). The product

of these processes are pervasive gender roles and stereotypes that reflect a consensually shared

set of expectations concerning typical and appropriate behaviors for men and women. The gender

role of men typically includes agentic behaviors (dominance, assertiveness), while the gender role

of women typically includes communal ones (nurturing, friendliness). Such roles are pervasive

and persistent because gender-appropriate behaviors are socially modeled, learned, and reinforced

through society’s power and status structures. Thus, women and men internalize gender roles and

tend to see the world and behave in ways that conform with these roles. However, although

gender roles are persistent, social role theory suggests these roles can and do change over time.

ROLE THEORY 18

Social role theory has been expanded beyond sex differences. Notably, Koenig and Eagly

(2014a) illustrate that core concepts of social role theory apply to a variety of stereotypes. The

authors showed that racial, occupational, age, socioeconomic status, sexuality, and educational

differences may all carry stereotypical roles that are a result of historical, social, and economic

forces. Like gender roles, these roles carry expectations for appropriate behaviors that influence

individual behavior and perceptions of behavior. While management research has predominately

leveraged social role theory to examine gender differences (e.g., Kacmar, Bachrach, Harris, &

Zivnuska, 2011, Madera, Hebl, & Martin, 2009), researchers have leveraged this perspective to

further understanding of other role types. For example, Hoyt and colleagues (2013) use social

role theory to propose a theory of unethical leadership, while Anglin and colleagues (2018) use

social role theory to understand how the interplay of entrepreneur sex, race, and sexual

orientation shape assessments of entrepreneurs in the crowdfunding context.

The second key extension of role theory is role congruity theory. Building from the core

tenets of role and social role theories, Eagly and Karau (2002) extend social role theory by

considering congruency between prevailing gender roles and leadership roles and introducing two

forms of prejudice against female leaders (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Specifically, when thinking

about leaders, perceivers combine leader role expectations with gender role expectations and

make judgements based on congruity between the two sets of expectations. Traditional leadership

characteristics (self-confident, ambitious, aggressive) appear congruent with the male gender role

and incongruent with the female gender role. As such, leadership behavior shown by women

violates expectations about how one ought to behave, eliciting negative reactions. This leads to

two forms of prejudice: women’s leadership potential is less favorably evaluated than men’s

because leadership ability is more stereotypical of men, and women’s actual leadership behavior

ROLE THEORY 19

is less favorably evaluated than men’s because such behavior is perceived as less desirable in

women. Role congruity theory has moved beyond examination of leadership and gender roles

under the premise that prejudice arises when group stereotypes are incongruent with stereotypes

based on social roles (Koenig & Eagly, 2014b). For instance, role congruity theory has proven

valuable in understanding the influence of stereotypes about age (Diekman & Hirnisey, 2007),

race (Barden, Maddux, Petty, & Brewer, 2004), and sexual orientation (Clarke & Arnold, 2018).

Still, management research drawing on this theory has remained focused on gender roles. A

notable exception is Rosette and colleagues (2016) who add an intersectionality lens and note that

prevailing gender stereotypes for women may be altered once race is considered with gender.

Advancing Role Theories from a Symbolic Interactionist Perspective: Role Identity Theory

The symbolic-interactionist perspective of role theory developed throughout the 1960’s

and 1970’s (Stryker, 2001; Stryker & Serpe, 1994). This perspective was integrated into the

structural-functional perspective because scholars disagreed about basic assumptions supporting

the structural-functional perspective, such as an individual’s agency within organizations to

assign, reject, and identify with one’s roles (Stryker, 2001). A key product of this integration is

role identity theory, which contends that individuals act based on how they like to see themselves

and how they like to be seen by others when operating in particular social positions (McCall &

Simmons, 1978). This theory expands role theory to include the processes wherein individual role

occupants define themselves within roles and how this influences their interactions with others.

As such, role identity theory also expands the definition of a role to include individual goals,

values, beliefs, norms, interaction styles, and time horizons that comprise a particular role (Sluss

et al., 2011). Thus, roles are not only structural positions occupied by an individual where

expectation are imposed at a macrolevel, but also shape one’s individual identity at a microlevel

ROLE THEORY 20

based on the individual’s interpretation of their roles. A fundamental feature of role identity

theory work in management is examining how and why individuals choose to respond when

occupying a myriad of roles. Here, the concepts of role salience, role centrality, and role conflict

(among others) have been used to explain such choices. For instance, individuals with a stronger

leadership identity are more likely to emerge as leaders because they actively take steps to reach a

leadership position, such as engaging in behaviors associated with performance and goal

attainment (Kwok, Hanig, Brown, & Shen, 2018).

CURRENT TRENDS IN RESEARCH ON ROLE THEORIES

Our integrative review from the last two decades (2000-2020) of empirical role research

(n = 234) highlights the emergence of key themes across diverse management disciplines, such

as organizational behavior, human resources, strategic management, and entrepreneurship. To

conduct this review, we first searched popular academic journals using the keywords: “role

congruity”, “role incongruity”, “role theory”, “social role theory”, “role congruity theory”,

“role identity theory”, “role salience”, “role centrality”, and “role transitions.” Additionally,

we performed a second keyword search for “role(s)” as catch-all to ensure we did not miss any

potentially relevant articles. We searched the following journals: The Academy of Management

Journal, the Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly,

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Group and Organization Management, Human

Relations, Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Review, International

Journal of Management Reviews, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Business

Venturing, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management, Journal of

Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Leadership Quarterly, Management

Science, Organization Science, Organization Studies, Organizational Behavior and Human

ROLE THEORY 21

Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology, Research in Organizational Behavior, Strategic

Entrepreneurship Journal, and the Strategic Management Journal.

Our search initially identified 533 articles. During our first pass through the literature, we

were able to quickly remove 44 articles as they did not directly relate to role theory research,

leaving 489 articles. Next, 159 non-empirical articles (conceptual pieces and editorials) were

removed, leaving 330 articles. An additional 43 empirical articles were removed because they

were published before 2000. During the coding of empirical articles an additional 59 articles

were removed because they did not use one of the role theory perspectives discussed in the

review; rather, these articles used a combination of other various theories to discuss the role

phenomenon (e.g., Cogin et al., 2018). Thus, our review below includes 234 empirical articles.

