Transcript Managing Identification among Amway Distributors

Managing Identification
among Amway
Distributors
Purpose of Study
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To examine the practices and processes of
creating members’ organizational identity.
How success and failures of these
practices lead to various identification
types….positive, negative, or ambivalent?
Methods
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Data Collection:
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Semi-over participant
observation
Interviews
Previous research
Findings
Corporate Culture
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necessity for strong “corporate culture” in
modern businesses to help act as a control
mechanism
A way to manage their workforce without
the usual means of daily supervision and
traditional deference cues
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“People say that we brainwash people.
That’s true. We are talking about
brainwashing – to help make you all more
positive people!”
-Amway speaker
How does Amway promote its
company values and goals?
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Dream building
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Helping distributors to set personal and sales
goals
Positive programming
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Helping distributors surround themselves with
uplifting and supportive people
Sensebreaking
• Disrupting or questioning an individual’s
sense of self to create a ‘meaning’ void that
must be filled
• This is done with the Amway practice of
dream building
Dream Building
• New distributors are asked to
decide what their dream is and
why they are doing this
– Material wealth
– Freedom
– Family
– Helping
• By customizing a dream scenario for each
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new distributor they create a sense of choice,
familiarity, and emotion.
This causes distributors to be very
enthusiastic and excited about their work,
and is known as “the burn”, “getting the
fever”, or “getting the bug”.
Building a New Identity
• Linking One’s Sense of Self to Possessions:
– Possessions serve as extensions of one’s
self-concept
– Dreams represent the things that one wants
to achieve or have in life
• Creating Motivational Drives for Meaning:
– Get out of your comfort zone – “what you
currently have is not good enough… you
need to change to achieve your dreams”
The Continuous Dream
• Perpetuating the motivational drive for
meaning
• “When a dream comes true, always
replace it with a bigger dream”
• Constant state of seekership – sense of
identity-related discontentment
– dreams represent their ideal selves and their
current dissatisfactions
Positive Programming
Establish relationships that are
supportive and nourishing – avoid those
that are harmful
3 Interrelated Steps:
1. Establishing a relationship with a mentor
2. Creating relationship barriers via revaluing
3. Enacting relationship barriers
Relationship with Mentor
• Find a mentor who will help you become more
positive
• Mentors provide economic and emotional
support
• “duplication” – blindly obey the advice of upline
members
• “help distributors understand who they are and
who they should be in organizational terms”
Relationship Barriers
• Mentors help insulate members from the
negative opinions of non-members
• Create barriers - compare ideal Amway
relationships with other relationships
• “Given that both money and love characterize distributor
relationships, all other relationships are compared with
that standard – and found wanting”
Relationship Barriers
• “Friends who do not join
or buy products from a
distributor are seen as not
being ‘true friends’
because they are not
supportive of one’s
business”
 “Avoid spending time with
friends and family who do
not support your
business”
Relationship Barriers
 Encapsulation – process where group
members are kept separate from nonmembers
 Social: creation of strong in-group bonds
while structuring daily life to avoid meeting
outsiders
 Ideological: an organization’s belief system
buffers a member from external threats or
attacks – avoid contact with non-supporters
Perpetuating Relationship Barriers
 “Distributors were often encouraged to try
to sponsor family members and friends
first before attempting to sponsor
strangers. This allowed them to learn
firsthand whether family and friends really
loved them and wanted to support them
economically”
Perpetuating Relationship Barriers
Distributors try to avoid non-members
because of encapsulation
Family and friends (non-members) try to
avoid distributors because they see them
as taking advantage of existing
relationships for economic gain
Perpetuating Relationship Barriers
If family and friends join, it provides
support for the upline distributor
If they don’t, it also supports the upline
distributor’s claim that not all relationships
will fit the ‘relationship standard’
Any action that non-members take can
strengthen members’ beliefs that Amway
relationships are better
Managing Identification
Positive Identification
Successful sensebreaking (dream building)
– distributors were dissatisfied with who
they were.
 Successful sensegiving (positive
programming) – distributors worked with
upline mentors to resolve their discontent
 Need for sensemaking was therefore,
triggered and fulfilled by Amway.
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Nonexistent/Broken Identification
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sensebreaking fails -members
likely to deidentify: stop feeling
uncomfortable with their current
lives and no longer wish to
“pursue their dreams”
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not motivated to seek out advise
from upline distributors, and
they didn’t want to abandon their
current “inadequate” identities
Disidentification
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When sensebreaking succeeded, but
sensegiving failed.
Individuals either came to disidentify
with Amway or remained ambivalently
attached to it.
“Members maintain a sense of selfdistinctiveness through perceptions
and feelings of disconnection with an
organization”
Anti-Amway, rather than simply
severing their connection.
Ambivalent Identification
Both sensebreaking and sensegiving were successful
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Need to achieve dreams
and maintain close ties
with upline members
creates positive
identification
•Do not cut themselves off from their nonmember friends
•Anti Amway advice from non-members
creates negative identification
Managing Identification
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If members are not seeking, then they will
either fail to identify, or will ultimately
deidentify with the organization.
Alternative ways to induce seekership;
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Identity mortification
Hazing
Public confessions of unworthiness
Selecting people who are more likely to “fit” the
organization
Conclusions
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The process of identification is dynamic
Dreams evolve from lifestyle dreams to
ones that are more abstract and farreaching
Nature of organizations are changing:
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Spans of control are broadening – decreasing
managerial control over workers
Changing psychological contracts – loyalty is
decreasing because of lack of job security
Conclusion
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Organizations need to weigh the benefits
and costs of managing identification
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Although strong, positive identifications may
facilitate organizational functioning, one must be
careful about the downside of such identification
(lack of flexibility, distrust and paranoia,
overdependence, and over conformity)