Culture and Organization, June 2006, Vol. 12(2), pp.

169–183

Culture, Identity, and Motivation: The Historical

Anthropology of a Family Firm
ANDREW M. JONES*

Department of Management Learning and Leadership, Lancaster University Management School,

Lancaster University, UK
Culture
10.1080/14759550600683054
GSCO_A_168275.sgm
1475-9551
Original
Taylor
202006
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a.m.jones@lancaster.ac.uk
AndrewM.Jones
000002006
and
&and
Article
Francis
(print)/1477-2760
Francis
Organization
Ltd (online)

This article combines ethnographic interviews with oral-historical material and documentary sources to
provide a cultural analysis of organizational energy and organizational commitment in a particular family
business in the American South. The article suggests that the cultural context of the American South produces
a ‘mutual confirmation’ between the cultural values of the South and the cultural values inhered in the organi-
zational history of the firm. The company, Omega Coffee and Tea, provides its employees with a powerful
affirmation of cultural identity, which is then transformed into employee commitment, energy, and effective-
ness. A ‘cultural theory’ of organizational energy and commitment is offered as a counter to psychological
theories of affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment.

Key words: Family firms; Organizational Energy; Mutual Confirmation; Commitment; Historical Anthro-
pology

INTRODUCTION

The following article provides an anthropological perspective on the emerging concept of

organizational energy as it relates to a particular family firm in the American South. The firm,
Omega Coffee and Tea Company (a pseudonym), is a 109-year-old, private, family-owned and
managed business that imports and roasts coffee and tea products and distributes them to restau-
rants, hotels, resorts, convenience stores, airlines, and corporate offices. The company currently
operates in 26 states, has approximately 500 employees, and annual sales of $125 million. Over
the past 50 years, the company has acquired over 65 competitor firms, and has become one of
the nation’s dominant players in what is known as the ‘institutional coffee’ business.
The concept of ‘organizational energy’ (Bruch and Ghoshal 2003; Cross et al. 2003; Orton-
Jones 2003; Charan 2004) represents an interesting shift in organizational analysis away from
the more popular notion of organizational culture, a shift that merits attention and consider-
ation. Organizational energy is defined as ‘the extent to which an organization has mobilized
the full available effort of its people in pursuit of its goals’ (Orton-Jones, 2003: 68). In the case
of Omega, an extremely high level of organizational energy has propelled the organization to
growth and market success in a seemingly paradoxical manner. On the one hand, the firm lacks
what might be considered ‘progressive’ concepts in managerial thinking such as open and trans-
parent communication, flattened hierarchies and workplace democratization, decentralization
and autonomy, etc. On the other hand, there exist strong levels of employee loyalty and commit-
ment that have been effectively translated into bottom line results for the company. What are

*Email: a.m.jones@lancaster.ac.uk

ISSN 1475-9551 print; ISSN 1477-2760 online © 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14759550600683054
170 ANDREW M. JONES

the sources of organizational energy in the company? How has Omega generated and sustained
loyalty and commitment over such a long period of time? Is there anything illustrative about
the Omega case that can be used in consideration of other firms and situations?
I suggest here that a focus on organizational energy is important for a couple of reasons.
First, it starts with an acceptance of the central role that emotions play in people’s connection
with and commitment to their work. Second, by (heuristically) de-centering the notion of
‘corporate culture’ as a determining force in organizational life, other avenues of explanation
and understanding are opened up. Particularly, my interest here is in the ways that the larger
cultural environment in which a firm is situated, in this case the American South, helps define
and condition worker loyalty, commitment, and ultimately organizational effectiveness. That
is, the prism of organizational energy allows the chance to articulate a cultural and anthro-
pological (Geertz 1973; Sahlins 1976, 1999; Ouroussof 2001), versus an individual and
psychological, understanding of employee commitment, motivation, morale, and energy. In
my analysis here, organizational energy is seen as being derived largely from cultural iden-
tity and commitment, first, and from an individual’s psychological and utilitarian connection
with her/his employer second. My goal here is to build on some of the foundational thinking
about employee loyalty and commitment by expanding the notion of commitment to include
macro-cultural (vs. organizational cultural) context and influence. I also take the opportunity
to add to the recent theorizing on organizational energy that has been advanced by Bruch and
Ghoshal (2003), Cross et al. (2003), and others. Finally, and more specifically, by thinking
about organizational energy as it relates to family businesses, it is hoped that this discussion
can contribute to an increased appreciation of the ways in which analyses of family firms are
relevant to and can contribute to general theorizing about organizations, organizational life,
and organizational ‘behavior.’

STRUCTURE OF THE ARTICLE

First, I introduce family firm research as a distinct and neglected area of research within the
broader field of management studies. Following this, I look in greater detail at the concept of
organizational energy as it has been written about recently in the management literature.
Then I present the research itself, which suggests three broad themes of organizational iden-
tity at Omega: kinship, personal sacrifice, and religion. These three themes provide the basic
framework for the rest of the paper. Next, I look critically at the normative literature concern-
ing organizational commitment and loyalty, as a way to distinguish between intrinsic
(psychological) sources of organizational commitment from extrinsic (in this study
‘cultural’) sources of motivation and loyalty. In the Discussion section I articulate a ‘cultural
theory’ of organization loyalty and commitment by building on the strengths of existing
perspectives on employee motivation and commitment. This entails a brief overview of some
current thinking about loyalty and commitment that, I suggest, is not fully able to account for
the distinct type of (Southern) cultural identification and loyalty manifest at Omega and other
organizations like it. A cultural theory of employee commitment is better able to account for
the high levels of organizational energy and commitment found at Omega.

