Doctoral Dissertation Research: Making a Living at Making a Difference - Oppositional Consciousness and Collective Identity in Employees of Nonprofit Social Service Organizations

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Doctoral student Rachel Wright (Syracuse University), supervised by Dr. John S. Burdick, will investigate new forms of oppositional consciousness among employees of nonprofit organizations in the United States. Nonprofit organizations are one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the American economy. Although types of nonprofits vary widely, this project focuses specifically on nonprofit organizations that provide social services, effectively filling the gap between government-administered social welfare programs and for-profit services in the free market. A site of a key tension in labor relations, these organizations are widely viewed as a haven for selfless and resilient employees, yet they are places of growing workplace inequality. This group of nonprofit organizations provides an ideal site for investigating the ways culture can be invoked and deployed to inhibit unionization and other forms of oppositional action, but they also provide an opportunity to grasp the processes that may lead to oppositional consciousness.The research will be carried out in Memphis, Tennessee, over a twelve-month period. The researcher will interview a stratified random sample of program directors, managers, and coordinators in non-profit service organizations, as identified through published lists. She also will collect data through semi-structured interviews and participant observation in service organization activities. Findings from this research will contribute to social science theory on work and labor by widening the ethnographic field to include non-union forms of resistance and by focusing on a group of workers with new types of grievances that have until now escaped study. This research is also timely in that recent social, demographic, and economic shifts have expanded the demand for many of the services that nonprofits provide. This increased demand has coincided with challenges such as staff turnover, effectiveness, and legitimacy with clientele that affect the work environment and the quality of services. The research will also support the education of a graduate student.