Advertising what lies behind the academic door: Occupational identity displays

The Social Science Journal 42 (2005) 459–467

Advertising what lies behind the academic door:Occupational identity displays

JoAnn Miller∗, Autumn Behringer, Erin K. Anderson, Sue Ellen Bovard,Ted Brimeyer, Robert Grantham, Yunqing Li, Lynette Osborne, Yanira Reyes

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA

Abstract

We used an unobtrusive research design to observe and measure the materials that academics post ontheir office doors in a social science department. The purpose of the study was to uncover how social actorsadvertise dimensions of their occupational identities. The analysis examined variation in the amounts andtypes of door materials, focusing specifically on how indicators of social status influencedexpressionsgiven in displays of occupational identity. We found that door displays are related to professorial rankand other relevant status markers. We encourage researchers to replicate the study in different types ofuniversities and academic departments.© 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Expressions given: you can not change your hair style during a departmentmeeting

Academic door displays are collections of items, posted by social actors, which identifyself-selected dimensions of occupational identity. They can promote campus and off-campusactivities, and disclose social and political positions. The items can be business cards, newspa-per articles, children’s art work, postcards, and other objects that tell others something aboutwho the academic is, what she does, and what he values and disvalues. Door displays can dis-tinguish the outward looking from the insular social scientists, and they can place the scholar’swork in a humanist or science tradition. They can convey social status and they can communi-cate parts of life stories that social actors choose to disclose to strangers (Mello, 2001).

As academics, we use our space to communicateto or toward colleagues, to express con-cerns, to advertise events, or to promote cultural and political programs and causes. Aware

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 765 494 4699; fax: +1 765 494 1476.E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Miller).

0362-3319/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2005.06.003

460 J. Miller et al. / The Social Science Journal 42 (2005) 459–467

of the phenomenon or not, academics tell others who we think we are and what we think werepresent. Door displays, inGoffman’s (1959:129)terms, are expressions that the selfgives.We contend that they are substitutes for “verbal symbols. . . to convey the information that. . .others are known to attach to these symbols.” Some actors use door displays deliberately inattempts to manage the impressions others form of them. However, we usually cannot knowwhat expression the self gives off with door displays. The self and the other can freely tradeinformation and attempt to correct supposed misinformation or a failed attempt at impressionmanagement through face-to-face interaction. The social actor has little control over how doordisplays – expressions given– are interpreted. Thus, they are more like the hairstyle or theclothes one selects for work than they are like the verbal phrases or the facial expressions aperson uses to communicate during a faculty meeting. The academic (in principle) can alterwhat she or he planned to say during a meeting in response to what others disclose. He cannot,however, in the middle of the faculty meeting, change his hairstyle or the shirt and tie he choseto wear to work (Pin & Turndof, 1990).

Door displays, for the office incumbent, communicateto or toward audiences. There are, ofcourse, social interactions that are initiated by items of a door display. A colleague can expresssupport for a political position represented in a comic strip. A graduate student can inquireabout a syllabus for a seminar. Even the self can monitor door display materials: Posting thatrejection letteris too cynical!

At best, such instances of social interaction are a biased sample of the responses to doordisplays. Only actors who are interested in them or eager or willing to sanction the officeoccupant will respond. In general, we cannot know how successful we are in communicatingwhat we intend to tell others with our door displays. If the person attempts to present dimensionsof an idealized occupational self to others by posting items on an office door, it is like takinga step in the dark (James, 1902). The result can advance the social actor’s play, or cause a fall.

We attempt to persuade others with our door displays, like local politicians attempt to winvotes with campaign brochures (King, 2002). Our local audiences, the persons who walk downour hallways, witness the displays. Most likely, university presidents do not see them, and ourpeer reviewers who recommend for or against publishing or funding our work are unaware ofthem.

Door displays are clearly important within our local departments and our local universities.A collection of items characterizing a department can communicate, like other materials do, thestatus or the importance of an academic discipline. Displays can influence how undergraduatestudents select a major program of study and how academics define themselves as scholars(see, e.g.,Montgomery, 1997; Zerubavel, 1995). Graduate students can get a glimpse or eventhe full picture of an unspoken curriculum or the power structure within a department thatcan affect their professional socialization and arguably their future occupational opportuni-ties and choices. Door displays become perceptions that travel with students and colleagueswhose influences, like the local politician’s, can affect or transcend extant social and politicalboundaries. They represent what we convey to our first public audiences.

Door displays, nonetheless, remain an understudied construct. A 2002 issue ofHarvardMagazine published a one-page article called “Door Speak” that linked items posted on doorsto personal background characteristics. The “Short Subjects” section of a 2002 issue ofTheChronicle of Higher Education describes a study conducted by a psychology professor who

J. Miller et al. / The Social Science Journal 42 (2005) 459–467 461

asked students to offer their impressions of slides depicting academic doors. Thus, no estab-lished body of literature can guide our empirical inquiry.

