“We truly love what we do”: The Tribal Consumer Inside Passionate Service Employees

Abstract

In times of increasing labor shortages and a contemporary cultural climate shaped by quiet quitting, understanding and addressing the sources of service employees’ passion for work becomes an important scholarly and managerial challenge. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered in the context of an outdoor-action-sports service provider, this study reveals how emotionally and physically demanding work conditions constrain service employees’ passion for work and explores how tribal consumption serves as an additional source of service employees’ passion for work. Findings highlight how service organizations can address this tribal source of passion by offering service employees an experience platform and opportunities for tribal sociality at work. This study introduces a consumption-related source of work passion to service employee passion research, extends consumer research on the blurring boundaries between work and consumption, and provides managerial implications for nurturing and/or maintaining service employees’ passion for work.