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‘New Kids on the Ship’: Organisational Socialisation and Sensemaking of New Entrants to Cruise Ship Employment
SPECIAL SECTION: CRUISE TOURISM AVAILABLE ONLINE
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management
‘New Kids on the Ship’: Organisational Socialisation and Sensemaking of New Entrants to Cruise Ship Employment
Imke Matuszewski and John Blenkinsopp
Drawing upon the organisational socialisation and sensemaking literatures, this article examines the implica-
Teesside University Business School, United Kingdom
reality of working on board. The study reveals how individuals make sense of this mismatch and how they
tions of potential mismatches between prospective cruise workers’ perceptions and their subjectively defined define their onboard experiences. Participants, who were former cruise ship workers, were asked about their perceptions and expectations relating to working on board — before joining the ship, while on board and after returning home. Though claiming to have few prior expectations, direct questions about surprises when joining the ship highlighted that participants had tacit expectations. Participants differentiated between working and living on board, and although their expectations of work were realistic, their expectations of life on board proved unrealistic. Their awareness of being in an unusual working environment led them to describe the cruise ship as another world, which was described as impossible for people who had not lived in that world to understand. The liminality of their situation, betwixt and between two social worlds, appeared an important feature of their sensemaking, although in many cases it was not until they returned home that they fully recognised this. This revealed a mismatch not only between their tacit expectations and experienced reality, but also between the cruise ship workers and their peers and family back on land. Reflecting on their return home, participants displayed a degree of nostalgia for working on board, and romanticised about cruise ship life which was portrayed as carefree and secure, involving both freedom and captivity.
Keywords: cruise ship employment, cruise tourism, organisational socialisation, sensemaking
Correspondence Imke Matuszewski, Teesside University Business School, Borough Road, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]
much in common in terms of similar work and social settings, and are distinctly different from the other occupations on board. Whereas many other staff on board are ‘professional mariners’, the cruise ship workers are typically experienced in their occupation but new to the experience of living and working on a ship, and Gibson (2006) suggests they can be overwhelmed by this new environment. To examine how cruise ship employees make sense of working on board, which is ‘partially under the control of expectations’ (Weick, 1995, p. 5) we draw upon the literature on organisational socialisation and sensemaking.
Literature Review Organisational socialisation (OS) has been defined as ‘the process by which one is taught and learns “the ropes” of a particular organisational role’ (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979, p. 211), focusing on how individuals adapt to performance proficiency, people, politics, language, organisational goals and values and history of an organisation (Chao, O’Leary-Kelly, Wolf, Klein, & Gardner, 1994). Recent studies have shown that an organisation’s culture is transmitted through the socialisation of employees (Bauer, Morrison, & Callister, 1998), thus in order to ‘survive’, as Ashforth, Sluss, and Harrison (2007) put it, an employee has to gain an understanding of the func-
Matuszewski, I., & Blenkinsopp, J. (2011). ‘New kids on the ship’: Organisational socialisation and sensemaking of new entrants to cruise ship employment. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 18, 79–87. DOI 10.1375/jhtm.18.1.79
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management
The increased economic importance of the cruise industry has led to increased attention from business and management researchers, but so far there has been little focus on organisational behaviour. A systematic literature review of cruise-related research (Papathanassis & Beckmann, 2011) found the majority of research on cruise ship employment focuses on health and safety issues. This seems surprising — cruise ships are unusual workplaces, so we cannot assume that existing theory and research on organisational behaviour will be applicable to such settings. It is, therefore, important to understand how employees make sense of, and respond to, this unusual working environment. Of greatest interest are likely to be the cruise ship workers, who work in a range of occupations (e.g., waiters, receptionists, chefs, tour guides, cleaners). Although cruise ship workers do a variety of jobs, they can be seen to form a single occupational community (Lee-Ross, 2008) as their jobs have
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tioning of and ‘how to function’ in the organisation (Cooper-Thomas & Anderson, 2006, p. 493), and has to ‘gain a sense of what the organisation is all about and why it’s important, as well as their place within it’ (Ashforth et al., 2007, p. 2). Most traditional socialisation research has focused on the development and application of organisational tactics on socialisation (Ashforth & Saks, 1996; Cable & Parson, 2001; Cooper-Thomas & Anderson, 2002; Saks, Uggerslev, & Fassina, 2007), drawing upon a range of nonmutually exclusive tactics originally identified by Van Maanen and Schein (1979). The emphasis on studying organisational socialisation from a tactics perspective has been criticised for its excessive focus on the role of the organisation while neglecting the role of the individual employee. Organisational newcomers do not solely react to tactics, but socially construct their