THE MULTIPLICITY OF CYBER IDENTITIES IN CYBER ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIETIES: AN EXPLORATORY INVESTIGATION

Abstract

This paper summarizes theoretical studies on the creation and presentation of multiple cyber identities shaped through globalization, cyberspace and social media from an organizational perspective, subsequently referred to as ‘cyber organizational societies’. Providing a multi-dimensional approach to multiple cyber identities, could assist organizations to discover and understand it through a subjective dimension and evaluation of the concept. Subsequently, this paper introduces the notion of multiple identities to investigate the incoherence that exists in social reality and real life and the iconic existence of these identities in organizations. In addition, it also explores how the different interdisciplinary theories can re-enforce and explain the existence of these identities through focusing on a contemporary context of cyber identities consisting in the cyber space of these organizations. Therefore this paper which is only the initial step of a long-term research project, has as a main objective to define, identify, contextualise, theorise and debate the multiple approaches to cyber identities in the nowadays cyber organizational societies. Based on recommendations by Acun (2011) and Attrill and Jalil (2011) that future research should focus on a theoretical exploration of identities in online social networks, this study sets out to present a theoretical framework of the social processes and phenomena in the formation of cyber identity research in cyber organizational societies through an interpretivistic approach to gain an in-depth understanding and knowledge of the meaning, nature and challenges of the communication phenomena under investigation.