To determine key themes, we first engaged in an extensive coding process that we then

used to inductively inform our selection of themes. For each empirical article, we coded types of

roles (social versus formal), specific roles (gender, manager, leader), role theory used and/or

concept, sample, analytic approach, dependent variables, independent variables, and research

design. Coding and manuscripts were reviewed by three authors to determine the five themes,

each of which are summarized in Table 1 and in an expanded version of this table in online

Appendix E. Online Appendix F provides a table reflective of the coding for each article, and

online Appendix G provides a summary of the methods used in role research. From this coding,

we observed the emergence of five major themes: Roles and Identity (n = 23), Work-Nonwork

Interface (n = 30), Biases and Stereotypes (n = 114), Career Lifecycle (n = 36), and Ethics and

Other-Oriented Behavior (n = 24). Only seven articles did not align into our five themes; thus,

roughly 97% of our articles found a home in our emergent themes. We consider the most

prominent theme for a given manuscript; however, themes are not mutually exclusive. For

ROLE THEORY 22

example, the Role and Identity theme generally examines relationships between identities and

roles, but the role identity concept is important to the Work-Nonwork interface as well. The

Work-Nonwork interface is treated as a separate theme because it occupies a prominent place in

the literature in its own right. We suggest readers consider the following themes as an integrative

examination of role theory research and not separate literature streams. After each major theme

was determined, authors looked within each theme to inductively determine the two or three

most common subthemes. Table 1 provides a brief summary of these themes.

----------------------

Insert Table 1

-----------------------

Roles and identity

In the spirit of role identity theory, the Roles and Identity theme features research that

examines how one’s identity influences relationships with work. This theme includes work

mostly in the organizational behavior and entrepreneurship disciplines. Three subthemes

emerged: the construction and maintenance of role identities, how individual identities influence

individual work outcomes, and the concept of entrepreneurial identity.

Identity construction. Several papers examined the construction and maintenance of

role identities, which are influenced by internal and situational factors. For example, Cinque and

colleagues (2020) examine how theater actors maintain their actor role identity despite hardships

of sacrifice, responsibility, and self-care. Marchiondo and colleagues (2015) illustrate that, for

individuals in a leadership role, leadership identities are constructed and negotiated between

leader and team members through team members accepting the claims of a leader. Currie and

colleagues (2010) examine role transitions for nurses within the English National Health System

ROLE THEORY 23

and show that, while organizations may impose policy changes intended to alter professional

roles, professional identity concerns and inter- and intra-professional conflict, may constrain the

enactment of new roles. Creative role identities emerge from perceived coworker creativity

expectations, self-views of creative behaviors, and greater exposure to U.S. culture (Farmer,

Yao, & Kung, 2011). In sum, this literature demonstrates that the construction and maintenance

of role identities results from a complex interplay of both individual and situational factors where

individuals develop and negotiate role identities within themselves and with others.

Individual outcomes. Role identities are also important to shaping individual work

outcomes. For example, role identities can enable individuals to cope with challenges and

increase performance. Beyer and Hannah highlight how past experiences influence the

relationship between identity and work, and show that newcomers with diverse experiences

adjusted better because “(1) they found it easier to enact dimensions of their personal identities

that allowed them to function effectively in the new situation, (2) they more easily found a fit

between know-how gleaned from that experience and their new jobs, and (3) they could draw on

a wider variety of personal tactics that they had previously used to help them adjust” (2002:

636). Lang and Lee (2005) show that role identity accumulation in flexible work environments

and others’ acceptance of one’s identity have a direct impact on reducing job stress. Centrality to

the team mediates the influence of one’s functional role, status, and communication role on

individual performance (Ahuja, Galletta, & Carley, 2003). Conflict or strain can arise when

identities are challenged. For instance, migrant workers who have moved from rural to urban

environments experience greater role strain when they retain their rural identity, and are more

likely to quit their job when there is a lack of supervisory support (Qin, Hom, & Xu, 2019).

ROLE THEORY 24

Entrepreneurial identity. Entrepreneurship literature has drawn from role identity

concepts to better understand how entrepreneur identity influences venture creation processes.

For example, when the entrepreneur role is central to one’s identity, entrepreneurial passion

increases, prompting entrepreneurial behavior (Murnieks et al., 2014). However, while an

entrepreneur’s identity centrality is relatively stable over time, changes to the entrepreneur’s idea

and increasing role ambiguity may cause passion to fade (Collewaert, Anseel, Crommelinck,

DeBeuckelaer, & Vermeire, 2016). Zhan and colleagues (2020) highlight a ‘role identity

advantage’ whereby more experienced entrepreneurs avoid being overly enthralled by a

situationally salient role identity (e.g., the businessperson) distracting them from the main goals

of developing novel and commercially viable ideas. Mathias and Williams (2018) find that

entrepreneurs that view the entrepreneur role identity as someone who can delegate and believe

others can act out important roles may be better suited to grow their ventures. Thus,

entrepreneurship scholars have been able to leverage the concept of role identities to explain why

some people choose to become and persist as entrepreneurs, while others do not.

Work-Nonwork Interface

Work in the Work-Nonwork Interface theme centers around role conflict at the work-

family interface, role enrichment at the work-family interface, and additional work-nonwork

roles. Much of this work either directly or implicitly adopts an identity-based perspective in that

it explores how individuals relate to their work and family roles, and occurs primarily in

organizational behavior and human resource disciplines.

Conflict. Because work roles and family roles often present competing demands for time

and attention, research has focused on inter-role conflict from expectations and pressures tied to

work and family roles (e.g., Michel et al., 2011; Li, Bagger, & Cropanzano, 2017; Livingston,

ROLE THEORY 25

2014). The underlying assumption of work-family and family-work conflict is that the centrality

or salience of a work role compared to a family role with regard to one’s identity is a key source

of role conflict (Carlson & Kacmar, 2000; Carr et al., 2008). For example, Greenhaus and Powell

(2003) illustrate that sources of role pressures matter—if the pressure from a manager to engage

in a work activity is strong (weak) and spousal pressure to engage in a family activity is weak

(strong), individuals are more likely to choose the work (family) activity. Involvement in family

roles shapes the willingness to expatriate, with the lowest interest among women with partners

and/or children and greatest interest exhibited by childless single employees (Tharenou, 2008).

Women who occupy higher status job roles than their husbands may indirectly increase

perceptions of marital instability, although this is buffered when husbands provide support for

their wives’ role (Byrne & Barling, 2017). Finally, the ability to establish and maintain role

boundaries among family and work roles may lead to reduced conflict (Powell & Greenhaus,

2010). In sum, conflict at the work-family interface is driven by competing role demands where

expectations of one role seem incompatible with expectations in another role (Siu et al., 2010).

Enrichment. The last two decades (2000-2020) have seen increasing emphasis on how

work and family roles serve as sources of role enrichment (Lapierre, Li, Kwan, Greenhaus,

DiRenzo, & Shao, 2018). For example, Rothbard (2001) suggests that enrichment between work

and family roles is more likely to occur from work to family roles for men, but family to work

roles for women. Dumas and Stanko (2016) show that individuals who identify more strongly

with family roles may increase transformational leadership behaviors as family identification

may strengthen relational and planning skills. Another implication from this literature is that

situational factors serve as important drivers of role enrichment. For example, when

organizations provide family supportive supervision (Walsh, Matthews, Toumbeva, Kabat-Farr,

ROLE THEORY 26

Philbrick, & Pavisic, 2019) and when individuals feel they have supportive and encouraging

partners (Petriglieri & Obodaru, 2019), individuals are more likely to experience role

enrichment. Female entrepreneurs may benefit from family-to-business enrichment in achieving

entrepreneurial success perhaps because female entrepreneurs often lack access to other

resources, and because the female gender role encourages women to pursue work–family

synergies (Powell & Eddleston, 2013). More broadly, work examining role enrichment at the

work-family interface reinforces the idea that experiences and skills in one role can elevate

performance in other roles, and that organizations can take steps to foster such enrichment.

