Ritual as Work Strategy: A Window into Organizational Culture

Learning in cooperation and/or collaboration with others is embedded in many higher education settings. Research on learning communities of various types often focuses on academic performance and pedagogical and curriculum enhancements. Our intent was to explore the cultural aspects of peer-to-peer collaboration. We apply the analytic lens of ritual to understand how engineering majors manage this "betwixt and between" phase of their lives prior to graduation. Our ethnographic and survey data go beyond confirming the emergence of "communitas" (an egalitarian and collaborative community spirit) among these undergraduates, to examine its value, how it works, and why it is sustained. We argue that students learn and adopt various work strategies, many of which are collaborative efforts, in response to the engineering school's organizational culture. This research raises options for new collaborations to transform the organizational culture while enhancing student performance and the college experience.