Narrative Negotiation in the Evaluative Arena: A Dialogical Self Theory Framework for Understanding Identity Construction in Job Selection Interviews

Abstract

Abstract

This paper proposes the Evaluative Narrative Negotiation Model (ENNM), a constructivist framework that reconceptualizes the job selection interview as a site of identity construction rather than attribute detection. Integrating Dialogical Self Theory, narrative psychology, and constructivist epistemology, the model challenges the signal detection paradigm while maintaining a complementarist meta-epistemological stance. The ENNM comprises four conceptual building blocks—Narrative Identity Space, Dialogical Self-Regulation, Interpretive Evaluation Framework, and Negotiated Fit—elaborated through seven formally stated propositions, each illustrated with a fictional vignette. The model theorizes how candidates navigate multiple I-positions under evaluative exposure; how interviewers function as relational co-constructors whose judgments are shaped by their own I-position systems; and how person-job fit emerges as narrative resonance rather than objective correspondence. The paper additionally confronts the ethical tensions inherent in applying a dialogically grounded framework to a structurally asymmetric evaluative context, positioning the ENNM as an analytical lens rather than a prescriptive technology.