A NOTE ON HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Both the theoretical and methodological assumptions underpinning this study can be
understood in terms of a ‘historical anthropological’ perspective. For the past 20 years, anthro-
pologists (Sahlins 1981, 1985; Wolf 1982; Roseberry 1989; Comaroff & Comaroff 1992;
 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND MOTIVATION 171

Whitehead 1995, Axel 2002) have questioned the notion that synchronic ethnographic studies
can fully capture the cultural and historical complexity (both in terms of inertia and structural
change) that a researcher encounters while conducting social research. Feinman suggests that
‘the major research focus has been neither diachronic nor processual, instead concentrating on
temporally shallow anthropological or ethnohistoric observations, single reconstructed slices
of archaeological time, and, most frequently, cross-cultural compendia of synchronic ethno-
graphic cases’ (1991: 229). Similarly, in organizational studies, scholars (Kieser 1994;
Usdiken & Kieser 2004; Clark and Rowlinson 2004) have also begun to suggest that a histor-
ical perspective should be more than a supplement to organizational analysis, but rather should
be constitutive of it. Regardless of the access, intimacy, and immersion that some researchers
are able to negotiate in conducting qualitative organizational analysis (Workman 1993),
departments, personnel, policies and practices in organizations result from negotiated values
and agendas often over many years. It can be misleading to present the findings from personal
interviews (what are essentially ‘conversations’) as ‘data sources’ (Workman, 1993: 419), as
if in ‘scientizing’ such information the researcher can transform narrative information into
something else. This is not to suggest that in-depth studies, such as Workman’s (1993) brilliant
analysis of the muted role of a marketing team in the product development process in a tech-
nology firm, are themselves misleading. In his particular case, the findings are rich and illus-
trative. What is missing, though, is a sense of the history of how Zytek became such an
engineering-oriented corporate culture, wherein the role of marketing is what it is today.
To deal with these matters of history, historical anthropology consciously splices together
interview-oriented ‘ethnographic’ (i.e. narrative) information, with documentary and archival
information, with a goal of producing holistic anthropological knowledge of a particular
cultural subject over a period of time. For example, Whitehead (2002) has written extensively
about the history of the kanaima cult in Guyana, which is a secretive assassination organization
in the Orinoco basin in South America. His discovery of kanaima came during intensive archi-
val, documentary and archaeological research in colonial sources, but he has since then been
able to confirm and study kanaima ethnographically in a most vivid and even haunting way.
In his case, the archival and ethnographic sources were both instrumental, and the time frame
of his kanaima analysis is some 250 years in length. Similarly, in my own research among the
Comanches of the American Southwest, and the Kpelle of Liberia and Guinea, West Africa,
the traditional ethnographic analyses that I conducted were significantly structured and guided
by what I had learned through a long and thoughtful period of study in the archives. Armed
with historical information, I was able to ask smarter questions and was better able to interpret
what I encountered ‘in the field.’ In my study of Omega, much of the historical information I
learned from both documentary sources and from interviews with long-retired employees
(from the 1950s and 1960s), significantly aided and directed my understanding of organiza-
tional life at Omega today. Thus, it is with a very strong sense of history and culture that my
research is organized and presented as a piece of historical anthropology.

I. FAMILY FIRMS

Family firms represent a much-neglected area of research within mainstream management

studies. As Nicholson suggests, ‘Family business is a forgotten world in the field of manage-
ment. It scarcely receives a mention in the leading journals of our discipline or in the
pedagogy of most leading business schools’ (2003: 3). Depending on the definition of
‘family firm’ that is used, family firms constitute around 75% of all businesses in developed
economies (Dyer, 2003: 403; Nicholson, 2003; 6; Anderson and Reeb, 2003: 1302; Colli,
2003: 15–17), as well as about 30% of the S&P 500 companies, employ almost 60% of the
172 ANDREW M. JONES

workforce in the U.S. alone, and account for a significant proportion of GDP in developed
economies as well. For my purposes here, I will implicitly follow Dyer (2003), Hoy (2003),
and Colli (2003) in defining family firms as ‘business organizations in which an identifiable
family, and its interests, retain managerial and/or decision making authority in the company,
as well as significant (though not necessarily controlling) ownership of voting shares.’ A
loose definition such as this casts a wide net and produces a larger percentage of family firms
in industrialized companies than might be expected. Regardless of the definition that is used,
their neglect in the literature is a matter of fact. In most textbooks on management, organiza-
tional behavior, organizational theory, or human resource management, family firms hardly
receive a mention (Dyer, 2003: 402–403).
Family firms are unique and relevant to the study of organizational energy in a distinctly
anthropological way. In cases such as Omega, where a particular family is closely associated
with the company over many years, that family’s values, beliefs, and priorities become
inscribed within the ethos of the company and become the metaphorical foundation of social
relations within the firm. That is, as Nicholson has suggested, relationships in family firms
often (although not necessarily) organize around what he calls the ‘as if’ principle.’ The ‘as if’
principle suggests that, as humans, we naturally tend to relate to others in organizational
settings ‘as if’ they were kin, as if they were a parent, child, sibling, or cousin, etc. Nichol-
son’s sees the ‘as if’ principle as being relevant to all forms of human organization (Nichol-
son, 2000: 175–178), such is his belief in the explanatory power of the field of evolutionary
psychology, on which much of his current theorizing is based. I differ from Nicholson signif-
icantly, however, in that I do not see the ‘as if’ principle as being a function of our genetic
hardwiring, and thus I part ways with him in terms of the underlying premises of evolutionary
psychology. Sewell (2004) has recently published an important critique of the simplistic, and
potentially dangerous, application of neo- Darwinian thinking to organizational analysis, and
I subscribe to Sewell’s sense of caution and criticism. However, as a foundational metaphor
for understanding the quality of personal relationships that have evolved at Omega over the
past 50 years, some sort of kinship principle does seem to permeate the company. The domi-
nant personality of the company’s chairman and patriarch underscores a benevolent paternal-
ism through which the owning family takes care of its employees, and many employees have
come to see themselves (metaphorically) as ‘part of the family.’ Thus, as I understand it, the
fictive kinship that I identify at Omega here is premised not on individual’s hardwiring, as
evolutionary psychologists might suggest, but rather on the complex historical interplay of the
owning family with long-term employees in the context of a shared regional cultural system
(Dyer 1988). As it pertains to the concept of organizational energy, the fictive kinship that I
identify here provides some employees with a related metaphorical belief/experience in what
I call ‘fictive ownership.’ In feeling deeply a part of the past and present of Omega’s market
success, long-standing employees at Omega feel that they have a stake (even though it is not
a literal ownership stake) in the success of the company. Fictive kinship and fictive ownership
combine to energize and motivate Omega employees in an interesting way.

