TITLE:
Beer Talk: When Consumer Culture Makes Work Meaningful
AUTHORS:
Christopher S. Elliott
KEYWORDS:
Craft beer, Consumer Culture, Meaningful Work, Organizational Culture
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Service Science and Management,
Vol.17 No.6,
December
10,
2024
ABSTRACT: This study examines the potential for consumptive narratives legitimizing a market system to inform the narratives of workers occupying job roles in that same market system. Participant observation in the craft beer lifestyle of North Carolina found emergent discursive themes articulating the consumer culture. Interviews with thirty-nine employees across twenty-two firms provided accounts of jobs. The analysis found overlapping themes between these observations of work and consumption. One set of three themes—beer talk, us against them, and community—existed similarly across jobs, regardless of autonomy or task. Implications suggest that when markets are shaped by strong consumer cultures, these could become an independent source of meaningfulness, separate from job design and organizational culture. Research implications for meaningful work in the contexts of consumptive discourses are discussed.