Other nonwork roles. Some research focusing on the work-nonwork interface has

examined the influence of nonwork roles other than family. For example, Ruderman and

colleagues (2002) suggest that women who play multiple roles in their personal lives (e.g., friend

or volunteer) may increase their effectiveness in management roles, as occupying multiple roles

can create more opportunities to enrich personal skills, to receive advice and support, and

provide psychological benefits. Student athletes that cognitively separate the student role from

the athlete role express higher levels of well-being than those who struggle to draw boundaries

between these roles (Settles, Sellers, & Damas, 2002). Nardon and colleagues (2020) explore

work role transitions caused by forced migration, finding that professional employment support

provided by newcomer support organizations ease such role transitions through helping migrants

understand career options, assess career opportunities, and cultivate their professional identity.

Biases and Stereotypes

The largest body of work leveraging roles theories focuses on examining how biases and

stereotypes tied to roles influence individual, team, and organizational outcomes. The Biases and

Stereotypes theme overwhelmingly focuses on biases stemming from gender roles, with scattered

ROLE THEORY 27

attention paid to roles tied to race, age, and physical attractiveness. This literature tends to adopt

a structural-functional perspective of roles, and frequently leverages social role and role

congruity theories. Studies typically examine how biases and stereotypes tied to a prominent

social role (e.g., gender) shape outcomes for individuals in functional roles (manager,

entrepreneur, leader, subordinate). This theme spans management disciplines.

Gender (in)congruency. Much of the biases and stereotypes literature examines how the

misalignment between gender role expectations and functional role expectations of a leader,

entrepreneur, and manager create impediments for women. If the prototypical leader embodies

agentic characteristics stereotypical of men, women face prejudice that suppresses leadership

emergence and harms perceptions of leadership effectiveness (e.g., Hirschfeld & Thomas, 2011;

Paustian-Underdahl, Walker, & Woehr, 2014). For example, Johnson and colleagues (2008)

examine male and female leader prototypes to show that sensitivity was more strongly associated

with female leadership, while masculinity, strength, and tyranny were more strongly associated

with male leadership. Female leaders needed to show sensitivity and strength to be perceived as

effective, whereas male leaders only needed to show strength. Gupta and colleagues (2018)

illustrate that women CEOs are more likely to come under threat by activist investors, likely due

to gender role bias. Similarly, the financial resource acquisition literature in entrepreneurship has

noted a disadvantage for women raising funds compared to men, often attributed to the idea that

the traditional role of an entrepreneur is ‘masculine’ (Alsos & Ljunggren, 2017; Malmström,

Johansson, & Wincent, 2017). Leveraging role congruity theory, Eddleston and colleagues

(2016) examine venture signals in bank financing and highlight that quality signals (past track

record of performance, business age, and hours devoted to business) were impactful for male

entrepreneurs but were weaker or played no role for female entrepreneurs. Yang and colleagues

ROLE THEORY 28

(2020) use role congruity theory to examine startups applying to social impact accelerators and

find that acceptance is more likely when a startup's signals are congruent with the stereotypes

associated with the lead founder’s gender. Further work has argued that investors are biased

against the display of stereotypically feminine characteristics for both men and women alike,

suggesting that it is not sex differences that drive funding differences, per se, but the gender-

stereotypical behavior of entrepreneurs (Balachandra, Briggs, Eddleston, & Brush, 2019).

Contingences for gender (in)congruency. While evidence exists for the negative

influence of role incongruity between women’s functional and gender roles, contingencies

matter. For example, high mental ability may lead to greater emergence in informal leadership

roles for women than for men (Neubert & Taggar, 2004). Lanaj and Hollenbeck (2015) find that

women who engage in counter-stereotypical agentic behaviors, notably task-related (e.g.,

organizing teamwork) and boundary spanning behaviors (e.g., interacting with people outside the

team to acquire resources), are more likely to emerge as leaders than men. Self-reliant female

leaders are evaluated as better leaders than are self-reliant male leaders because self-reliant

female leaders are seen as similarly competent, but more communal (Schaumberg & Flynn,

2017). Zalata and colleagues (2019) use social role theory to argue that female directors are able

to gain executives’ trust through soft skills (e.g., kindness, trustworthiness, sympathy) which

allows firm-specific information to be revealed – enabling women to perform this advisory role

better than men. Work in crowdfunding has shown a departure from traditional venture finance

domains by illustrating a ‘female advantage’. This advantage may be partially attributed to the

fact that communal qualities such as trustworthiness are highly valued in crowdfunding. For

instance, Johnson and colleagues (2018) find that female entrepreneurs are viewed as higher in

trustworthiness, which leads to funders' increased preference for backing female entrepreneurs.

ROLE THEORY 29

In sum, studies examining contingencies related to how gender roles intersect with functional

roles suggest that leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs who embody communal, feminine

qualities as well as agentic, masculine qualities, may be more effective in their functional role.

Stereotypes beyond gender. Although the intersection of functional and gender roles

dominates the bias literature, some studies examine how role expectations tied to other social

roles influence individuals in functional roles. Rosette and colleagues (2016) show that Black,

Asian-American, and White women were associated with distinct stereotypes in leadership roles.

Black women were perceived as dominant but not competent; Asian American women as

competent, but not dominant; and White women as primarily communal, but not viewed as

particularly dominant or competent. As a result, Black women were the least likely to suffer

agentic penalties, whereas Asian American women were most likely. Rooted in role congruity

theory, Rule and colleagues (2016) find that gay and straight men are perceived as more suited to

professions consistent with stereotypical roles of their groups. Specifically, the functional roles

of nurses, pediatricians, and English teachers were viewed as more consistent with gay men, and

engineers, managers, surgeons, and math teachers as more consistent with straight men. Lai and

Babock (2013) show that White female evaluators were less likely to select and promote Asian

candidates than White candidates into job positions involving social skills because the evaluators

perceived Asian candidates as having lower social skills. Anglin and colleagues (2018) use social

role theory to examine how narcissistic language in crowdfunding pitches influences funding

outcomes depending on social roles tied to gender, race, and sexual orientation. They found that

LGBTQ entrepreneurs generally yield greater performance when using narcissistic language than

heterosexuals; however, entrepreneurs of color were penalized compared to White entrepreneurs

using narcissistic rhetoric. While these studies illustrate the potential to use role theories to

ROLE THEORY 30

further knowledge about bias, they represent a small portion of current work, indicating untapped

potential in using role theories to understand a variety of role-related bias.

