The “We” and “Me” of Identity in Hazardous Industry Organizations: Face Work Tactics Among Practicing Engineers

In this paper, we use Goffman's notion of “face work” to examine how pipeline engineers perform and present their working selves as competent experts. Our analysis identifies various faces and face work tactics, including a focus on professional judgment, actively selling one's expertise relative to others, protective self-deprecatory strategies, and positioning self as part of an organization. This face work mostly reflects a focus on the individual that is out of step with typical explanations of structure and agency in studies of engineering work and disaster causation. In only rare cases did engineers effectively hide behind their organization in presenting their working selves.