identities in the organisation through interacting with others (Schneider, 1987). The historical neglect of the role of the newcomer led researchers to advocate an interactionist perspective on organisational socialisation, which stimulated research on newcomer proactivity (Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, & Tucker, 2007; Cooper-Thomas 2009; Crant, 2000; Morrison, 1993; Saks et al., 2007), focusing on how newcomers actively shape their environment and subjectively define their situation within their work context. One of the most influential contributions to a more individual-focused approach to OS was that of Louis (1980), who focused on sensemaking during organisational entry, comprehending past experiences that help to explain surprises during entering a new organisation. She developed a model focusing on how individuals cope with their new organisational environments and make sense of it, thus attributing meaning to surprises occurring at organisational entry. Her cyclical model suggests that when newcomers enter a new organisational setting they have prior expectations about the new work setting, and if these expectations are unmet, they experience ‘shocks and surprises’. According to Louis (1980) surprises are based on the concepts of change and contrast, wherein change refers to the objective difference between the old and the new organisational setting (e.g., location or working conditions), and contrast focuses on the subjectively experienced conditions of this new setting ‘by which newcomers characterise and otherwise define the situation’ (p. 244). Both change and contrast lead to surprise which is defined as the ‘difference between an individual’s anticipations and subsequent experiences in the new setting’ (p. 237). Surprises can be experienced either positively or negatively, and consciously or unconsciously. Furthermore, newcomers attribute meaning to surprises, on which basis they form their behavioural responses. Louis (1980) stresses that newcomers’ use past experiences to compare, interpret and evaluate the new setting, so having limited knowledge about the situation (when compared to insiders), they must interpret and construct their new situation based on initial experiences. However, over time they develop an understanding and are able to interpret meanings attached to events by supervisors and others. Sensemaking, in which newcomers attribute 80
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meaning to the new organisation, occurs through the interplay of past experience, personal characteristics, local interpretation schemes and others’ interpretations. This enables the newcomer to select behavioural responses as well as to update expectations and views of the new organisational setting. Reichers (1987) focuses on the development of a situational identity and the attachment of meanings to organisational reality. This perspective places the primary importance of attributing meaning on the interaction between the individual and the situation. This view suggests that, whilst reality and meanings are socially constructed, individuals are not, in their deepest sense, separable from their environments — ‘individuals and situations mutually determine each other’ (p. 279). Reichers (1987) suggests past research has neglected the impact of relationships with insiders, which he argues is the primary vehicle of socialisation. His model proposes that the rate of socialisation depends on newcomer and insider interaction, suggesting that high newcomer proactivity and a high frequency of interactions with insiders leads to rapid socialisation, which is preferable for organisations. This was partly confirmed by Rollag (2004, 2007), who found that the length of time during which newcomers were perceived as new by insiders was reduced when there was frequent interaction between the newcomer and insiders. The notion that socialisation tactics are adopted by newcomers and the organisation is common in the literature, but Cooper-Thomas (2009) suggests that insider tactics are also an important element of the socialisation process. In the context of cruise ship employment the issue of insider–newcomer interaction may be particularly important, but also rather different to those commonly observed, for two reasons. First, the unusual nature of the work setting means that newcomers are especially reliant on insiders to help them become orientated to the ship, and they are therefore likely to be very active in engaging with them. Second, the relatively high turnover of cruise ship employees means that the ratio of newcomers to insiders is unusually high, many insiders will have relatively short tenure (months rather than years), and the period taken to become an insider may be very short (weeks or even days, rather than months). The ideas of Louis and Reichers are closely linked to the work of Karl Weick on sensemaking, which is particularly relevant to the present study. Sensemaking is the process of construing identity in the context of others, relying on retrospective experiences that help to develop plausible images for prospective action indicating that sensemaking is ‘driven by plausibility rather than accuracy’ (Weick, 1995, p.17). Sensemaking is triggered by events which are unexpected, and stimulate a search to answer the question ‘What’s the story?’ (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). Entry to a new workplace is, therefore, a situation with considerable potential to trigger sensemaking, if reality is different from expectations (Blenkinsopp & Zdunczyk, 2005). It seems likely that unusual work settings, such as cruise ship employment, will be particularly likely to trigger sensemaking at entry and during organisational socialisation, and we, therefore,
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seek to explore how cruise ship employees made sense of their employment situation before, during and after their time on board.