Career Lifecycles

Considerable research is concerned with how social and functional roles shape the

emergence, transition, and decline of individuals’ careers. Organizational behavior and human

resource research comprise most of the research within this theme. Work here often adopts a

structural-functional view of gender roles to investigate career outcomes. Work on role

transitions and leadership emergence is also prominent within this theme.

Gender roles. Research on career lifecycles frequently leverages role theories to

understand career differences between men and women. For example, Bowles and colleagues

(2019) use role congruity theory to explain gender differences in work negotiations, such that

expected gender-prescriptive behaviors inhibit women from engaging in negotiations for higher

pay and men from negotiating for more work flexibility. They do so to minimize the potential for

social backlash from not behaving in accordance with expected gender-specific behaviors.

Moreover, because female managers experience judgements regarding workplace absence due to

having children or being the primary caregiver at home, Kim and colleagues (2020) found that

female managers feel pressure to increase workplace visibility by working extended hours to

gain promotions as compared to engaging in professional development activities, leading to more

stress, less job satisfaction, and higher turnover intentions. In situations where women are able to

climb to the top ranks of the organization, Gupta and colleagues (2020) found that female CEOs

are roughly 45% more likely to be dismissed than male CEOs, suggesting that even when women

are promoted to the highest roles of leadership, they still risk being ‘pushed out’ of the

ROLE THEORY 31

organization. In sum, this research suggests that gender roles influence both the ability to

advance in one’s career and the consequences experienced when seeking to advance.

Role transitions. The concept of role transitions is important to understanding career

lifecycles. For example, the transition from the role of professional to that of retiree can be

daunting and complex (Beehr, 2014). Bordia and colleagues (2020) use interviews to understand

how pre-retirement role identities influence the retirement transition process and the techniques

individuals deploy to manage this transition. Career transitions also occur across dissimilar

cultural contexts. For example, in the late 1500s and early 1600s, merchants emigrating from

Southern Netherlands (a guild system in a protected economic environment) to Amsterdam (open

competition, and speculative and depersonalized financial investments) were required to make

sense of unspoken social norms prescribed to their work role in a foreign environment

(Carnabuci & Wezel, 2011). Canabuci and Wezel (2011) found that these merchants experienced

a role transition from “pre-modern merchant” to that of “capitalist entrepreneur” and predicted

why some were successful in this role transition while others were not. Aguinis and Vaschetto

(2011) examine the demanding role expectations and role conflict researchers face when

adopting the functional role of journal editor. However, Aguinis and colleagues (2013) found

that former editors of top journals continue to be productive scholars, and to make meaningful

non-research contributions after their role transition. This emphasizes the prescribed social norm

of voluntary service within the career role of an academic.

Leadership emergence. A final notable topic within this theme involves how leaders

informally emerge in the workplace. For example, a social role theory perspective would suggest

that women are less likely to emerge as leaders and would not be as influential in swaying

collective group decisions. However, Watson and Hoffman (2004) find that when both men and

ROLE THEORY 32

women are given relevant task-related information and encouraged to use it, women emerge as

leaders just as frequently as men do; further, women were just as successful influencing group

members to support their preferred decision as men. Similarly, Lemoine and colleagues (2016)

use social role theory to show that when male-majority groups have high group extraversion,

women within those groups are more likely to emerge as leaders. Studying leadership emergence

in all-female groups, Schock and colleagues (2019) find that the most effective female leaders

emerge when they blend agentic characteristics of a leader (e.g., appearing strong to others) with

communal characteristics of a woman (e.g., displaying sensitivity to followers’ needs). However,

effective female leaders must also display a high level of competence without being judged as

‘not nice enough’ to appear congruent with their gender social role.

Ethics and Other-Oriented Behavior

The Ethics and Other-Oriented Behavior theme captures research that connects roles and

role perspectives to ethical behavior in functional roles as well as other-oriented behaviors such

as OCB. This theme includes identity-based perspectives where one’s role identity influences

ethical or other-oriented behavior as well as structural-functional perspectives in which

perceptions of ethicality or other-oriented behavior are viewed through the lens of roles.

Unethical behavior and identity. The concepts of role theory have been used to

understand why individuals engage in ethical or unethical behavior. For example, Stuart and

Moore develop the concept of an illicit role—a role “that specializes in activities forbidden by

law, regulatory bodies, or professional societies, in the belief that doing so provides a

competitive advantage” (2016: 1963). The authors illustrate that teams who lose individuals

specializing in such roles (e.g., an ‘enforcer’ on a hockey team) may be more destabilized than

when occupants of formal roles leave. Hoyt and colleagues (2013) find empirical support for a

ROLE THEORY 33

social role theory of unethical leadership, contending that the core expectation of achieving

goals, central to the role of leader, results in leaders over-valuing group goals with higher

confidence in the moral permissibility of the means by which to achieve goals, which may result

in unethical behavior. Graham and colleagues (2020) examine perceptions of ethicality when

engaging in unethical pro-organizational behavior, finding that egoistic norms, where

maximizing the interests of a narrow set of internal stakeholders is valued, promote unethical

behavior, particularly among those whose identity is more strongly tied to the organization.

Vincent and Kouchaki (2016) illustrate that individuals with a stronger creative role identity

report higher levels of psychological entitlement and engage in more unethical behaviors.

Perceptions of ethical and other-oriented behavior. Drawing parallels to prior themes,

gender roles influence the engagement in and perception of ethics or other-oriented behavior. It

has been argued that women are generally socialized to obey rules and thus less likely to engage

in dishonest behaviors and should show greater concern for others (Honig & Bedi, 2012;

Wiltermuth, 2011). For example, Thomson and colleagues (2020) leverage social role theory to

illustrate that men, more than women, need to feel a sense of obligation in order to engage in

OCBs and that this obligation can be fostered through perceived organizational support. Kacmar

and colleagues (2011) illustrate that while both men and women seek to repay ethical leadership

by engaging in OCBs, when the perception of organizational politics is high, men are more likely

to do so while women are less likely. Further, women are more likely to engage in deceptive

behaviors when serving in an other-advocacy role compared to when they are representing

themselves in strategic interactions, while men’s deceptive behaviors show little difference when

advocating for others or representing themselves. This may be because women are more

sensitive to letting others down (Kouchaki & Kray, 2018). Women receive more backlash when

ROLE THEORY 34

fighting unethical behavior, however, because the female gender is often viewed as having lower

power status. For example, Rehg and colleagues (2008) show that women are more likely to

receive retaliation for whistleblowing, likely because women are viewed as behaving in a manner

inconsistent with their status. In sum, research examining ethics and other-oriented behavior

continues to highlight the emphasis placed on gender in role theory research by illustrating how

ethical perceptions and reasons for unethical actions are different for women versus men.

