ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the idea of "role biography". It utilizes this term to describe a biography of the person-in-role as described through the various work roles that they have taken up throughout their lives. The chapter distinguishes this from "role history", which is a history of a particular organizational role, shaped over time by its incumbents. When we take up and engage a particular work role it is always in the context of a larger work system. The value of conceptualizing work systems as systems of role relations is that it emphasizes the interactions between roles and their links to the tasks of the enterprise. In contrast, the idea of "person" seems to have lost the essence of interaction or embeddedness in the system. Role is at the intersection of the person and the system. Although a role is a structural part of the system, it is filled and shaped by its incumbent, the person.