Methodology This study was based on in-depth interviews with former cruise ship employees who had worked in nonmanagerial positions, which provided rich data about individuals’ perceptions and expectations relating to working on board. Our focus was on differences between prior expectations and the perceived reality once on board, and their awareness or realisation of these differences. Though the research design relied on retrospective data, this is not necessarily a methodological constraint. Blenkinsopp and Zdunczyk (2005) note Weick’s categorisation of sensemaking as retrospective in nature, and argue that specific questions about individuals’ past experiences can trigger sensemaking. As one respondent stated in relation to the question of when she realised there were behavioural differences between the new work setting and her ‘normal’ life at home: ‘I wouldn’t have realised if you hadn’t asked me’. As we envisaged undertaking relatively lengthy interviews, we decided to select a small sample. Based on post hoc analysis of the data generating utility of a typical qualitative research design, Guest (2006) identified that a sample size of 12 interviewees is sufficient to produce data saturation when dealing with a relatively homogenous population (in this case all held nonmanagerial positions on board, were the same nationality, and similar in age), consequently we adopted this sampling approach in our design. The 12 interviews, which were all recorded, were conducted via Skype in May 2010. Skype allowed us to overcome certain logistical difficulties (the participants were based throughout Germany, whereas the researchers were in the United Kingdom [UK]). Sturges and Hanrahan (2004) have tested the comparability of telephone and face-to-face interviews and concluded that telephone interviews did not reduce data quality, and in cases where personal information was required actually enhanced data quality. The average interview lasted one hour, whereas the shortest took 25 minutes and the longest 1.5 hours. At the start of the interview the nature of the study was briefly outlined, and participants were asked about their reasons for working on board, what they expected prior to joining the ship, and where these expectations came from. Following that, questions focused on the first day(s) on board, on how far their expectations had been fulfilled and what surprised them about about life and work on board. The interview contained questions regarding perceptions, behaviours and self changes during socialisation, at the point of time when employees felt that they had settled in. Finally, we asked about their current perceptions of working on board and included questions regarding hierarchy and building friendships on board, and the process of contacting home. Participants were German nationals, aged between 21 and 30 years old, and employed in nonmarine positions during their time on board (e.g., tour guide, chef, housekeeping, reception, waitressing). All had worked on board
for at least three months. The sample represented workers from five different cruise operators and seven different ships. The ships employed people from different nationalities, however, while some ships employed up to 30 different nationalities, others only employed people from Germany and the Philippines. Three respondents were employed as interns and frequently changed departments. We anticipated the interns might have different perceptions and expectations, but their responses were similar to the others — for all participants it was the unusual working environment of the cruise ship which was the key feature of working on board. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2006), adopting a constructivist standpoint, which focuses on ‘theoris[ing] the sociocultural contexts, and structural conditions, that enable the individual accounts that are provided’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 85). Constructivist approaches assume multiple interpretations depending on the research context and the position of the researcher (King, 2004). Following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) guidelines for thematic analysis, the interviews were transcribed, read and re-read. Initial codes were developed focusing on interesting features discovered in the data set. Subsequently, codes were clustered into potential themes which were labelled in a thematic map. Finally, themes were analysed and related back to the literature.
Findings Expectations and Mismatches with Reality With regard to their expectations, eight participants stated they had no prior expectations before going on board and were completely ‘unbiased’, while the other four stated that they already ‘knew how it would be’, and had ‘realistic’ expectations before going on board, including knowledge of the long working hours and limited privacy. I didn’t have expectations before I went on board. I was unbiased and I was well prepared of course. I knew that I had to share a cabin and all these things.
Participants claimed either that they had no expectations at all, or that they knew exactly how it would be, yet their claims were in all cases undermined by subsequent answers — it was clear that all of them had gone aboard with expectations about how it would be to live and work on a cruise ship. They identified various sources of expectations — friends, the media (‘I was always passionate about ships and watched the TV soap Love Boat and the German equivalent Traumschiff’), colleagues (‘every chef dreams about working on board at least once’), ‘cruisers’ (‘my neighbour had done a cruise and that inspired me’), culturally prevalent views (‘working on board is seen as something special’), education ( ‘I knew from my studies what it would be like to work on board’), and cruise ship operators’ job advertisements (‘Travel the world … and get paid for it!’ — [Cruise Jobs, 2010]). The predominant reason for applying for a ship based position was being able to ‘see the world’, or indeed, ‘getting paid to see the world’. Other motivating factors were to experience something ‘new’, to do ‘someVolume 18 2011
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thing unusual’, and also to get work experience on board ships, which was viewed as helpful in obtaining employment in a land-based role either with a cruise operator or leading hotel chain. Remuneration was not mentioned as the primary reason for working on board although after asking specifically, participants agreed that it is seen as a good opportunity to save. Participants identified a number of aspects of their initial experiences which surprised them, notably surprise at ‘how strict it was’, at their own ability to continue working and remain smiling even when exhausted, and at how different the crew area was from the guest area. They reported that on their arrival on board they were ‘overwhelmed’, ‘excited’, ‘nervous’ and ‘everything was new’ to them. Trying to interpret this difference, it appears that their prior expectations were either implicit and thus not readily reported to the interviewer, or so obvious that they didn’t think of them as expectations. Blenkinsopp and Zdunczyk (2005) observed a similar problem in their study, noting, for example, that a common unmet expectation on their participants’ first day at work was the absence of a place to work — something only recognisable as a prior expectation through its absence. Living on board represented a change and contrast to what participants were used to, with the cruise ship environment being objectively observed and subjectively experienced as very different to previous organisational settings in which they had worked. Louis (1980) proposed the contrast and change in the socialisation process is what produces the surprises which lead to sensemaking. These surprises experienced in relation to life on board reflect a mismatch between expectations and the perceived reality, and arose even though (as noted) they claimed to have few expectations (or believed their expectations had been realistic). Participants stated they felt well prepared for their new jobs, due to the information provided by the cruise operators or owing to proactive behaviour on the newcomers’ part, such as actively seeking information online. Their surprise appeared to arise from the dawning realisation of the considerable difference between ‘working on board’ and ‘living on board’. As one interviewee stated: Perhaps I was only well prepared for the job, I doubt that you can really be well prepared for the life on board.