INSIGHTS FOR FUTURE WORK

Using the above review as a launching point, we now provide suggestions for future

research within each theme. We briefly summarize our suggestions in Table 2 and provide an

expanded version of this table in online Appendix H.

----------------------

Insert Table 2

-----------------------

Roles and Identity

The Roles and Identity theme examined the construction and maintenance of role

identities, how identity relates to individual performance, and the concept of entrepreneurial

identity. We identified three key areas in which this literature can expand. First, there is

opportunity to expand understanding of the relationship among identity, roles, and individual

outcomes by examining the relationship between role identities and well-being. Second, research

should examine the conflict experienced by individuals when their profession may be perceived

negatively, furthering knowledge on how societal views intersect with individual work role

identities. Third, more work is needed to examine identity expressions and diversity issues.

ROLE THEORY 35

Well-being. Our review indicates that recent role theory research has begun to examine

how roles are tied to individual well-being (e.g., Hmieleski & Sheppard, 2019). Well-being is a

critical part of a fulfilling and flourishing life and substantially shapes people's ability to work

and maintain positive relationships (Wiklund, Nikolaev, Shir, Foo, & Bradley, 2019). Despite

management scholars’ increasing interest in the relationships between well-being and work

(Guest, 2017), research has yet to fully explore relationships among roles, identity, and well-

being. For example, future research could expand understanding of how roles relate to well-

being by examining how processes involved with macro role transition—those tied to shifts in

identity—enhance or harm one’s well-being. For instance, a substantial challenge facing the US

and other Western nations is enabling veterans’ transition back into society by reentering the

work force. In the US alone, each year roughly 200,000 individuals experience role transitions

from service member to civilian, with over 19 million men and women identifying as veterans

(US Department of Veteran Affairs, 2019). Previous research has shown how prior trauma

experienced by veterans impedes their transition back into the workforce, arguing that progress

toward a new career path is greatest for those who can orient away from trauma and envision a

future career (Haynie & Shepherd, 2011). Yet, how organizations may foster career role

transitions for those with past trauma, perhaps increasing an individual’s well-being, remains

sparsely investigated. HR scholars could interview veterans involved in career services

programs, such as the Workforce Opportunity Services, Workshop for Warriors, or Microsoft

Software and Systems Academy to study how such programs facilitate the transition from

service member to a new career, help veterans deal with trauma, and ultimately enhance well-

being. The interviews could be used to generate new theory concerning the linkages between

trauma, role transitions, and well-being. This research would likely have implications beyond

ROLE THEORY 36

veteran programs, perhaps holding insights for programs that seek to help abuse victims, victims

of sex trafficking, and other traumatic experiences to regain their footing in the workplace.

Identity conflict. Work examining identity conflict has typically focused on individual

level conflicts, such as among functional roles or at the work-family interface. Role identity

theory has long contended many job roles are associated with societal perceptions that shape

identity (McCall & Simmons, 1978), such as that doctors must do no harm, teachers should care

for students, or police should act as protectors. A key uninvestigated question surrounding role

identities involves how individuals cope when individual identities conflict with broader

perceptions associated with their profession. For example, a Washington Post article highlighted

the duty and burden of being a Black police officer in the US, and the profound role conflict

these officers face when performing their job (Beachum & Shammas, 2020). One officer

interviewed in the article noted that she was called “sellout” or “traitor” during racial justice

protests although she is “here to protect and serve”. Future work might examine how a sense of

duty or conviction helps individuals, such as Black police officers, manage role conflict and be

forces for positive change when experiencing role conflict between their job, community, and

what they believe to be right. Such studies have the potential to advance understanding of how

conflict between structural roles and individual role identities influence specific action.

Diversity. A third question surrounding the concept of role identities facing organizations

is how to best embrace gender diversity while avoiding discrimination against gender and sexual

minorities in the recruitment and development of employees. Recent work by Klysing and

colleagues (2021) illustrate that Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) statements that

emphasize gender diversity signal identity safety to gender minority applicants and increase

organizational attractiveness to these applicants. They found applicants that identified with a

ROLE THEORY 37

gender majority (man or woman) did not exhibit role identity threat or view the organization

more negatively. Such work exemplifies the potential of language to facilitate inclusiveness and

impact how individuals relate to an organization. Future research could extend this work by

using computer aided text analysis to examine how the language of advertisements, interview

questions, onboarding materials, and other corporate communications reduce role identity threat

for gender minorities and how such language may facilitate a more inclusive environment.

Linkages between the reduction in role identity threat and individual performance, organizational

commitment, and OCBs could then be explored to further knowledge of how feeling safe to

express role identities relates to important work outcomes. For instance, increased psychological

safety has been linked increased OCB and extra role behaviors for people of color in the

workplace (Singh, Winkel, & Selvarajan, 2013). Future work may benefit from examining if

organizational language can be used to reduce role identity threat for sexual minorities, perhaps

through increasing psychological safety, and the potential influence on extra-role behavior.

Work-Nonwork Interface

Research at the work-nonwork interface, primarily found in organizational behavior and

human resource research, focuses heavily on work-family relationships. We see two key

opportunities to expand research at this interface. First, opportunity exists to expand research

beyond family roles, such as volunteer or gig roles. Second, the entrepreneurship literature

appears ripe for further investigation at the work-family interface.

Nonwork roles. As organizations and younger generations of workers seek to be more

socially conscious, future work might examine how a volunteer role may enrich work roles. A

recent study found that 93% of employees who volunteer through their company report being

happy with their employer, while 54% report being proud of their company’s contributions to

ROLE THEORY 38

society (Bengtson, 2020). Further, volunteering may increase job meaningfulness, particularly

when employees have less meaning in their jobs (Rodell, 2013). While initial work suggests one

role can enrich the other, opportunity exists to investigate conditions in which volunteerism may

enhance (or not) the work experience. For example, future work might examine companies who

incorporate volunteerism as part of their social responsibility strategy to determine if a volunteer

role may enrich individuals in the employee role, thus uncovering new benefits to socially

responsible behavior. It also remains unclear whether spillover effects of an individual adopting

a volunteer role identity influence coworkers, although it has been theorized that doing so may

encourage the spread of volunteerism to coworkers (Gill, 2021). Future work might study the

spread of volunteerism in the workplace to examine how individuals who have a stronger

volunteer role identity influence volunteer efforts with the organization, and whether coworkers’

participation in volunteer efforts increases over time. Such studies could shed light on how

individuals with certain role identities may serve as exemplars that motivate collective action.