2. Impression management beyond the context of face-to-face interaction

In this study we analyze the variation in door displays that we observed within a sociologyand anthropology department. We peer through Goffman’s perspective, but we add a twist tothe conventional study of impression management. While we scrutinize the linkages betweensocial status and occupational identity as other social scientists have, we study how social actorsgive expressions in settings that are not characterized by face-to-face interaction. The studyof quasi-identity management outside the context of social interaction would have seemednonsensical a decade earlier. Nowadays, however, a good amount of day-to-day exchangesoccurs in the absence of face-to-face interaction. Social actors communicate with others viaemail and attempt to manage their occupational identities with web pages and related imagesavailable to strangers around the world.

3. Research methods

We designed an unobtrusive study of all the door displays in a department that is home totwo disciplines (sociology and anthropology) in a public research university. During March2002 we observed and notated everything posted on office doors. We made the observationsduring late afternoon and early evening hours. Although we were sometimes seen, notebookin hand, as we collected data, no one asked what we were doing. We photographed the doorsand drew maps to indicate where items were taped or tacked on the doors. We wrote detaileddescriptions of the materials. We then read the accounts to determine which types of informationwere amenable to numerical coding. Based on our review of the documents, we developed ascheme and coded 17 characteristics of 30 faculty member doors. All the door observationswere coded for the purpose of compiling a database for statistical analysis. We also includednumerical codes for nine variables that represent academic information (e.g., rank, discipline,and books and papers published since 1990) for each faculty member. Finally, we included datato represent personal and family information. We assigned codes for each faculty member’ssex, race, and marital status. We entered codes to indicate if the person has no children, a childor children who were born before tenure, or a child or children who were born only after tenurewas awarded.

4. Expected findings

In our analysis of the data, we focus on the social status indicators that are most relevantto stratified academic places. We examine how the faculty member’s gender and professorialrank, graduate seminar responsibilities, academic discipline, and the timing of children areassociated with door displays. Rank is an unambiguous marker of status in every academic


department. The research literature on gender and academic positions in higher education (see,e.g.,Fox, 2000; Misra, Kennelly, & Karides, 1999) supports the claim that women continue toface serious obstacles for promotion and recognition within the university setting. In addition,social scientists examine how family formation, or the timing of children, affects the upwardmobility of male and female academics differently (Mason & Goulden, 2002).

Goffman (1959, 1961)was intrigued by social behaviors that signified status within a strati-fied organization or society. He argued that, in many situations and contexts, social actors tendto aspire or admire higher status. Thus, we expect to find that academic rank and gender willbe associated with the types and the amounts of door displays observed. More precisely, weexpect to find a curvilinear relationship between academic rank and amounts of door display.Assistant professors, we contend, need to maximize control over their expressions given andtherefore will display fewer items compared to associate professors. Full professors, presum-ably not invested in promoting the self to aspire a higher status within the department, will alsodisplay fewer items compared to associate professors.

We also expect to see a pattern, defined by professorial rank, in the type of door displaysthat we observe. We expect to find that assistant professors display pieces of information thatcommunicate official university business. If they include other items on their doors, we expectthat they will be announcements for politically safe events on campus, e.g., a callout for acommunity volunteer opportunity. Associate professors, liberated by promotion and tenure,are likely to post information that signals their interests on and off campus. We predict thatevent announcements and miscellaneous promotional items, such as travel postcards, willdominate the associate professor’s door displays.

Coupled to professorial rank is the responsibility for teaching graduate seminars. In thedepartment where we conducted our research, the more senior faculty teach required andelective graduate seminars, while the assistant professors assume responsibilities for a dis-proportionate share of the undergraduate curriculum. All told, we expect to find that facultyassigned to teach graduate seminars will post more materials, especially the type that promotesacademic programs and campus events to attract graduate student attendance.

We look for two gendered patterns in the amount and type of door displays. We expectto find that women, compared to men, will post fewer pieces of information. Women, awarethat “The Department is very male, very white, very old, and very conservative”(Margolis &Romero 1998:1), regardless of rank, will likely avoid posting political information. Women,because they are more likely than men to be viewed by others as teachers rather than professors(Miller & Chamberlain, 2000) are likely to respond accordingly, and post course or scheduleinformation.

We examine how the timing of having children, also a highly gendered pattern withinhigher education, is associated with the door displays that we observe. We expect to find thatfaculty members who follow the normative pattern for family formation post more informationto communicate occupational identity. Women who are successful academics and who havechildren are likely to have children only after a tenure decision, i.e., they have “late children”(Mason & Goulden, 2002). Successful male academics are likely to have “early children,”i.e., to have children prior to tenure decisions. We posit that the gender-normative pattern forearly and late children will affect the door displays that disclose dimensions of occupationalidentity.