Cruise ship workers, or employees in residence, as Weaver (2005, p. 176) calls them, distinguish between work and life, and ‘realistic’ expectations mainly focus on the cruise ship as a work environment highlighting the concrete aspects of working on board, such as the accommodation, rather than the intangible elements. In contrast, surprises result from tacit expectations and a mismatch with perceived reality focus on life/ living on board a cruise ship.
Awareness of the Unusual Sensemaking occurred on the basis of employees’ shared awareness of the unusual work context of cruise ship employment. Consistent with what Gibson (2006, p. 82
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98) has referred to as a ‘unique’ job (long hours and contracts, scale of ship, way of life, structures that support and inform crew), and the sea-based mobility of the ships isolating employees from their previous social lives, respondents’ awareness about the unusualness of cruise ship life was prevalent. Working and living on board was compared to being in a prison: When everybody is on board they shut the door and everybody has to be able to live and work with everybody else. There is no escape.
The contained space was the major feature mentioned by all interviewees. Weaver (2005) analysed how the contained space leads to revenue capture of passengers and, in line with Tracy (2000), even defined cruise ships as ‘total institutions’ or ‘environmental bubbles’, which share a ‘common feature [in] that they encapsulate individuals’ (Weaver, 2005, p. 169). In their strictest sense, total institutions strip people from their individuality and prior status (Louis, 1980). Although some characteristics of cruise ship employment conform to the idea of total institutions, employees freely choose to work on board. Being on board does create a spatio-temporal isolation of individuals from their ‘normal’ lives, but technological advances (such as Skype) mean that ships are nowadays much less isolated from the shore, and this allows for psychological escape from cruise ship life. The ‘unusualness’ of the environment confirms what Louis (1980) defined as ‘contrast’ and ‘change’, and triggers sensemaking (Weick, 1995). According to Wenger (1998, p. 54) ‘meaning exists neither in us, nor in the world, but in the dynamic relation of living in the world’, indicating the importance of insiders when making sense of an environment. Results showed that peers and friends, and also supervisors and guests embodied models of behaviour in terms of how to perform on the job and in relation to life on board in terms of what constitutes socially acceptable behaviour, thus the organisations’ insiders acted as sensegivers. The dynamics of meaning negotiation showed changes in newcomers’ perceptions and behaviour over their time on board, which is consistent with the organisational socialisation literature (e.g., Cable & Parsons, 2001; Haski-Leventhal & Bargal, 2008). Cruise ship workers described their experiences in broadly one of two ways. Sometimes they referred negatively to the initial overwhelming feeling experienced in the cruise ship environment, describing feelings of loneliness and tentativeness at the outset, which over time developed into a strong sense of belonging, with newcomers remarking they had become part of the ‘family’. However, in order to achieve this sense of connectedness, it had been necessary to adapt their social behaviour, and participants mentioned having to immerse themselves in social activities despite feeling physically exhausted. The other way in which this early experience of being overwhelmed was framed was through emphasising feelings of excitement and curiosity which, by taking part in social activities, made it easy to quickly become part of the group. ‘Belongingness’ was a key factor in making sense of the environment which was related to taking part in social activities and building
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friendships, but also to drinking behaviour. These two different ways of framing the early experience might seem likely to come from different participants, but the majority of employees appeared to have experienced both elements, referring to excitement as well as loneliness both of which were related to a sense of belonging. In retrospect, both elements demonstrated similar notions of negotiated meanings and viewed the cruise ship context as being ‘another world’.
Between worlds The ‘other worldness’ of the cruise ship produced a particular challenge for sensemaking. Initially viewing their life back home as normal, they inevitably encountered working and living on a cruise ship as ‘abnormal’ — that is, striking different to what they were used to. However, this represented an inherently unstable position. As we noted in the previous section, participants coped best with the shocks and surprises of the early socialisation period through taking steps to engage with the social aspects of the ship. To do so required a degree of acceptance of cruise ship life as normal, even though it differed markedly from life at home. They might, therefore, be expected to experience some degree of liminality — a sense of being betwixt and between two social worlds (Turner, 1995). In fact, although they were aware of the liminal nature of their situation, they appeared to deal with it by embracing the cruise ship world while remaining fully aware that they would return to their own world when they left the ship. Participants stated that they ‘lived in this world at the moment’ but that working on board had a transient character indicating that when they left the ship they returned to their old lives, which they identified as separate from cruise ship life. They noted that they lived ‘from one day to the next’ on board, without having to expend a great deal of effort to be part of both worlds simultaneously. However, differences were apparent with regard to employees contacting home; some cruise ship workers mentioned continual contact, while a large number stated that contact diminished in relation to organisational tenure. Thus for the majority, participating in home life diminished in relation to organisational tenure and the cruise ship environment substituted ‘home’, replacing family, friends and colleagues. A common explanation offered by participants for why their participation in the former world had diminished related to discrepancies in understanding the cruise ship world. Participants stated that peers could not understand the cruise ship life because they had not lived in it. They just didn’t understand the life on board. I didn’t want to listen to their mundane day to day problems. I was living in my world and I was happy there.
