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Serving Time: Volunteer Work, Liminality and the Uses of Meaningfulness at Music Festivals

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  • Maria Laura Toraldo
  • Gazi Islam
  • Gianluigi Mangia

Abstract

Drawing from a participant‐observer study of volunteering in the context of UK music festivals, we examine how the sense of meaningfulness and community relate to instrumental goals of consumption and efficiency. We argue that the liminal nature of the festival setting supports an ambivalence in which meaningfulness is established through constructions of community, while the commodification of community feelings leads to heterogeneous understandings of the work setting. Our findings reveal heterogeneous ways in which work was rendered meaningful by festival volunteers, ranging from (1) A commodity frame, characterizing work as drudgery seeking ‘fun’ through consumption (2) A ‘communitas’ frame, emphasizing a transcendental sense of collective immediacy and (3) A cynical frame, where communitas discourse is used instrumentally by both managers and workers. We discuss meaningful work as caught between creative community and ideological mystification, and how alternative workspaces vacillate between emancipatory principles of solidarity and neo‐normative forms of ideological control.

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  • Maria Laura Toraldo & Gazi Islam & Gianluigi Mangia, 2019. "Serving Time: Volunteer Work, Liminality and the Uses of Meaningfulness at Music Festivals," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 617-654, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:56:y:2019:i:3:p:617-654
    DOI: 10.1111/joms.12414
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    1. Jennifer Howard-Grenville & Karen Golden-Biddle & Jennifer Irwin & Jina Mao, 2011. "Liminality as Cultural Process for Cultural Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(2), pages 522-539, April.
    2. Michel Anteby, 2008. "Identity Incentives as an Engaging Form of Control: Revisiting Leniencies in an Aeronautic Plant," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(2), pages 202-220, April.
    3. Shershow, Scott Cutler, 2005. "The Work and the Gift," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226752563, September.
    4. Ruth Yeoman, 2014. "Conceptualising Meaningful Work as a Fundamental Human Need," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 125(2), pages 235-251, December.
    5. Chen, Katherine K., 2009. "Enabling Creative Chaos," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226102375, September.
    6. Catherine Bailey & Adrian Madden, 2017. "Time reclaimed: temporality and the experience of meaningful work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(1), pages 3-18, February.
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    Cited by:

    1. Gazi Islam & Roberta Sferrazzo, 2022. "Workers' Rites: Ritual Mediations and the Tensions of New Management," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 284-318, March.
    2. Mai Chi Vu & Nicholas Burton, 2022. "The Influence of Spiritual Traditions on the Interplay of Subjective and Normative Interpretations of Meaningful Work," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(2), pages 543-566, October.
    3. Robin Burrow & Rebecca Scott & David Courpasson, 2022. "Where ‘The Rules Don’t Apply’: Organizational Isolation and Misbehaviour in Elite Kitchens," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(5), pages 1103-1131, July.
    4. Mai Chi Vu & Roger Gill, 2023. "Are Leaders Responsible for Meaningful Work? Perspectives from Buddhist-Enacted Leaders and Buddhist Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(2), pages 347-370, October.
    5. Verena Komander & Andreas König, 2024. "Organizations on stage: organizational research and the performing arts," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 74(1), pages 303-352, February.
    6. Evgenia I. Lysova & Jennifer Tosti-Kharas & Christopher Michaelson & Luke Fletcher & Catherine Bailey & Peter McGhee, 2023. "Ethics and the Future of Meaningful Work: Introduction to the Special Issue," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 185(4), pages 713-723, July.
    7. Åsa Bergman Bruhn, 2022. "The Double-Sided Nature of Meaningful Work: Promoting and Challenging Factors within the Swedish Equine Sector," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-14, April.
    8. Sohier, Alice & Sohier, Romain & Chaney, Damien, 2023. "When volunteers are also consumers: Exploring volunteers’ co-consumption experience in leisure contexts," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    9. Dalal Elarji, 2022. "Minor Spatial Tactics from the Floating University Berlin and Agrocité Paris," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(4), pages 21582440221, December.
    10. Tuure Haarjärvi & Sari Laari-Salmela, 2022. "Examining the Role of Dignity in the Experience of Meaningfulness: a Process-Relational View on Meaningful Work," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 417-440, December.

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