Is Everyone Having a Good Time? The Effects of Complex Organizational Rituals on Employee Engagement and Behavior

Abstract

The organizational rituals literature has primarily focused on simple rituals and their positive effects on participants. While generative, this focus has obscured the intricacy and potential downsides of complex rituals, such as workplace celebrations and team-building retreats. In our research, we leverage Interaction Rituals Theory (IRT) to broaden the theoretical foundation of the study of organizational rituals by examining the range of experiences that employees have within complex organizational rituals. First, we inductively identify the positive and negative experiences within complex organizational rituals and create scales to measure them. Next, drawing further from IRT, we develop a model explaining how these experiences affect employee engagement and identify the subsequent work behaviors most likely to be affected by ritual-induced changes in engagement (helping, loyal boosterism, and job search behavior). In two field studies in the United States and Germany, we test this model, first in a single complex organizational ritual (i.e., company holiday party) and then across a broader set of common complex organizational rituals. Across both studies, we find that employees’ positive experiences during an organizational ritual enhance engagement and predict subsequent work behavior, while their effects can be significantly diminished by negative ritual experiences, challenging the assumption that rituals are uniformly beneficial. By providing evidence for a more balanced perspective on the impact of organizational rituals, our work provides a more nuanced and holistic understanding of the true nature of organizational rituals.