II. ORGANIZATIONAL ENERGY

The recent focus on organizational energy can be seen as yet another way for scholars and
consultants to understand and talk about the ‘soft side’ of managing organizations. Since the
early 1980s, the concept of corporate culture has provided a common vocabulary with which
to talk about the ‘soft,’ human side of organizational life (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Hofstede,
1991; Alvesson, 2002; Martin, 2002), and the organizational energy literature (Bruch and
Ghoshal, 2002; Cross et al. 2003) is something of a extension of the corporate culture
 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND MOTIVATION 173

literature. An important difference, however, is that the concept of organizational energy is

focused on translating emotions, ethos, belief, values, etc., into action and engagement. While
some corporate culture scholars have also had this focus (Kotter, 1992; Denison and Mishra,
1995), the organizational energy discourse moves the conversation toward action in an impor-
tant way. ‘For 50 years, management theory and practice have adopted a technical, analytical
approach in which the role of the so-called soft factors like emotions and feelings has largely
been denied. That trend is now being reversed, with both academics and managers recognizing
the powerful role that emotions play in shaping corporate behavior’ (Bruch and Ghoshal, 2003:
45). Here I am interested in the ways that cultural identity (in this case an identification with
the American South), provides a context for emotional comfort, security, and identity
construction in the workplace. This contrasts with a purely psychological approach to under-
standing emotion, which is rooted more in the individual. From an anthropological perspec-
tive, something as seemingly given as emotion is seen as being partially culturally constructed,
and not merely a behavioral matter of individual psychology, cognition and affect.
In their recent article, ‘Unleashing organizational energy’, Bruch and Ghoshal (2003)
organize their research findings gathered from an action-learning project begun in 1994 with
a consortium of leading global firms, which over the past ten years has included ABB,
Lufthansa, Aktiebalegat SKF, Standard Chartered Bank, The BT Group, The LG Group,
Sony, Old Mutual, Cartier, Oracle, Mars, Emirates Airlines, and Philip Semiconductors
(Bruch and Ghoshal, 2003: 46). The London-based organizational consulting firm, Stanton
Marris, has also employed the concept of organizational energy in its consulting work with
an equally strong list of clients: Boots, British American Tobacco, Unilever, Proctor &
Gamble, Pearson Group, IBM, Diageo, Coca Cola, Cadbury Schwepps, J. Sainsbury, and
Nestle (Orton-Jones, 2003: 68). Bruch and Ghoshal’s research, as well as Stanton Marris’s
consulting engagements, have begun to test the concept of organizational energy in the
hands-on world of management practice. While only time will tell what the long-term utility
of the concept will be, their preliminary research and applications are suggestive.
Bruch and Ghoshal define organizational energy as ‘the interplay of a company’s
emotional, cognitive, and physical states’ (2003: 45). They differentiate between intensity
and quality of organizational energy.
Intensity refers to the strength of organizational energy as seen in the level of activity, the amount of interac-
tion, the extent of alertness and the extent of emotional excitement. Symptoms of low energy are often obvi-
ous: apathy and inertia, tiredness, inflexibility and cynicism. Qualitatively, organizational energy can be
characterized as positive energy (for example, enthusiasm, joy, and satisfaction) or negative energy (fear, frus-
tration, or sorrow). In fact, it is the intersection of intensity and quality that determines an organization’s
energy state which usually falls into one of four categories (Bruch and Ghoshal, 2003: 45–46).

They describe the ‘four energy zones’ in the following way. The ‘comfort zone’ is manifest
in firms that ‘have low animation and a relatively high level of satisfaction’ (2003: 46). They
cite the South African insurance company, Old Mutual Plc, as an example of a firm with solid
but not spectacular financial results, and with significant job satisfaction and personal
connection with the company. Companies in the second energy zone, the ‘resignation zone’,
suffer from negative emotions such as frustration, sorrow, and disappointment (ibid.).
Companies that are driven by intense, strong, and highly competitive negative emotions
occupy the third energy zone, the ‘aggression zone’. High levels of focus, attention, and alert-
ness are mustered in pursuit of a company’s goals. Oracle Corporation is cited as an example
of a company in the aggression zone. Oracle’s motto—‘It’s never good enough to win; all
others must lose’—succinctly summarizes the organizational energy found in the aggression
zone (ibid.). The fourth energy zone, the ‘passion zone’, is where companies possess and
compete with strong, positive emotions. Employees in this zone strongly connect with and
identify with their employers. This translates into enthusiasm and excitement on the job.
174 ANDREW M. JONES