Despite the rapid emergence of the gig economy, there remains a paucity of research

examining the intersection of gig roles with fulltime work roles. Research by Sessions and

colleagues (2021) indicates engaging in a “side hustle” may create opportunities for role

enrichment when workers feel able to shape the work and its context. However, given the

diversity of gig work, questions remain. One key question is whether role conflict or enrichment

depends on alignment among gig work and fulltime work role tasks. Consider teachers who

choose to drive for Uber, where the role expectations are distal from their teaching role, and

teachers who choose to tutor students, where role tasks are more similar. To assess how

alignment between gig and work role tasks facilitates role enrichment or conflict, researchers

might benefit from developing a typology of gig work. Future research could also consider

ROLE THEORY 39

questions of role transitions. For example, how does one manage the micro role transition from

their fulltime job to gig work, and how does the transition process relate to enrichment or

conflict? Jachimowicz and colleagues (2021) contend that commutes create opportunities to

actively engage in role transitions and that employees who engage in thinking about the

upcoming work role (i.e., role-clarifying prospection) during a commute—while they are making

the micro transition to the employee role—are less likely to be negatively affected by long

commutes. It is worth investigating whether role-clarifying prospection may also be beneficial

for workers as they make the micro role transition from full-time employee to gig worker.

Work-family in entrepreneurship. Opportunities exist for entrepreneurship scholars to

more deeply probe how family and work relationships intersect to foster the creation and growth

of new ventures. For instance, in the last decade (2010-2020), approximately 50% of new

ventures in the US have been launched by entrepreneurs classified as a racial minority (SBC,

2021), but little is known about the underlying dynamics of these ventures. These entrepreneurs

typically have less access to resources and face a variety of business and family hurdles (e.g.,

lower incomes, longer hours, less access to childcare) that may hinder the launch of a new

venture. Entrepreneurship scholars have sparingly drawn from theory at the work-family

interface to show how role enrichment and family support enable women entrepreneurs (e.g.,

Powell & Eddleston, 2013). As such, we encourage future research to tap the rich literature

examining the work-family interface to better understand relationships among family dynamics,

role conflict, role enrichment, and the pursuit and success of new ventures of racial minority

entrepreneurs. For example, entrepreneurship scholars might survey business owners associated

with the Black Business Association to examine how affective family-to-business enrichment,

ROLE THEORY 40

instrumental family-to-business enrichment, and family-to-business support relate to

entrepreneurial success and compare these results against a sample of white entrepreneurs.

The transition from employee to entrepreneur role is pivotal. Research has generally

treated this transition as business-focused, where entrepreneurial identity facilitates the change

(e.g., Hoang & Gimeno, 2010). However, for entrepreneurs with families, it is likely the decision

to become an entrepreneur occurs with input and influence from a spouse or other family

members. Given that the family may serve as a source of support or resources for entrepreneurs

(Edelman, Manolova, Shirokova & Tsukanova, 2016), and that family dynamics play a key role

in successful career change (Ocampo, Restubog, Liwag, Wang, & Petelczyc, 2018),

entrepreneurship research can benefit from developing a better understanding of how family

dynamics relate to the transition from employee to entrepreneur. For example, the strength of

one’s entrepreneurial identity may increase one’s entrepreneurial passion (Murnieks et al., 2014);

however, recent work has shown that entrepreneurial passion maybe become destructive to a

venture when it becomes obsessive (Cardon, Glauser, & Murnieks, 2017). Thus, future research

could examine if the strength of one’s entrepreneur role identity, through the mechanism of

passion, can lead to work-family conflict. If so, at what point does an entrepreneurial identity,

which has generally been viewed in a positive light, become destructive to the family dynamic?

Biases and Stereotypes

The role literature focusing on biases and stereotypes overwhelmingly examines

traditional gender roles and how such roles influence outcomes for men versus women in

functional roles. We believe this creates two opportunities for future research spanning

management disciplines: expanding research to biases associated to race and expanding

conceptualizations of gender roles.

ROLE THEORY 41

Race. Issues surrounding race continue to evolve as organizations make concerted efforts

to be more inclusive. Indeed, the concept of systemic racism—where racism is a fundamental

part of society’s structure—is consistent with the structural-functional view of roles. As such,

research can use the structural-functional view of roles to examine issues of race. For example,

due to negative role perceptions, such as lower capability and competence, managers of color

may have a more difficult time developing social capital (Keeves & Westphal, 2021). At the

same time, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs frequently fail to reduce obstacles for

managers and employees of color and may even create additional impediments (Kraus, Torrez, &

Hollie, 2022). However, the specific influence of these programs on role expectations has

generally been overlooked, potentially leaving an important explanatory mechanism for racial

bias out of the conversation. For example, such programs may lead people of color to be viewed

as occupying a “model minority” or “token minority” role, which then imposes harmful

stereotypes (e.g., Garibay & Vincent, 2018; Kim, Block, & Yu, 2021). As such, HR scholars

might examine how DEI strategies alleviate or reinforce role expectations tied to “model” or

“token” minority roles and examine how such strategies further influence the development of

social capital, performance reviews, or role conflict among managers of color.

Expanding conceptualization of gender roles. Gender roles are generally assessed

using a dichotomous measure of gender. We believe opportunities exist beyond the dichotomous

emphasis on gender to expand understanding of how biases associated with gender roles shape

important outcomes for individuals within organizations. The concepts of gender identity and

gender expression do not conform to traditional binary measures of gender used in management.

Likewise, recent work in psychology has begun to provide evidence that the role of ‘non-binary’

or ‘transgender’ may constitute a gender-based social role. Initial evidence suggests this role

ROLE THEORY 42

includes negatively valanced expectations such as being confused, mentally ill, weak, or

depressed (e.g., Howansky, Wilton, Young, Abrams, & Clapham, 2021; Worthen, 2021).

However, additional evidence suggests this role could include expectations of being creative or a

nonconformist (Motmans, Nieder, & Bouman, 2020). If true, such role prescriptions may carry

important implications in the workplace. As such, we encourage OB and HR scholars to assess

how role expectations tied to non-binary individuals influence a range of micro-oriented

outcomes, such as leadership emergence, supervisor support, organizational commitment, and a

willingness to hire. For example, HR scholars could use content analysis to examine usage of

preferred gender pronoun mentions in resumes, cover letters, or email signatures and examine

differences in hiring perceptions and decisions based on role expectations tied to specific jobs.

Career Lifecycles

The Career Lifecycles theme generally focused on differences in men’s and women’s

career development, leadership emergence, and professional role transitions. Future research

could benefit from examining role concepts in virtual or hybrid work environments (e.g.,

Delanoeije et al., 2019). Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the growing trend of

virtual and hybrid work environments (Bennett, Campion, Keeler, & Keener, 2021); thus,

opportunities exist to use role theories to better understand the consequences of and opportunities

in virtual work, as well as how employees transition between in-person and remote work.