This shows that liminal perceptions were not only the result of a mismatch between cruise ship workers’ prior tacit expectations and their perceived reality, but also reveals a mismatch between cruise ship workers’ experiences and the perceptions of their peers outside the cruise ship environment. Interviewees felt that cruise
ship work is misconceived by peers; but rather than striving to deliver the ‘real’ picture of working on board, interviewees indicated the notion that it would be impossible for peers to understand this world. Liminality construction for the cruise ship worker was twofold: on the one hand the different world displayed captivity, indicating acceptance of strict rules and a fixed role in a work context, which is marked by contained space. Captivity not only designates cruise ship work, but also life and employees stated the need to ‘function’ on and off duty, indicating limitations for self-fulfilment. The inability to ‘escape’ also indicated a lack of alternatives for the employee, in a social context as well as a physical one. Several interviewees observed that the distance from ‘real’ life led them to consider the cruise ship world as being an artificial environment, which was marked by luke-warm, functional friendships. Interviewees agreed that it is not impossible to make real friends on board, however a common view was that while you might refer to some of the people you meet on board as friends, these friendships do not reflect those formed in one’s real life. They are rather functional and often developed due to: the lack of alternatives, the limited nature of the time available to get to know people who you really feel connected with, and the contained space on board. One interviewee neatly captured the views expressed by many participants: Friendships on board are lukewarm, I doubt that real friendships exist. Of course you like one person more than another, and I’m not saying that it isn’t possible [to make real friends] but I would call it a friendship of convenience.
There was consistency of views on friendships among participants, but we note numerous statements on the Facebook group, ‘Working on board cruise ships’, which make reference to long lasting friendships made between people who met on board. It is obviously difficult to judge the reliability of such data but it suggests further research might be worthwhile. Aside from the captive side of cruise ship life, it also displayed freedom, indicating the possibility to experiment with atypical behaviour owing to the distance or absence from normality. Cruise ship workers stated that freedom was experienced by being distanced from their previous social lives; and they did not connect with this aforementioned life unless they made a concerted personal effort to do so. Trying out identities in this world was also apparent; being away from home but also being safe and separated from former problems enabled experimentation. As Garsten (1999) stated in relation to temporal, liminal work; ‘it may be seen as a seedbed of cultural creativity, where old perspectives on work and subjectivity are contested and new ones created’ (p. 601). Retrospective sensemaking, therefore, facilitated identity construction that emphasised a type of on board identity in which liminality discourse is used as a strategy for rationalising behaviour. Interestingly, freedom and captivity were not viewed as isolated from one another but were seen to operate in conjunction with each other. In what at first glance Volume 18 2011
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appears like Orwellian doublethink, they suggested that the controls and limits of the ship actually created a sense of freedom: Life on board is carefree and secure, in the evenings you know how the next day will be, you know your tasks, the board program, you know what you will wear, you don’t have to iron, you don’t have to go shopping, you don’t have to cook. Whether you want it or not everything is taken care of. And if you don’t want to you don’t have to confront yourself with your real life. If you have problems at home you can leave them there, you don’t have to take them with you on board.
The discrepancy between two worlds highlights the possibility of reality shocks when leaving the carefree environment and returning home, indicating a continuous process of sensemaking. Several interviewees experienced what Gullahorn and Gullahorn (1963) referred to as reverse culture shock, the process of re-assimilating to normality resulting from expectations of returning to an unchanged normality as an unchanged individual (Gaw, 2000), which is often not the case. Although reverse culture shock in most cases did not cause personal problems for the individual, employees needed re-socialisation back to constructed normality and reverse culture shocks contributed to the retrospective realisation of liminality. An interesting insight here is that while the situation is perceived as an unusual one and is recognised as such at the time on board, it is actually only fully recognised when cruise ship workers return to normality. For example, as one interviewee stated in regard to friendship on board: When I was on board I thought I was in a different world and I thought that I had made friends for life, I didn’t want to leave the ship because I didn’t want to leave the people. But now I think, whether or not you made real friends is something that you can only see after you have returned home and have met these people in a normal environment. When you see your old friends at home you have forgotten your friends on board. I have contact with two people although I thought that I found so many good friends when I left the ship.