Bruch and Ghoshal cite the French luxury firm Cartier PA as an example of a company that
has built up passionate emotional resonance in its employees. Over the 20 years that Cartier
CEO, Alain Dominique Perrin, has led the firm, the company has grown revenues from $50
million to $1.2 billion per year. That Cartier’s employees love the brand and enjoy their work
is tied up intimately in the company’s financial success (Bruch and Ghoshal, 2003: 47). The
type of product/service mix offered by a particular company will to some extent determine
the energy level in a company. Some offerings are simply more emotionally compelling than
others. However, the larger cultural context in which a company exists and competes will
also contribute to the degree to which employees connect with and contribute to their
employer.
As I discuss in the next section of the paper, the energy zone at Omega is an amalgam of
Bruch and Ghoshal’s four zones. Aggressive and resigned, comforted and secure, Omega’s
employees work in an energy zone that is defined by Southern culture, in what I call a
‘culture zone’. The specific elements of Omega’s energy zone are its family orientation and
ideology of kinship (organized around a benevolent paternalism), its cultural conservatism
and ethos of personal sacrifice, and its embeddedness within a powerful ideology of religious
identification.

III. THE RESEARCH

The research on which this article is based took place between September 2002 and
December 2003. Over the 15 months in which I interviewed Omega employees and former
employees, I was provided unlimited access to company financial records, board meeting
minutes, and in-house newsletters. The themes and patterns that emerged over the 15 months
are interesting, and provide the structure for my understanding of organizational energy at
Omega. Some of the conversations I had with Omega employees were structured, although
most of them were unstructured and open-ended. Some were scheduled in advance, while
some were conducted spontaneously at the company’s headquarters as I was introduced to
different people. In addition to conversations with current Omega employees, I was provided
the opportunity to talk with many former Omega employees, as well as with three members
of the board of directors. Also, I was allowed to ride-along with several salesmen (or
‘Territory Managers’) over the course of a few days, during which time I participated as their
assistant in hauling coffee and tea products from the truck to their various customers. The
conversations I had with the TMs (territory managers) were among the richest and most
informative of them all. I was provided two separate guided tours of the company’s opera-
tions plant, during which time the company’s plant manager and COO were available to
answer questions and explain the roasting and distribution facilities. I was also invited to
attend the annual sales meeting in the company’s hometown, which lasted a full day and
provided an opportunity to witness some 200 Omega employees interacting in a celebratory,
pep-rally type of environment. On that particular day the conversations I had were limited, as
I sat quietly throughout most of the awards ceremonies and simply observed the proceedings.
And finally, I was provided unlimited access to the company’s ‘board meeting minutes’ and
financial records for the period, 1950–2003. An overview of the interviews and activities is
provided in Table 1.
As I suggest here, three themes underlie the link between cultural identity and organiza-
tional energy at Omega: kinship ideology, personal sacrifice, and religious ideology. These
three themes emerged from my various conversations with Omega employees during my
research. Omega’s ability to endorse and then leverage a powerful (Southern) cultural
identity as organizational energy is, I believe, one of the keys to their long-term success.
 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND MOTIVATION 175

Table 1: Interviews and research.

Person/type Interviews Time

Current Employees
Chairman 8 11 h
CFO 3 50 min
CIO 1 30 min
COO 2 50 min
Credit Manager (CM) 2 1.5 h
Director of Training (DT) 2 1.5 h
Special Projects Manager (SPM) 4 3h
Regional Sales Manager (RSM) 1 45 min
Territory Manager 1 (TM 1) 2 Whole day + 2 h
Territory Manager 2 (TM 2) 1 Whole day
Current Board Members
Board Member 1 (BM 1) 1 1h
Board Member 2 (BM 2) 1 45 min
Board Member 3 (BM 3) 1 1.5 h
Former Employees
Regional Sales Manager (FRSM) 1 4h
Former TM (FTM 1) 1 5h
Former TM (FTM 2) 1 2h
Former Secretary (FS 1) 2 6h
Former Secretary (FS 2) 1 2h
Former Secretary (FS 3) 1 3h
Former Credit Manager (FCM) 1 2.5 h
Documentary Research 82 h total
Board Meeting Minutes (1950–2003)
Corporate Financial Records (1950–2003)
2003 Annual Sales Meeting 6h

KINSHIP

One powerful ideological current running throughout Omega is the extent to which employ-
ees, both past and present, express a kind of fictive kinship with the company’s owning
family (the Clarksons). Currently, the company’s Chairman, President and CEO, and COO
are members of the Clarkson family. The Chairman’s youngest son now works in a new mail
order/internet sales group in the company. Even though there are only four family members
in the firm, the family itself has an enormous presence in the company. The sentiment of
attachment and connection to the family is expressed perhaps most strongly among some of
the long-retired employees who are now more sentimental about their time at the company.
These older employees worked for the Chairman’s father, Mr. Clarkson Sr. A former secre-
tary for Mr. Clarkson Sr. in the early 1960s puts it this way.
No one really left the company. Mr. Clarkson (Sr.) made you love the company. You always knew you’d be
treated like family. If you were sick and at home, you’d be paid anyway. You had to look professional and act
professional, but he would take care of you (FS 1).
Similar statements expressing affection and admiration for the senior ‘Mr. Clarkson’ were
expressed openly.
Mr. Clarkson never used the word ‘I,’ he always said ‘we.’ He was always humble, and never took credit for
anything. He would do anything for you … (FRSM).
FRSM choked up with tears three times during our conversation. He recalled one particular
event that moved him to tears as he described it. In the late 1950s, one afternoon when his car
176 ANDREW M. JONES