Virtual work that allows employees to complete job tasks at home raises questions about

how individuals are assessed and develop in their functional roles, and the boundaries pertaining

to the temporal-spatial orientation of roles. For example, because physical role transitions

(working from home) may become normalized as a result of the pandemic, HR scholars might

investigate the sense making process managers experience when making pay and compensation

ROLE THEORY 43

decisions when they cannot directly monitor role performances in the physical office space.

Further, although gender, racial, and age-related roles influence a host of evaluations, such roles

may be more impactful for in-person work as coworkers are frequently seen, thus roles triggered

by outward appearance remain highly salient. It is possible the virtual environment could reduce

the salience of such roles, perhaps leveling the playing field for women and people of color in

some domains. Such reasoning would be consistent with prior work finding that social cues are

less influential in virtual work environments compared to in-person work environments (Serban

et al., 2015). As such, OB and HR scholars might revisit prior studies on gender and race to

determine how the influence of such roles differs in virtual and in-person environments.

Many roles have periodic and/or spatial boundaries. For example, the manager role is

likely most salient during working hours and in the office. However, virtual work may blur such

boundaries (Hughes & Silver, 2020). We know little about how individuals redefine their work

roles in virtual environments. Future research might adopt a longitudinal, qualitative approach

with employees transitioning to a virtual role. Following this transition may provide substantial

insight into how employees recraft work identities. Future research in strategic management

might also examine how the organization restructures roles and the resulting impact on firm

performance. For instance, recent reports indicate that Google plans to cut pay to suburban

employees working remotely relative to employees who work remotely from cities where Google

offices are already located. Employees moving further away from the company's offices could

potentially face the harshest pay cuts (Kaye, 2021). From a role theory perspective, this move

suggests Google is trying to place spatial boundaries on virtual work roles. As such, scholars

might examine differences in how employers define the boundaries of virtual work roles and

how differences in such boundaries ultimately influence financial performance.

ROLE THEORY 44

Ethics and Other-Oriented Behavior

The Ethics and Other-Oriented Behavior theme revealed that scholars have used role

theory to develop explanations of why individuals choose to engage in unethical behavior as well

as to examine perceptions of ethical, unethical, and other-oriented behavior. We believe both

lines of inquiry continue to have fruitful opportunities for growth.

Justifying unethical and counterproductive behavior (CWB). Opportunities exist to

examine how individuals use roles to justify unethical behavior. Unethical behaviors can be

linked to morally ambiguous gray zones where leaders or followers engage in behavior that

could harm others, but benefit the follower, leader, or organization (Knoll, Lord, Petersen, &

Weigelt, 2016). For example, an interviewee might ask for a salary far below the company

standard for a position, where a manager could choose between among granting the typical

salary, the requested salary, or a salary between the two (Knoll et al., 2016). Such zones may

result in role ambiguity. At the same time, employees experiencing role conflict may be more

likely to engage in CWBs (Selvarajan, Singh, Cloninger, & Misra, 2019). A next step for OB

scholars could be to juxtapose this work and examine whether moral gray zones create an outlet

for unethical or counterproductive behavior for those experiencing role ambiguity or conflict.

Further, Klotz and Bolino (2013) present a theory of moral licensing, where people engaging in

morally praiseworthy behavior grant themselves license to behave ‘immorally’ but note how

identity orientations may lessen engagement in counterproductive behaviors. For example, a

salesperson who regularly engages in OCBs has obtained a moral license, but may not engage in

CWBs until coming across a disliked task, such as cold calling a new prospect (Klotz & Bolino,

2013). Entrepreneurship scholars could use the role of social entrepreneur to extend this theory.

Social ventures are generally viewed as doing good, with the role of social entrepreneur being

ROLE THEORY 45

seen as someone who is compassionate and concerned for the welfare of others (Anglin et al., in

press). In light of such praiseworthy behavior, would social entrepreneurs engage in unethical

behaviors if they felt the behavior would benefit the venture or the population the venture seeks

to help? For example, the social entrepreneur could exaggerate accomplishments to impress

donors or key stakeholders with the intention of doing good with added resources. Or would such

behavior be prevented by inconsistency with the role identity held by the social entrepreneur?

Perceptions of (un)ethical and other-oriented behavior. Although gender roles have

been the primary lens for examining perceptions of unethical behavior, future research should

embrace a more diverse perspective, given that ethical perceptions are also shaped by race

(Marquardt, Brown, & Casper, 2018). Strategy research could examine how corporate unethical

behavior or social responsibility is viewed in light of CEO race or top management team

diversity. For instance, research has shown that boards may react differently in terms of CEO

dismissal depending on previously held beliefs in the face of misconduct (e.g., Connelly, Shi,

Walker, & Hersel, 2020; Park, Boeker, & Gomulya, 2020). Given harmful racial stereotypes that

often occupy roles associated with people of color (e.g., Black man role), future research might

examine if racial minority CEOs are more likely to be replaced after corporate misconduct.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Shakespeare’s classic notion that ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women

merely players’ has inspired research on roles at least since Biddle and Thomas’s classic (1966)

book on role theory. Understanding the roles individuals play is particularly salient today given

heightened awareness regarding role perceptions and their potential impact in a variety of

settings. Our review of role theories offers extensive avenues for scholarly investigation that can

continue to provide insights into how roles impact individuals and organizations.

ROLE THEORY 46

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Table 1

Summary Of Key Themes

Roles and Identity (n = 23): the interplay between occupied roles and individual identities, including how roles impact the emergence

and the dismantling of an identity as well as how identities influence the formation, maintenance, and transition of roles.

Roles investigated: Actor; businessperson; information contributor or seeker; culture; developer; student; alumni; entrepreneur,

experience; gender; migrant; newcomer; nurse; faculty; staff; researcher; coworker, supervisor, subordinate, and leader; passion,

physician; spouse; parent; employee; sibling; neighbor; child; religion; friend; team member.

Work and Non-Work Interface (n = 30): the intersection of work and non-work roles, primarily focusing on the work-family

interface, to understand how work role expectations, family dynamics, and personal life shape individual, family, and work experiences.

Roles investigated: Age; education; entrepreneur; parent, child and spouse; firm successor; gender; identity (career, family,

breadwinner, athlete, student, refugee); full-time and part-time employee; unemployed person; professional; homemaker; caretaker;

spouse; supervisor; non-manager; race; religion; political member; abuse victim

Bias and Stereotypes (n = 114): how broadly held role expectations, along with corresponding stereotypes, influence key outcomes for

social groups (e.g., women, people of color) in work-related roles.

Roles investigated: Advocate; contributor; board member; leader; manager; member; follower; recommender; applicant; engineer;

entrepreneur; executive; department; inventor; investor; IT professional; pediatrician, surgeon and nurse; military member; film

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director; professor; negotiator; parent; predecessor; scientist; student; top management team member; gender; US senator; age;

coauthor; culture; education; race; industry; institutional affiliation; spouse; mentor; minority; nationality; physical attractiveness;

politician; pregnant woman; protégé; religion; sexual orientation.

