To Be or Not To Be: The Ontological Project of the Modern.

This study investigates the identification process of the modern telecommunications professional as a reflexive process of adaptation to the prototypical characteristics of the modern economy. The data for this study focuses upon the accounts of telecommunications professionals concerning their experiences in the new economy, within multiple telecommunications organizations, and within an educational program. This study then, first contributes to previous understandings of the technical professional identity. A second contribution to theory emerges as these accounts reveal an interdependence of the rules, resources, and routines of professional identity structure. The routines participants described in their work processes and in continuing their education are meaningful for individuals in terms of their ontological security; routines are the means through which professionals prepare for and secure their future role as a professional. This work extends understandings of both identity as a structure (Scott, Corman, and Cheney, 1998) and how knowledge directly connects to the identity structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]