was not working, Mr. Clarkson Sr. offered to give him a ride home from work. FRSM’s wife
was at home with complications from a pregnancy with their second child. When they arrived
at his house, Sr. noticed that the grass in the front yard had not been mowed in weeks. It was
summer time, and the grass was extremely high.
He could tell we weren’t doing good. So he got out of the car, took off his jacket, went to the garage, and
started to mow the front yard. He mowed the whole yard, front and back. The owner of the company mowed
our yard. My wife couldn’t believe it (FRSM).
FRSM personalized his relationship with Sr. by contrasting him with his own father. An
awkward conversation at some points, but very revealing about how deeply Sr. affected him
when he worked at Omega.
I could talk to him about things I couldn’t talk about with my dad … I think of him even more than I think of
my own father … He influenced me more than any other person in my whole life. He was a once in a life-time
kind of person (FRSM).
One of the more striking things about conversations with former Omega employees who
worked for Sr. for many years is how consistent, and enduring, their respect and admiration
for him is, even still today. FTM 1, who worked for the company from 1954 to 1988, echoes
FRSM’s feeling of respect for Sr.
I never worked for any one better than Mr. Clarkson. He was firm, and honest, and listened. He never wanted
to be known as the owner of the company. He was in charge, but he stayed in the back (FTM 1).
Like FRSM, FTM 1 welled up with tears when he talks about visiting Sr. in the hospital one
week before he died (of lung cancer) in 1968.
He said, ‘if you ever see my sons smoking a cigarette, I want you to knock it to the ground and take it away,
and tell them about what happened to me’ (FTM 1).
It is not only former Omega employees who subscribe to a kind of familial relationship with
the Clarksons. Omega’s current Director of Training (DT), who has been with the company
for 26 years, said that what distinguishes Omega’s culture is its ‘family orientation’.
This is a family company. Not only do the Clarksons treat you like family, lots of employees have other family
who work here too. My son, his wife, and my daughter work here too (DT).
DT’s son, TM 2, says that the ‘family aspect’ of the job can be so all-encompassing that it
can be overwhelming.
For a lot of people in the company, especially those who have family here, the company is their life (TM 2).
In referring, effectively, to his own family’s life as ‘their life’, TM 2 is so deeply immersed in
the ideology of belonging in the firm that his, and his family’s, presence in the company has
almost become invisible. It is precisely his family (among several other families with multi-
ple representatives in the company) for whom the company ‘is their life’. This ethos is not
unique to Omega, as many family firms cultivate a general ‘family feel’ (Stewart, 2003).
However, as I develop in the next section, the ways in which such emotional connections and
the resulting ‘emotional capital’ (Golemen, 2002) accrue over time as organizational energy
is important at Omega.

SACRIFICE

The second theme that I want to discuss relates to the combination of what is perceived as an
extremely high level of work (ethic) and achievement on the one hand with what is also
perceived as below average pay and compensation on the other. I refer to this as an ethos of
sacrifice, because employees, both current and former, reflect on this as a ‘badge of courage’
and pride (i.e. sacrifice) more so than they do as a source of frustration. During a full day
 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND MOTIVATION 177

‘ride-along’ with TM 1, I was reminded several times how poorly the company pays its
employees. The daily round of a TM, what other companies might call ‘delivery men’, is
physically very demanding, particularly in their Southern territories in the summer months
when the temperature can range around 100 degrees. The day begins around 5:30 a.m., with
the truck already loaded from the previous evening. The first delivery is at a breakfast restau-
rant at around 5:50 a.m., on a hot and balmy early September morning. It is almost 80
degrees by the time of the first delivery. TM 1 was sweating profusely by the time we made
the fourth delivery around 7:30 a.m. Similar to a driver for UPS, TM 1 was on and off the
truck all day long, sometimes breathing heavily if the order was large or if it required several
trips. He has worked for Omega since 1980, and says he has no interest in leaving the
company. He has worked this same route for 8 years, and he has developed friendships with
the storeowners where he delivers and has a very workable rapport with most of them. Some
of the stops resemble social visits more than sales calls, each asking the other about their chil-
dren, about vacations, etc. Each year TM 1 sells approximately $800,000 worth of coffee and
tea products off of his truck. While he does work on a commission basis, he still expresses
frustration about his salary.
You don’t work at Omega for the money, that’s for sure … It’s other stuff (TM 1).
Similarly, TM 2 offers a mild complaint about the pay that is somewhat backhanded yet
speaks to the combination (of hard work/low pay) I mentioned earlier.
None of us get rich, but we work hard. The more we sell, the more commissions we earn … But I’m more
interested in servicing customers and keeping their machines clean and working hard than I am in bringing in
new accounts (TM 2).
TM 2 then confides in me that his focus on servicing his existing customers, as opposed to
bringing in new customers, is a source of frustration with the company’s current President
and CEO. However, with so much of his own family in the company (his father, his wife, and
his sister), he knows his job is secure, so he brushes it off.
DT’s career (TM 2’s father) at Omega has not only been long (at 26 years), but it has also
entailed significant personal and family sacrifice. DT started out with the company, like his
son, as a territory manager. After becoming a regional sales manager, he was then promoted
to being head of the company’s training program. Omega regularly acquires competitor
companies, and thus there is a constant need to train and integrate newly acquired sales staff
into the Omega system. Most often the companies are in new market areas where the
company wants to compete, and this means that the DT has to travel to where the new staff is
located. The training and indoctrination process can take months at a time, a process that he
has been through over a dozen times. He explains that he has helped train newly acquired
employees in Nashville, Memphis, Portland, Phoenix, Seattle, Denver, Washington D.C.,
among other cities. I asked him how long he has had to live on the road in different cities, and
he said anywhere from 3 months to 9 months per acquisition.
It takes about 8 to 10 months to really get it right. I guess I’ve spent about 5 years, if you add it all up, living in
hotels in different places. You miss your family, but it’s your job (DT).
I do not know his salary, but, like his son (TM 2), he indicated that he was educated only to
the high school level, and that, as he put it, his was a ‘middle class life’. He knows he does
not earn as much as those in the company who graduated from college and live more closely
to the lifestyle of the Clarksons, but he does not seem to resent that. He loves what he does,
and the traveling is just part of it. At the end of our second conversation, he suggested to me
that he was ‘a simple man who just tried to do the right thing everyday’.
Omega’s credit manager (CM) echoed the theme of hard work at the beginning of our first
conversation.
We do a lot of work here. You have to like what you do here, because we do a lot of it (CM).
178 ANDREW M. JONES

