This study provides insight into lived experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Participant metaphors of the pandemic were collected by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews ( N = 44). Participants were asked to compare the pandemic with an animal and with a color, and to provide contextual sensemaking about their metaphors. A metaphor analysis revealed four convergent mental models of participants’ pandemic experiences (i.e., uncertainty, danger, grotesque, and misery) as well as four primary emotions associated with those mental models (i.e., grief, disgust, anger, and fear). Through metaphor, participants were able to articulate deeply felt, implicit emotions about their pandemic experiences that were otherwise obscured and undiscussable. Theoretical and practical implications of these collective mental models and associated collective emotions related to the unprecedented collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

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‘Why, even with the proliferation of poststructuralist theoretical understandings of identity, do people routinely talk in terms of “real” and “fake” selves?’ (Tracy and Trethewey, 2005: 168). This chapter examines the deeply rooted assumption and sedimented way of talking about selves as essentialized, authentic, and real. Such viewpoints, along with the tendency to pit ‘real selves’ against ‘fake selves’ are often promulgated even in social constructionist, poststructuralist, and critical work, leading to a number of unintended and problematic consequences. The authors review research related to real and fake selves, and expand upon how Tracy and Trethewey’s (2005) metaphor of the ‘crystallized self’ has extended and opened up additional research that explores: (1) the discursive struggles of resistance and self-disciplining in relation to the preferred self; (2) the difficulty of viewing multiple facets of identity as valuable rather than contradictory; (3) the gendered work involved in boundary-spanning; (4) critical intersectionality; and (5) qualitative research. The authors close the chapter by discussing how the new materialism in organizational studies might extend and inspire future research in terms of crystallized identities and organizations.

The values people hold tend to be relatively enduring. An important exception appears to be values adaptation in response to major, life‐altering situations. Major events can act as triggers for people to adapt their values based on the new context. In particular, collective traumas—such as the COVID‐19 pandemic—may incite immediate values change. The aim of the current paper is to compare business school students' value orientations before and after the COVID‐19 global pandemic outbreak. We investigated responses from two comparable samples of business students: one surveyed before and one surveyed after the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic. The subjects' individual value orientations were aggregated and analyzed by comparing the distribution of the first group's pre‐COVID‐19 outbreak responses with the second group's post‐COVID‐19 outbreak responses regarding the importance given to values in the Rokeach Values Survey. We further explored specific demographic differences in personal versus social orientations and competence versus moral orientations for our samples. Results confirm differences in business school students' pre‐COVID‐19 outbreak versus post‐COVID‐19 outbreak value orientations, with the post‐COVID‐19 outbreak sample reporting greater attention to social values, as predicted, and competence values, not as predicted. Implications of our findings are discussed.

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