 An Exploration of Communitas Among Road WarriorsGayla S. Napier South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, 2014, vol. 3, issue 1, 89-100 Abstract: Consulting services, estimated by Gartner at USD 89.6 billion in 2012, refer to the practice of helping organizations improve performance through analysis of business problems and development of solutions ( Heng, 2013 ). Core to the consulting services are road warriors—consulting professionals who spend their workweek away from home at a client site. Inherent to the distributed nature of their work, road warriors are often dependent on technology-enabled communications to connect with members of their professional community. This study explores how road warriors in a professional services firm engage with one another. The study goes beyond traditional descriptions of community to suggest that road warriors intermingle in a virtual third-place of communitas . Findings suggest how a sense of communitas provides support for road warriors as they juggle family, friends and professional duties. The study has implications for how consulting services firms foster a sense of communitas in their ranks, and how in doing so, they may increase retention of their consulting talent. Keywords: Community; communitas; liminality; road warriors; professional services firms; turnover intention (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sajbmc:v:3:y:2014:i:1:p:89-100 Access Statistics for this article More articles in South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases |
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