FTM 1 recalls how difficult it was to work for Sr.

He didn’t care how far away it was, or how small the sale. If you could sell some coffee, you sold it. It was dog
eat dog. He had you travel 100 miles to sell a pound of coffee if that is what it took to get a new customer. He
made you eat and sleep Omega (FTM 1).
During my conversation with FTM 1, which took place at his house, he recalled that he was
out of town on a sales call on the day that his first son was born, and that he did not get home
for a couple of days. He was on the road so much, traveling throughout the Southeast US, like
the current DT, his family grew accustomed to his absence.
If I was home with the family watching TV and got up to go to the bathroom, my kids would say, “Bye
Daddy.” I would say, ‘Daddy’s just going to the bathroom (FTM 1)
Also, FTM 1 says that he has struggled financially over the years, because, as he put it, ‘no
one gets rich working for the Clarksons’. Yet he expresses pride in being an ‘Omega man’. He
points up to a wall in his living room that is filled with pictures of his children and grandchildren.
Omega made all of that possible. You know, the company you work for is your survival, and their success is
your success … I’m proud to be a company man. I feel like I’m a part of this company (FTM 1).
I ask him why he talks about the company in the present tense, having retired from the
company in 1988. He tells me that he is still an employee of the company.
Every Monday I help one of the local TMs with his sales calls. I’m still with the company (FTM 1).
I later asked FRSM about this, and he said that the company sent him small checks, for
‘consulting services’, for 10 years after he left the company.
Sr. and I were so close, I guess they thought they owed it to me. I finally had to insist that they stop sending
them (FRSM).
In an interview with the company’s Special Projects Manager (SPM), the phone rang at a
nearby office without anyone picking it up. The phone rang again several times, and he went
over and picked it up. It was a call to customer service from a very angry customer. He excused
himself and went into a flurry trying to track down the TM in the St. Louis area where the call
originated, and I didn’t seem him again for a couple of days. He explained it to me this way.
Job descriptions are only so important at Omega. Happy customers are more important. I spent the rest of that
day solving the equipment problem in St. Louis. That is not what I usually do, but I do whatever it takes for
Omega to succeed (SPM).
The sense of service and sacrifice evidenced by Omega employees has served the company
well over the past 50+ years. Particularly since 1968, when Mr. Clarkson Jr. assumed leadership
at the company, the company has grown significantly. When he joined the company in 1968,
it had sales of $2.5 million and 50 employees. Between 1968 and 1998, when his little brother
became CEO and he moved over to being the company’s Chairman, the company acquired some
65 other companies, reported sales of $120M, with about 500 employees working in 20 states.
That aggressive growth and success, both in terms of gross sales and profitability, was achieved
via enormous sacrifices from Omega employees, past and present. With a history of sacrifices
across the organization, Omega has stores of organizational energy and organizational capital
that it can draw upon when it asks employees to reach for ‘stretch goals.’ This emotional capital
(Goleman, 2002) and organizational energy is not something that can be understood synchro-
nically, in the present tense; rather, it needs to be understood diachronically and historically
as the result of half a century of commitment and sacrifice by Omega employees.

RELIGION

The third theme I want to address here relates to the casual and open expression of religious
belief at Omega. In an early conversation with the company’s Chairman, he described what
he sees as his role in the company very openly and personally.
 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND MOTIVATION 179

I see myself as a steward of something provided by my Daddy. I try to do that according to the Judeo-Christian
ethic of humility and hard work, just as my Daddy did (Chairman).
The importance of religion at Omega is both a historical fact and a contemporary source of
comfort, identity, and belonging. The Chairman’s comment about being a ‘steward according
to a Judeo-Christian ethic’ is straight out of his father’s worldview. FRSM, who as I have
described here had a very close relationship with Sr., told me that religion was central to Sr.’s
life, and to the values of the company.
After a couple of months in the company, he asked me where I went to church. I told him that when I was
younger I went to church with my parents, but that at the present time I didn’t. He insisted that we go to
church, it was part of how he saw things. So I went to church, and have ever since (FRSM).
It should be noted that in all of the conversations I had at Omega that touched on religion,
never did I bring it up nor was it ever turned back on me in an uncomfortable way. It was
more passive and ubiquitous than that. For example, in conversation with the company’s CM,
he said casually, ‘We always try to do the right thing, you know, the golden rule’, which he
followed up saying bluntly:
I’m an ordained Baptist Minister. I have my own church. I preach every Sunday (CM).
He said this as a matter of fact, as if it was a common thing to say or hear. Unsolicited, CM
provided some of the most interesting and revealing thoughts about how pervasive, yet
subtle, religious identification is at Omega.
On another occasion, during the ride-along with TM 2, he asked me ‘where I went to
school’. I told him where I went to college and graduate school, thinking that the conversa-
tion was headed towards college football, which is an important subject in the South. He then
said, ‘I went to the Baptist Academy’, which is known in the area as the most fundamentalist,
conservative Christian school in the region. Again, similar to the conversation with the CM,
he was not offensive nor did he invite a response, he simply wanted to position himself on the
issue of religion. It should be noted that the climate today at Omega is considerably different
than it was under the leadership of Sr. No one in the company is told to go to church, as was
the case 30 years ago. The current religious ethos is much more subtle and implicit than it
used to be. It is subtler and more implicit precisely because of the historical–organizational
inertia I have been describing. It is tied to the inertia and historical significance of religion
and religious identity in the American South, generally, a region that is becoming more, not
less, religiously conservative, over time (Cobb, 1999). Religion is such a ubiquitous aspect of
Southern culture, and Southern cultural identity, that it is powerfully conditioning in an
understated way. That larger cultural identity, as I suggested earlier, is implicated in the way
that Omega drives its employees to success. History and cultural identity articulate with the
long-standing organizational values at Omega, and become organizational energy. That is,
cultural identity is enlisted as organizational energy in a virtuous spiral of identity construc-
tion and organizational commitment. I look more closely at this now.

