Samenvatting

Public organizations seem to be in a permanent state of transition in an attempt to adapt to the outside world. A recent development is the emergence of hybrid professional roles in fields such as healthcare and primary education. These hybrids are a midway between managerial and professional roles and are expected to collaborate with stakeholders in tackling problems. This article focuses on the challenges of recently appointed hybrid professionals within a Police team in The Netherlands. We focus on their efforts to find a place and position in their team by analyzing some critical incidents in which they clashed with their fellow professionals. In doing so, they perform ‘identity work’ to find out who they are, both for themselves, as for colleagues. We conclude both identity and identity work don’t come natural in a hybrid professional reality and stress the need for facilitation of professional reflection at the organizational level.