5. Results

Fifty percent of the faculty members are associate professors, 37 percent are full professors,and 13 percent are assistant professors. Seventy percent are married, 10 percent are persons ofcolor, and 77 percent earned their PhD degree from a public university. The faculty is made up of23 sociologists and 7 anthropologists. The department, at the time of data collection, employedfour assistant professors. Among them, two are women of color, one is a never married whitewoman, and one is a married white woman. No assistant professor has children. Among the11 full professors, nine are men who had children prior to tenure and one has no children.

There are 15 associate professors, nine men and six women. One is African American.Among the men, seven had “early children,” i.e., prior to their tenure decisions. Two associateprofessors, both men, have no children. Among the full professors is one woman. She had“late children” making the entire group of full professors who have children normative interms of family formation. Among the women at all ranks, one had an “early child.” All theother women in the department fit the normative pattern that is empirically associated withsuccess or upward mobility in academic settings. The observed gender and rank pattern isstriking and statistically significant (χ2 = 12.95, d.f. = 2,p < .01). It replicates whatMason andGoulden (2002)report in their analysis of the Berkeley faculty and their analysis of the menand women who, 12–14-years post Ph.D., are working in universities and colleges throughoutthe United States. They conclude that only men benefit from early children.

5.1. A profile of door displays: variation by rank and gender

Most faculty members post items that tell their audiences something about their occupationalidentities. As we expected, we found a curvilinear relationship between professorial rank andthe total amount of door displays that we counted. Assistant professors, on average, post sevenitems (S.D. = 4.24), associates post an average of 12.4 items (S.D. = 13.95) and full professorspost the least items of door display. On average they post 2.5 items (S.D. = 1.75).

There are two nearly blank doors in the department. Behind one is an assistant professorwhose door provides contact information only. “Name, rank, and serial number” are the onlyexpressions given. This particular assistant professor, we infer, is careful to contain imagesof her occupational identity. She follows university rules and department recommendationsexplicitly: Display contact information but do not post any grade information. She minimizesthe risk of others attributing to her characteristics that she does not want to represent dimensionsof her occupational identity. The second nearly blank door displays only a business card. Behindthe door works a male full professor who expresses no dimensions of his occupational identityon the entrance to his workspace.

Contrary to our expectations, assistant professors as a group, compared to associates or fullprofessors, are significantly more likely to post nonpolitical as well as political cartoons andcomic strips. With one exception, assistant professors do not guard against expressions thatdisclose a comedic or political dimension of their occupational identities.

We also observed variation in door displays within rank. Associate professors, for example,can display the most or very few items. We compare two doors, both opening academic spacesoccupied by female associate professors, to illustrate. While one door displays a cartoon and


contact information, the other door includes items that fit 16 of the 17 categories of materialsthat we coded for this study. Comic strips, epistemological positions, travel postcards, notes tostudents, and promotional materials for campus and off-campus events are among the eclecticexpressions given by an associate professor of anthropology.

There is a statistically significant difference in the specific types of materials that women andmen display to express dimensions of their occupational identities. Men display significantlymore pieces of political information than women. Women are more likely than men to followthe department recommendation to post their contact information, including their office phonenumber, their office hours, and their e-mail addresses. Men, on the other hand, are significantlymore likely than women to violate a university and department regulation by posting examor course grades on their doors. Whereas women follow the prescribed norms, men are morelikely to violate norms.

5.2. Analysis of door displays

To construct dependent variables for a regression analysis, we first counted the 17 types ofdoor displays that we observed. Second, we created a summed scale, the “promoter scale,”consisting of eight items that promote activities, events, and functions that are held on and offcampus. The promoter scale has an alpha reliability coefficient of .89. Third, we summed thetotal number of political and nonpolitical cartoons and comic strips.

5.3. Explaining variance in “expressions given”

Single equation regression models were specified to examine how social status in an aca-demic department affects the amount and types ofexpressions given in the form of doordisplays. We found that income, race or ethnicity, holding a joint appointment, and administra-tive experiences within the department do not explain variance in door displays. We also foundthat items that disclose political positions or that advocate political action are not explained byany of the social status measures that we examined in this study.

The final regression models are shown inTable 1. The equations specified to explain variancein the total number of door display items (Adj.R2 = 326) and the comic type of displays (Adj.R2 = 296) are more successful than the equation that explains the promoter type of items (Adj.R2 = 195). Controlling for the other status measures in the model, gender per se does not explainany of the summary measures of theexpressions given through door displays. Rank, however,does explain the total number of items posted and the number of comic strips and cartoonsposted. Full professors, relative to associates and assistants, tend to display fewer items ontheir doors that disclose dimensions of their occupational identities. However, those facultymembers with graduate seminar responsibilities post more items.

