Intense Loyalty in Organizations: A Case Study of College Athletics

Abstract

We would like to thank Jean Blocker for help during the data-gathering portion of this research and Charles Gallmeier, Peter Manning, John Van Maanen, and the editors and anonymous ASO reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Address correspondence to Dr. Peter Adler, Department of Sociology, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208. In this paper we examine a type of organizational loyalty, intense loyalty, that is more profound than the type of organizational loyalty traditionally portrayed as a rather mild attachment of individuals to a group, based on their satisfaction with their economic rewards, authority relations, or occupational self-fulfillment. Using data gathered over a five-year participant-observation study, we use the case of college athletics to illustrate this previously undiscussed form of organizational loyalty. We suggest that there are five elements essential to the development of intense loyalty in organizations: domination, identification, commitment, integration, and alignment. Through their experiences with each of these organizational dimensions, athletes develop feelings that lead to the development of intense loyalty. We conclude by contrasting the structural characteristics of organizations that generate intense loyalty with those of more ordinary work organizations.'