IV. DISCUSSION: THE ‘CULTURE ZONE’ AND EMPLOYEE

COMMITMENT AT OMEGA

I now want to connect the foregoing discussion of kinship, sacrifice, and religion at Omega
with the larger theoretical issues of employee loyalty and commitment. Much of the literature
on organizational commitment is grounded, as is much of organizational theory generally, in
the theories and methods of the discipline of psychology. Commitment is conceived of as a
psychological relationship between an individual and the value proposition of an employ-
ment situation. For example, while they do provide a certain measure of qualification, Meyer
180 ANDREW M. JONES

and Allen say bluntly that they ‘treat commitment as a psychological state’ (Meyer and
Allen, 1997: 10). They identify three possible dimensions, or combinations of dimensions, of
an employee’s commitment to an employer: affective commitment, continuance commit-
ment, and normative commitment (Meyer and Allen, 1997: 13). Affective commitment (AC)
is drawn from a person’s emotional and affective attachment to a particular group of people
(Meyer and Allen, 1997: 12). In the case of Omega’s long-term employees, there is indeed a
considerable amount of affective commitment present in the organization. Continuance
commitment (CC), according to Meyer and Allen, reflects a cost–benefit analysis that
employees go through as they determine what they stand to lose, in terms of salary, stability,
employment continuity and security (ibid.). Again, this sort of pragmatic thinking underpins
the basic thinking process that many people, Omega employees included, undergo when
considering whether or not they will remain in a particular job at a particular company. And
finally, the notion of normative commitment (NC) refers to the sense of obligation and moral
responsibility that employees act upon as a result of internalizing certain prescribed values
and practices (ibid.).
In the case of Omega, there can be no question that a powerful normative connection, and
commitment, is at play in the organization. However, to the extent that the culture of the
American South differs, significantly in some respects, from that which is presumed in a
universalist, psychological model of commitment, the dimension of ‘normative commitment’
deserves special attention in this case. It is the unique definition of what constitutes
‘normative’ in the American South that provides the key to understanding what I mean by the
‘culture zone’ of organizational energy. And, in turn, the concept of the culture zone under-
lies what I see as a cultural perspective on employee commitment.
To expand on what I mean by the ‘culture zone’ of organizational energy at Omega, I want
to build on the interpretive cultural theory of Clifford Geertz, particularly on his essays,
‘Ideology as a cultural system’, and ‘Religion as a cultural system’, in his seminal book, The
Interpretation of Cultures (Geertz, 1973). He defines culture as ‘an historically transmitted
pattern of meaning embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in
symbolic forms by means of which me communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowl-
edge about and attitudes towards life’ (1973: 88). One of the defining signatures of Southern
cultural identity is the overtly expressed, evangelical and fundamentalist religious belief
system shared by many in the region (Peacock, 1971; Hill, 1975; White and White, 1995;
Cobb, 1999). For example, a recent survey, conducted by Auburn University in the state of
Alabama, indicates that 96% of respondents claim to be religious, while 62% of those
surveyed are not comfortable with the ‘theory’ of evolution and believe that creationism
should be taught in public schools (Ask Alabama, 2005: 3). In the state of Alabama, for
example, public schools currently co-teach the ‘theories’ of evolution and creationism in
biology courses as a measure to appease what is seen by lawmakers as a majority opinion. As
an organization, Omega is only one specific organizational embodiment of the religious
cultural values that exist in the region. However, my own personal experience from having
lived in the South for most of my life and from conducting research in several Southern firms
over the past three years suggests to me that Omega is not anomalous in terms of its religious
identifications and beliefs.
I want to now reconsider the three-part model of organizational commitment provided by
Meyer and Allen (1997). Initially, the issue of what constitutes ‘normative’ in the South
needs to be reconsidered, not in theory but in substance. Much of what draws employees to
Omega and keeps them committed for long periods of time can be understood as ‘normative
commitment’, but according to a distinctly Southern definition of ‘normative’. While the
concepts of affective and continuance commitment (Glazer et al., 2004; Hult, 2005) are also
relevant to the tenure patterns of Omega employees (as they likely are in most long-term
 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND MOTIVATION 181

employer–employee relationships), what drives Omega employees to loyalty and commit-