The cruise ship world replaced parts of family and friends while on board, and interviewees talked about being part of a large community, and having lots of friends. However, they reflected that after leaving the ship they had stayed in contact with very few people, typically one or two only. The interesting point here is that realisation of for example ‘friendships of convenience’ was not epiphanic on board but happened, to a large extent, after the individual had returned to normality (‘I wouldn’t have realised if you hadn’t have asked me’). Therefore, the process of sensemaking is partly retrospective in the sense that it is a response to shocks and surprises and how employees make sense of them, but also in the sense that for many employees it is not until they leave the cruise ship environment and are on land that they realise how different life on board was. Sensemaking draws not only upon their immediate context (the ship) but also upon their prior tacit expectations and their engagement (real and envisaged) with significant others who are and are not on board, such as friends and family. Our findings suggest that the sense84
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making process produces a more balanced view of the nature of this work, incorporating both positive and negative elements. Despite this, findings suggest that because of the impossibility of others understanding the cruise ship world without having experienced it themselves, returning workers tend to stress the positive, and thus perpetuate the more positive image of cruise ship employment to their peers.
Addiction to Working On board All participants felt strongly connected to the cruise ships they had worked on, reporting a strong sense of nostalgia, a desire to return and wanderlust, especially if they see ‘their’ ship in port, or even on TV: Working on board is an addiction and it is hard to say no. It is a parallel world to your ‘real’ world and if you don’t have something fixed at home that gives you stability in life, it is hard to leave the ship.
The nostalgia appeared to arise from reverse culture shocks, and the notion that the cruise ship environment will forever remain another world, accessible only to themselves and to fellow cruise ship workers. The metaphors of cruise ship work/life as a virus or an addiction were frequently invoked by employees and many felt the desire to go back, although several interviewees stated that they would not return due to their current circumstances. Cruise ship work was viewed as ‘a great experience’, ‘something I’m glad that I did’ but also something which ‘you cannot do your whole life’ because of its unusual features.
Conclusions Before exploring the implications of our study, we need to acknowledge a number of limitations. The study was undertaken with a relatively small sample and although, as Guest (2006) suggests, this appears to provide for data saturation it would be useful to undertake similar research with a larger and more diverse sample; for example, different nationalities, different backgrounds and levels of prior experience, and different types of employment on board. It certainly seems likely that the experience will be different for employees (e.g., those in managerial roles, the entertainment staff, and the marine staff) because of their different motivations for working on board and the different working conditions they experience on board (accommodation, autonomy/freedom). This study examined newcomers’ sensemaking experiences on board cruise ships. Findings showed that although participants stated they had no prior expectations, or had realistic expectations, before joining the ship, their responses to direct questions about surprises they encountered on joining the ship showed they had many tacit expectations. The newcomers’ sensemaking of the subjective reality of the cruise ship environment resulted from a mismatch between these tacit expectations and experienced reality, highlighted through reality shocks when arriving on board. Participants articulated a shared awareness of the unusualness of working on board which was portrayed as secure and carefree. Indepth interviews showed the interesting notion that freedom and captivity were not seen as being opposites,
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instead captivity created a sense of security that enabled the cruise ship worker to adopt an on-board identity, which may be quite different to their identity on shore. Participants differentiated between work and life, revealing a preparation which led to a realistic picture of the job. They reported difficulties in preparing for life on board and questioned the possibility in having realistic expectations of the life on board. The perceived unusualness of the cruise ship environment led them to apply the metaphorical lens of liminality, indicating a different world, one which is impossible for others to understand. This led them to experience reverse culture shocks when returning home, resulting from expectations of returning to an unchanged normality as an unchanged individual. Interestingly, it was not until they had left the cruise ship environment that they fully realised how different it was from normality. The mismatch between peers’ expectations and the employees’ subjectively defined reality supported nostalgia towards working on board and cruise ship workers shared that notion that working on board is a ‘good experience’. Perhaps the most important contribution of this study is the significance of the workers’ construction of the cruise ship as another world which had implications for the organisational socialisation process. Their sense of coming from one world (home) to the other world of the ship, knowing all the while that they will return, is rather different to the more linear movement from newcomer to insider assumed in the organisational socialisation literature. Further exploration is needed here in how employees construct their other worldness. In addition, the relatively short employment cycles of cruise ship workers are becoming less unusual, as more and more workers find themselves employed on a short-term or project basis, so the socialisation processes we observed for cruise ship workers may become more relevant to other occupational groups. This article provides cruise operators with an insight into employee experiences of working on board and how they make sense of it. This article has shown that the cruise ship environment constituted change and contrast for employees in relation to their previous experiences. Whereas employees related change, the objective difference of the work setting and the specifics of the job, towards the ‘work’ on board, the life on board was marked by contrast. Employees stated that they felt well prepared for their jobs, indicating positive experiences with cruise operators preparation regarding the jobs as well as objective specifics of the surroundings (e.g., where do I wash on board, what does my cabin look like). However, future cruise operators should provide as many information as possible regarding change (e.g., experience reports from cruise ship employees). Although several web sites exist where employees discuss their onboard experiences, most focus on general experiences, not on specifics with specific cruise operators/ships. Web sites from cruise operators for future crew would allow people to get to know each other beforehand and in a forum get answers from the right people before they actually join the ship.
