This thesis considers the workplace experiences of British professional African, Asian and Caribbean (AAC) women, to better understand the holistic nature of their organisational experiences and any consequences for their well-being. The thesis is grounded in social identity theory, intersectional theory and identity work scholarship and examines women’s experiences at the intersection of multiple identities, in doing so it demonstrates the importance of understanding the nature of intersectional, social differences within groups, such as “women” and what this might mean for organisations. The thesis’ research questions are: What are the workplace experiences of British professional women of African, Asian and Caribbean ethnicities? And, what are the implications for African, Asian, and Caribbean ethnic women’s well-being? the thesis extends intersectionality and some intersectional identity-work scholarship beyond its original focus of non-prototypical multiple identities constituting multiple-disadvantage. The thesis also considers ways in which intersectional identities may be a resource due to the uniqueness or originality of such an identity (in the UK context), thus allowing professional British African, Asian and Caribbean women to leverage particular opportunities and navigate certain challenging workplace experiences, particularly issues of stereotyping and “otherness”. The thesis engages with a qualitative exploratory methodology, which adopts a non-traditional methodological approach to conducting real-time semi-structured online written interviews with British professional AAC women. The empirical studies include a sample of 50 British professional AAC women across all studies. The findings reveal how intersecting identities are leveraged within daily organisational encounters, with the main themes to emerge being, (a) experiences of identity imposition and, (b), the use of strategic identity flexing to navigate organisational inter-personal exchanges. This thesis makes a methodological contribution to intersectional and racio-ethnic identity research, which to my knowledge is one of the first to utilise a document sharing word processing platform to conduct web-based written interviews. Furthermore, from the research in this study, it is now possible to take a strength-based approach to the study of African, Asian and Caribbean (AAC) ethnic women (racial and ethnic identity relations), rather than solely a deficit-based approach.

Google Docs is a widely used online word processing software. Despite its broad popularity in business and education, Google Docs is under-utilised as a tool to facilitate qualitative interviews within research. In this article, we reflect on our experiences as two PhDs using Google Docs to conduct synchronous, online, written interviews. We present two case studies, which, to our knowledge, are the first to utilise Google Docs to conduct web-based written interviews. In doing so, we (a) outline the development and implementation of the methodology, (b) highlight the key themes we identified when considering the benefits and challenges of conducting interviews using this technology and (c) discuss possible future uses of the methodology. We argue that synchronous web-based written interviews via Google Docs offer unprecedented opportunities for qualitative research.