Managing Identification among Amway Distributors

1
Managing Identification among Amway Distributors
2
Purpose of Study

• 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?

3
Methods

• Data Collection
• Semi-over participant observation
• Interviews
• Previous research

4
Findings
5
Corporate Culture

• 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

6

• People say that we brainwash people. Thats
  true. We are talking about brainwashing to
  help make you all more positive people!
• -Amway speaker

7
How does Amway promote its company values and
goals?

• Dream building
• Helping distributors to set personal and sales
  goals
• Positive programming
• Helping distributors surround themselves with
  uplifting and supportive people

8
Sensebreaking

• Disrupting or questioning an individuals sense
  of self to create a meaning void that must be
  filled
• This is done with the Amway practice of dream
  building

9
Dream Building

• New distributors are asked to decide what their
  dream is and why they are doing this
• Material wealth
• Freedom
• Family
• Helping

10

• By customizing a dream scenario for each 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.

11
Building a New Identity

• Linking Ones Sense of Self to Possessions
• Possessions serve as extensions of ones
  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

12
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

13
Positive Programming

• Establish relationships that are supportive and
  nourishing avoid those that are harmful
• 3 Interrelated Steps
• Establishing a relationship with a mentor
• Creating relationship barriers via revaluing
• Enacting relationship barriers

14
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

15
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

16
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 ones
  business
• Avoid spending time with friends and family who
  do not support your business

17
Relationship Barriers

• Encapsulation process where group members are
  kept separate from non-members
• Social creation of strong in-group bonds while
  structuring daily life to avoid meeting outsiders
• Ideological an organizations belief system
  buffers a member from external threats or attacks
  avoid contact with non-supporters

18
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

19
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

20
Perpetuating Relationship Barriers

• If family and friends join, it provides support
  for the upline distributor
• If they dont, it also supports the upline
  distributors 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

21
Managing Identification
22
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.

23
Nonexistent/Broken Identification

• sensebreaking fails -members likely to
  deidentify stop feeling uncomfortable with their
  current lives and no longer wish to pursue their
  dreams
• not motivated to seek out advise from upline
  distributors, and they didnt want to abandon
  their current inadequate identities

24
Disidentification

• When sensebreaking succeeded, but sensegiving
  failed.
• Individuals either came to disidentify with Amway
  or remained ambivalently attached to it.
• Members maintain a sense of self-distinctiveness
  through perceptions and feelings of disconnection
  with an organization
• Anti-Amway, rather than simply severing their
  connection.

25
Ambivalent Identification Both sensebreaking and
sensegiving were successful

• Need to achieve dreams and maintain close ties
  with upline members creates positive
  identification

• Do not cut themselves off from their non-member
  friends
• Anti Amway advice from non-members creates
  negative identification

26
Managing Identification

• If members are not seeking, then they will either
  fail to identify, or will ultimately deidentify
  with the organization.
• Alternative ways to induce seekership
• Identity mortification
• Hazing
• Public confessions of unworthiness
• Selecting people who are more likely to fit the
  organization

27
Conclusions

• The process of identification is dynamic
• Dreams evolve from lifestyle dreams to ones that
  are more abstract and far-reaching
• Nature of organizations are changing
• Spans of control are broadening decreasing
  managerial control over workers
• Changing psychological contracts loyalty is
  decreasing because of lack of job security

28
Conclusion

• Organizations need to weigh the benefits and
  costs of managing identification
• 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)