One status marker, anthropology faculty member, represents a minority status becauseanthropologists are numerically the minority (N = 7) in a 30-person department. Timing ofchildren (“early” for men and “late” or none for women) represents a normative status marker.We find that minority and normative status markers influence the expressions given by the fac-ulty members through their office door displays. Anthropologists, compared to sociologists,post significantly more door display items, more promoter type of items, and more comic strips


Table 1OLS models to explain variation in door displays by status markers (n = 30)

Independent variable Total number ofitemsb (S.E.)t

Sum of promoterdisplay itemsb (S.E.)t

Comic strips andcartoonsb (S.E.)t

Male faculty member −.482 (4.226) −5.683 (3.428) 3.694 (2.658)−.114 −1.658 1.390

Rank (1–3) −10.370 (3.678) −.672 (2.983) −6.658 (2.313)−2.820** −.225 −2.879**

Graduate seminar 8.921 (3.909) 7.855 (3.171) .862 (2.458)2.282* 2.477* .351

Anthropology faculty member 17.799 (4.618) 8.345 (3.746) 9.256 (2.904)3.854** 2.228* 3.1887**

Normative timing of childrena 9.370 (4.308) .273 (3.494) 6.935 (2.709)2.175* .078 2.560*

Intercept 6.671 1.748 1.025M (S.D.) 8.03 (10.90) 3.50 (8.09) 2.70 (6.71)Adj. R2 .326 .195 .296F value 3.801* 2.404 3.438*

a Early for men; late children or no children for women.∗ p < .05.∗∗ p < .01.

and cartoons to their first public audiences. Faculty members who fit the timing-of-childrennorm tend to display more items on their office doors and they post more items that express acomedic dimension of their occupational identities.

6. Summary

Our empirical study shows clearly that most faculty members in a sociology and anthropol-ogy department attempt to communicate their occupational identitiestoward or to their firstpublic audiences with a rich variety of door display items. We find that social statuses relevantto the academic work place, i.e., professorial rank, the normative timing of family formation,being an academic minority, and teaching graduate seminars, explain some of the differencesin how academics give expressions to tell students, colleagues, and strangers who they are,what they do, and what they believe is important in their work and in their communities.

This study invites replication in other social science departments, in other types of aca-demic units, and in different types of settings. Sociologists and anthropologists tend to studysocial issues (Mills, 1959). Do members of the mathematics or physics department in a publicuniversity advertise their occupational identities in similar ways? Do social science faculty ina liberal arts college advertise their occupational identities differently? While this particularstudy has clear limitations it encourages replication across academic spaces.

7. Conclusions and discussion

We contend that door displays advertise dimensions of the occupational self to the aca-demic’s first public audience, i.e., students and colleagues who take the displays with them


in their travels. Occupational identities are, to some extent, one’s own choosing. They are,however, constrained by the social structural features of occupations and identity that definewhat is appropriate and normative. What we select to display to others may be images of theoccupational self that we truly feel or they may be images that we hope to achieve in thefuture. Regardless, these self-conceptions, and how we choose to display them, are importantfor understanding how academics want to be seen by others.

Academics may see themselves as researchers, teachers, activists, or administrators. Theidentities linked to any occupation are not uniform, but rather fluctuate from person to personand from place to place, depending in part on social structural influences; and in part on howsocial actors choose to situate, define, and display the self (Fine, 1996).

The academic hallway is a fascinating space to study occupational identity displays. Whileprofessors have offices, not unlike many other types of workers, their treatment of office doorsmay be different in that they are somewhat encouraged or expected to advertise to publicaudiences. Although faculty members actively engage in impression management tasks, theidentity a faculty member attempts to advertise on the office door is not fluid. The itemsdisplayed are relatively permanent statements. Many remain for weeks, months, or even years.The academic cannot adjustexpressions given through door displays in response to perceptionsof how they are interpreted by unknown audiences who consume them.

Whether or not professors recognize the affects of their door displays, they surely recognizethe norms and expectations of their department and consider them when selecting items topost. Because occupational identity is most malleable in the early stages of one’s career (Ibarra,1999), assistant professors may put considerable thought into the construction of the identitythat is displayed on their office doors. More senior faculty members, whose jobs are secure,may be less concerned about their door displays and the occupational self that the items signalto audiences.

Identities that have more self-relevance than others will likely be displayed publicly whereasthose with little relevance, positioned at the bottom of an individual’s identity hierarchy, willlikely be suppressed (Hogg, Terry, & White, 1995; Stryker, 1968). Basically, professors mustask themselves, “what am I about?” or more accurately, “what do I want others to think I amabout?” Although located within a common space, the occupational identities that social actorspossess and display in an academic department are complex and multi-faceted. The choice ofwhich dimension to portray and how to do so are influenced by both characteristics of theindividual and the social context in which the actor displays identity.

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Advertising what lies behind the academic door: Occupational identity displays

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