Another point would be for cruise operators to provide good access to the Internet which eases crew members to be part of two worlds simultaneously rather than create the notion of being betwixt and between worlds. Although newer ships offer Internet facilities for crew members, it is not the general rule on board every ship yet. However, further research is needed here in order to analyse the impact of technology on cruise ship life of being betwixt and between worlds — it is possible that it may actually be advantageous to be able to immerse oneself in the onboard world, and being in touch with the world back on shore may make it more difficult to settle in. Weick (1995) stresses that sensemaking is a retrospective process in nature, so it has been useful in the present study to gather retrospective accounts. However, it would also be interesting to explore organisational socialisation of cruise ship employees through gathering contemporaneous accounts of their experiences, perhaps through a longitudinal ethnographic study. This would also respond to the call from Papathanassis and Beckmann (2011) for wider studies of ‘social life and human behaviour’ on board cruise ships in order to provide greater understanding of issue such as sensemaking and identity. Future research might also examine the importance of person-organisation fit, focusing on who is working on board and who is most suitable for this environment, an important issue for cruise companies (and prospective employees), as it could reduce employee turnover by ensuring they hire the ‘right’ people.
References Ashforth, B.E., & Saks, A.M. (1996). Socialization tactics: Longitudinal effects on newcomer adjustment. Academy of Management Journal, 39(1), 149–178. Ashforth, B.E., Sluss, D.M., & Harrison, S.H. (2007). Socialization in organizational Contexts. International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 22, 1–70. Bauer, T.N., Morrison, E.W., & Callister, R.R. (1998). Organizational socialization: A review and directions for future research. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 16, 149–214. Bauer, T.N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D.M., & Tucker, S. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 707–72l. Blenkinsopp, J., & Zdunczyk, K. (2005). Making sense of mistakes in managerial careers. Career Development International, 10(5), 359–374. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101. Cable, D.M., & Parsons, C.K. (2001). Socialization tactics and personorganization fit. Personnel Psychology, 54, 1–23. Chao, G.T., O’Leary-Kelly, H.J., Wolf, S., Klein, H.J., & Gardner, P.D. (1994). Organizational socialization: Its content and consequences. Journal of Applied Sciences, 79, 730774. Cooper-Thomas, H., & Anderson, N. (2002). Newcomer adjustment: The relationship between tactics. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 75, 423–437. Cooper-Thomas, H.D., & Anderson, N. (2006). Organizational socialization: A new theoretical model and recommendations for future research and HRM practices in organizations. Journal of Management Psychology, 21(6), 492–516. Volume 18 2011
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Papathanassis, A., & Beckmann, I. (2011). Assessing the ‘poverty of cruise theory’ hypothesis. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(1), 153–174. Reichers, A.E. (1987). An interactionist perspective on newcomer socialisation rates. The Academy of Management Review, 12(2), 278–287. Rollag, K. (2004). The impact of relative tenure on newcomer socialization dynamics. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(7), 853–872. Rollag, K. (2007). Defining the term ‘new’ in new employee research. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80, 63–75. Saks, A.M., Uggerslev, K.L., & Fassina, N.E. (2007). Socialization tactics and newcomer adjustment: A meta-analytic review and test of a model. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 70(3), 413–446. Schneider, B. (1987). The people make the place. Personnel Psychology, 40, 437–453. Sturges, J.E., & Hanrahan, K.J. (2004). Comparing telephone and faceto-face qualitative interviewing : A research note. Qualitative Research, 4(1). 107-118. Tracy, S.J. (2000). Becoming a character for commerce. Management Communication Quarterly, 14(1), 90–128. Turner, V.W. (1995). The ritual process. Structure and anti-structure. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter. Van Maanen, J., & Schein, E.H. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. Research in Organizational Behavior, 1, 209–264. Weaver, A. (2005). Spaces of containment and revenue capture: ‘Supersized’ cruise ships as mobile tourism enclaves. Tourism Geographies, 7(2), 165–184. Weick, K.E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Weick, K.E., Sutcliffe, K.M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking, Organization Science, 16(4), 409–421. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
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Appendix A
Interview questions Prior to joining the ship: Why did you want to work on board? Where did you get the idea from to apply for a position on board a cruise ship? How did you think it will be before you joined the ship? Why did you think that? How did your peers (parents, friends, colleagues) react when you told them that you were going to work on board a cruise ship? What do your peers (parents, friends, colleagues) think about working on board? How would you describe working on board?
Joining the ship: Please describe your first day on board. How did you feel? What was different than you expected? What was just as you expected? What surprised you in the beginning? Have your expectations been met? When you had settled in:
When did you feel settled in? Was there a specific event when you realised that you had settled in? What did you think about working on board? How did you feel when you had settled in? How did you become a member of a group? How did you react towards newcomers? What did you think? Has your attitude towards working on board changed? Did you behave different onboard than you normally do at home? If yes, how and when did you realise that? Have your peers told you that you have changed?
When you returned home: Please describe how it was when you returned home. What picture did your peers get from working on board based on your stories?
Now: What do you think now when you think back about your time on board? What did you like most? What did you like least? Would you like to work onboard again? What do you think when you see a cruise ship/the ship you were working on? Why do you think people are working on board ships for years?