Career Life Cycle (n = 36): how roles shape the formal and informal emergence (promotion, transition, succession), maintenance

(evaluation, performance, negotiation) and decline (retirement, resignation, dismissal) of individuals’ organizational careers.

Roles investigated: Administration; age; analyst; captain; executive; employee; parent; child; founder; gender; investor; leader;

subordinate; marital status; merchant; negotiator; newcomer; nurse; physical space; physician; religion; retiree; terrorist; immigrant;

TMT member.

Ethics and Other-Oriented Behaviors (n = 24): how ethics, morals, and other-oriented behaviors influence individual decision

making, and impact group and organizational social, functional, and financial performance.

Roles investigated: Advocate; age; author; beneficiary; board member; business school; owner and co-owner; founder and co-founder;

economic environment; employee; entrepreneur; ethnicity; gender; illicit organizational role; ethics; morality; religion; institutional

affiliation; military member; executive; supervisor, peer, and subordinate; employee; unemployed person; chief; intern; volunteer;

client; parent; teacher; whistleblower.

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Table 2

Future Research Directions

Roles and Identity

Well-being: 1) What are the relationships between roles and well-being? How do macro role transitions—those that are tied to shifts in

identity—enhance or harm one’s well-being? 2) How can organizations best foster career role transitions for those with past trauma?

Identity conflict: 1) How do societal views concerning a particular job role (e.g., police officer) impact individual work identities? 2) What

are the consequences of role conflict when individuals’ job roles are at odds with their beliefs about where they fit in society?

Identity expressions and diversity issues: 1) How can organizations and managers best embrace gender diversity while avoiding

discrimination against gender and sexual minorities in the recruitment and development of employees? 2) Does language used in

organizational communications impact how individuals relate to an organization and the perception of an inclusive working environment?

Work and Non-Work Interface

Non-work roles: 1) How does a volunteer role enrich a work role? 2) How and why do gig roles enrich or conflict with full-time work-

roles? 3) Does role enrichment from gig work depend on alignment among gig work tasks and full-time work tasks? 4) How does one

manage the role transition from their full-time job to gig work and how does the transition process relate to role enrichment or role conflict?

Work-family in Entrepreneurship: 1) How do the family dynamics of racial minority entrepreneurs relate to role conflict, role enrichment,

and the pursuit and success of new ventures? 2) Does the strength of entrepreneurial identity influence how work-family conflict is

perceived by the entrepreneur? At what point does an entrepreneurial identity become destructive to the family dynamic?

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Bias and Stereotypes

Race: 1) How do DEI strategies alleviate or reinforce role expectations that inhibit the development of managers of color? 2) How do role

expectations vary within racial minority populations?

Expanding conceptualization of gender roles: 1) How do role expectations tied to non-binary individuals influence micro-oriented

outcomes, such as leadership emergence, supervisor support, and organizational commitment? 2) How does usage of preferred gender

pronouns in resumes and cover letters lead to differences in hiring based on role expectations tied to specific jobs?

Career Life Cycle

Virtual Work: 1) How does the transition to virtual work shape the sense making process for employers and managers when making pay

and compensation decisions given that they cannot directly monitor individuals’ role performances in a physical office space? 2) How do

outcomes tied to roles related to gender and race differ in virtual versus in-person environments?

Ethics and Other-Oriented Behaviors

Unethical and counterproductive behavior: 1) Do moral gray zones create an outlet for unethical or counterproductive behavior for

individuals experiencing role ambiguity or role conflict? 2) Would social entrepreneurs grant themselves a moral license to engage in

unethical behaviors if they felt the behavior would benefit the venture or the population the venture seeks to help?

Perceptions of ethical behavior: 1) How is corporate unethical behavior viewed in light of CEO race or diversity of the top management

team?

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that are suitable for publication in the Journal of Management cover such areas as business

strategy and policy, entrepreneurship, human resource management, organizational

behavior, organizational theory, and research methods. Your paper clearly aligns with

JOM's mission and scope.

Given the revisions you made to the manuscript I did not see the need to send the paper

back to the reviewers. I was pleased with the substantive edits you made to the manuscript.

At this time, I am not asking for any further changes to the substance or content of the

review, instead I am asking you to be much more concise in your writing. As such, I am

asking for the drastic reduction in manuscript length. Right now you manuscript is 150

pages long. Checking with our head editor, the maximum length of the review manuscript

(all-in) is 70 pages. While I leave the decisions of where to reduce length up to your author

team, I did note some areas where you could potentially do so. One of your appendices is

about 28 pages long, and I recommend that you think about moving this appendix (and

perhaps other appendices) online. Other areas where I think you can cut manuscript length

is in the very specific and detailed nature of some of your recommendations for future

research, in the narrative on the origins/evolution of role theory, and the descriptions of

key role concepts. Overall, more concise writing throughout the manuscript would also

benefit the paper and help you cut length.

If you remove or drastically reduce sections in the manuscript, in your letter back to me,

please indicate the areas/parts you drastically reduced or removed. You will have 60 days

to make the edits to the manuscript.

Thank you for the opportunity to review your work and for considering the Journal of

Management as a potential publication outlet. I look forward to seeing a revised version of

your paper in the days ahead.”

We appreciate the suggestions concerning how to reduce the length of the manuscript and

understand the need to shorten our work to fit within the page requirements. Our manuscript is

now 70 pages all inclusive. We have made the following changes to meet this requirement.

1) We more clearly specify that our appendixes are meant to be online. To do so, we

changed the name of each to include the word “online”. For example, Appendix A is now

titled Online Appendix A. It is worth mentioning that the JOM submission instructions

note to “Upload the online supplement as a separate file and designate it as the main

document to appear at the end of the paper. For the final submission process the title

page, paper, and online supplement should be designated as the main document so they

will all appear in one PDF document.” Thus, the appendixes will appear as part of the

ROLE THEORY 72

paper when submitted, but are not meant to be part of the main document published

within the pages of JOM.

2) Table 1 (key themes) and Table 2 (future research) have been shortened considerably.

The expanded (original) versions of the tables are now included as appendixes. Readers

are referred to these expanded versions when each table is introduced.

3) All other tables and figures have been moved to online appendixes.

4) We collapsed the first two paragraphs of The Evolution and Advancement of Role

Theories section into one paragraph.

5) The discussion of methods used in role research has been moved to Online Appendix G.

6) We removed the footnote referencing the importance of roles to other theories.

7) References have been cut by two pages.

8) We shortened several discussion paragraphs and removed the paragraph concerning racial

roles and colorism.

9) We shortened the Key Concepts sections and the description of role identity theory by

trimming examples and tightening writing.

10) We made numerous passes to tighten writing throughout the manuscript.

In total, we believe that these changes have led to a more concise manuscript. We hope you will

agree.