ment, at least in part, is this distinctly Southern iteration of normative commitment.
A discussion of ‘Southern normativity’ relates to Bruch and Ghoshal’s (2003) notion of
organizational energy in an important way. The types organizational energy that they
describe are endogenous to the organizations, that is, the source of the energy is from within
the organization itself, in the personalities, values, structures and patterns of the firm. At
Omega, by contrast, a significant amount of the organizational energy in the firm is exoge-
nous, that is, it originates outside the firm, but then is enacted, confirmed, and re-enacted
within the firm. The defining values of Southern culture originate in institutions throughout
the region, primarily in families, churches, schools, and social clubs. The high levels of orga-
nizational energy that I observed at Omega reside in what I call the ‘culture zone’, which is
derived from a situation wherein Omega’s ‘social organization’ (re)presents a microcosm of
the way in which the world, according to a ‘traditional’ definition of Southern culture, should
be organized. This ‘traditional’ definition consists of belief in such practices and values as
the ‘sanctity of the nuclear family’, the principle of ‘male headship’ of households, regular
church attendance, a general skepticism regarding (evolutionary) science, and a religiously
derived fatalism that accepts gender, class, and racial inequality, generally (Smith, 2000).
Organizational energy, commitment and loyalty at Omega are strong and sustainable in
part because of the congruency between the prevailing cultural values of the region, on the
one hand, and the cultural scripts, values and identities available to individuals inside the
company, on the other. In his discussion of ‘religion as a cultural system’, Geertz talks about
this as ‘mutual confirmation’.
In religious belief and practice a group’s ethos is rendered intellectually reasonable by being shown to repre-
sent a way of life ideally adapted to the actual state of affairs the worldview describes, while the worldview is
rendered emotionally convincing by being well-arranged to accommodate such a way of life. This confronta-
tion of a mutual confirmation has two fundamental effects. On the one hand, it objectivizes moral and
aesthetic preferences by depicting them as the imposed conditions of life implicit in a world with a particular
structure, as mere common sense given the unalterable shape of reality. On the other hand, it supports these
received beliefs about the world’s body by invoking deeply felt moral and aesthetic sentiments as experiential
evidence for their truth. Religious symbols formulate a basic congruence between a particular style of life and
a specific (if, most often, implicit) metaphysic and in so doing sustain each other with the borrowed authority
of the other (Geertz, 1973: 90).
Key here are the notions of ‘mutual confirmation’, ‘congruence’, and ‘borrowed author-
ity’. The social system at Omega confirms and ‘validates’ many employees’ view of the
world, and actively makes that ethos/world view alive in the world on a day-to-day basis.
This sort of confirmation of one’s belief system (i.e. the congruence) is perhaps rare in some
regions, but it is ‘common sense’ at Omega, both in terms of the ongoing processes of iden-
tity construction of its employees (Collinson, 2003), and in terms of creating an energized,
effective, and competitive workforce.
The ‘culture zone’ type of organizational energy at Omega is premised, then, on an articu-
lation of exogenous and endogenous values and beliefs, wherein the company provides,
somewhat seamlessly, a vehicle through which employees experience the world (of work) as
they (already) believe it should be. Such congruence reduces the space between (the values
of) the world of work and the world at home, and the resulting cultural authenticity trans-
forms the work environment into a life-affirming place in which to earn a living.

CONCLUSION

I began this article with the idea that Omega is a highly energized, productive, and competi-
tive organization despite its lack of ‘progressive’ managerial principles, practices, and sensi-
bilities. I suggested that his represents something of a paradox. If it is not for competitive
182 ANDREW M. JONES

salaries, or for individual recognition and rapid career advancement, what is it that motivates
Omega employees to commit their personal energy, and in many cases entire careers, to the
success of the company?
As I have discussed here, Omega’s high levels of sustained organizational energy are
derived from a ‘congruence’, or ‘mutual confirmation’ (Geertz, 1973: 90), between the
(Southern) cultural world view of Omega employees on the one hand and the ethos and
world view embodied in the history, practices, and values within Omega on the other.
Interestingly, the productive and energizing paternalism that has accrued in the company
over time, through the interplay of the principles of kinship, personal sacrifice, and reli-
gious belief is not necessarily the result of a conscious manipulation. Recently, some schol-
ars have written persuasively about how certain ‘progressive’, knowledge-intensive post-
bureaucratic organizations manipulate and direct employee subjectivity via clever empow-
erment schemes and initiatives. Alvesson and Willmott (2002) have recently suggested that
some firms actively ‘produce appropriate individual’ identities that, under the guise of
autonomy and emancipation, actually endorse the efficiency-oriented goals that subsume an
individual’s agency or self-interest. At Omega, the flow of influence is, interestingly,
somewhat reversed. Organizations such as Omega are, in an important way, produced by
the ‘cultural structures’ (Geertz, 1973; Sahlins, 1976, 1999) of which the employees are
also a part. In some respects, the Omega example is a case of ‘culture producing the appro-
priate organization’. Where Omega has been so successful in attracting people who want to
contribute to the owning family and their enterprise (AC), has been in the unconscious way
in which the company serves as a microcosm of the world that its employees want to create
and live in. Such commitment is normative (NC), but in the distinctly Southern cultural
sense I have discussed here.
According to the cultural analysis of organizational energy and employee commitment I
am outlining here, the source and the goal of energy and loyalty is the regional cultural ‘way
of life’ itself. Omega functions as a vehicle for the enthusiastic reproduction of a distinct
cultural system. That the company is and has always been a private, family-owned and
managed business lies at the center of the equation. Located, as Stewart suggests of other
family firms, closer to ‘the moral pole of the hearth and home’ than it is to the ‘amoral pole of
the (anonymous) market’ (Stewart, 2003: 384–385), Omega provides more than just jobs for
its employees. It provides a way of life. That simple proposition is an important source of
cultural loyalty, organizational loyalty, and organizational energy for the company.

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