Generally: What did you learn during your time on board? What do you think about: Friendships on board With how many people are you still in contact with? How many people did you meet after your time on board? Acceptance by colleagues Uniform (impact on your life?) Contacting home Work-life balance Stress Influence of passengers on your life Illness on board Hierarchy Is working on board a lifestyle? Did working on board leave a mark on your life? Someone said that you can only understand the life when you have lived it. Would you agree? Volume 18 2011
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‘New Kids on the Ship’: Organisational Socialisation and Sensemaking of New Entrants to Cruise Ship Employment
Imke Matuszewski and John Blenkinsopp
Drawing upon the organisational socialisation and sensemaking literatures, this article examines the implica-
Teesside University Business School, United Kingdom
reality of working on board. The study reveals how individuals make sense of this mismatch and how they
tions of potential mismatches between prospective cruise workers’ perceptions and their subjectively defined define their onboard experiences. Participants, who were former cruise ship workers, were asked about their perceptions and expectations relating to working on board — before joining the ship, while on board and after returning home. Though claiming to have few prior expectations, direct questions about surprises when joining the ship highlighted that participants had tacit expectations. Participants differentiated between working and living on board, and although their expectations of work were realistic, their expectations of life on board proved unrealistic. Their awareness of being in an unusual working environment led them to describe the cruise ship as another world, which was described as impossible for people who had not lived in that world to understand. The liminality of their situation, betwixt and between two social worlds, appeared an important feature of their sensemaking, although in many cases it was not until they returned home that they fully recognised this. This revealed a mismatch not only between their tacit expectations and experienced reality, but also between the cruise ship workers and their peers and family back on land. Reflecting on their return home, participants displayed a degree of nostalgia for working on board, and romanticised about cruise ship life which was portrayed as carefree and secure, involving both freedom and captivity.
Keywords: cruise ship employment, cruise tourism, organisational socialisation, sensemaking
Correspondence Imke Matuszewski, Teesside University Business School, Borough Road, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]
much in common in terms of similar work and social settings, and are distinctly different from the other occupations on board. Whereas many other staff on board are ‘professional mariners’, the cruise ship workers are typically experienced in their occupation but new to the experience of living and working on a ship, and Gibson (2006) suggests they can be overwhelmed by this new environment. To examine how cruise ship employees make sense of working on board, which is ‘partially under the control of expectations’ (Weick, 1995, p. 5) we draw upon the literature on organisational socialisation and sensemaking.
Literature Review Organisational socialisation (OS) has been defined as ‘the process by which one is taught and learns “the ropes” of a particular organisational role’ (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979, p. 211), focusing on how individuals adapt to performance proficiency, people, politics, language, organisational goals and values and history of an organisation (Chao, O’Leary-Kelly, Wolf, Klein, & Gardner, 1994). Recent studies have shown that an organisation’s culture is transmitted through the socialisation of employees (Bauer, Morrison, & Callister, 1998), thus in order to ‘survive’, as Ashforth, Sluss, and Harrison (2007) put it, an employee has to gain an understanding of the func-
Matuszewski, I., & Blenkinsopp, J. (2011). ‘New kids on the ship’: Organisational socialisation and sensemaking of new entrants to cruise ship employment. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 18, 79–87. DOI 10.1375/jhtm.18.1.79
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The increased economic importance of the cruise industry has led to increased attention from business and management researchers, but so far there has been little focus on organisational behaviour. A systematic literature review of cruise-related research (Papathanassis & Beckmann, 2011) found the majority of research on cruise ship employment focuses on health and safety issues. This seems surprising — cruise ships are unusual workplaces, so we cannot assume that existing theory and research on organisational behaviour will be applicable to such settings. It is, therefore, important to understand how employees make sense of, and respond to, this unusual working environment. Of greatest interest are likely to be the cruise ship workers, who work in a range of occupations (e.g., waiters, receptionists, chefs, tour guides, cleaners). Although cruise ship workers do a variety of jobs, they can be seen to form a single occupational community (Lee-Ross, 2008) as their jobs have
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tioning of and ‘how to function’ in the organisation (Cooper-Thomas & Anderson, 2006, p. 493), and has to ‘gain a sense of what the organisation is all about and why it’s important, as well as their place within it’ (Ashforth et al., 2007, p. 2). Most traditional socialisation research has focused on the development and application of organisational tactics on socialisation (Ashforth & Saks, 1996; Cable & Parson, 2001; Cooper-Thomas & Anderson, 2002; Saks, Uggerslev, & Fassina, 2007), drawing upon a range of nonmutually exclusive tactics originally identified by Van Maanen and Schein (1979). The emphasis on studying organisational socialisation from a tactics perspective has been criticised for its excessive focus on the role of the organisation while neglecting the role of the individual employee. Organisational newcomers do not solely react to tactics, but socially construct their identities in the organisation through interacting with others (Schneider, 1987). The historical neglect of the role of the newcomer led researchers to advocate an interactionist perspective on organisational socialisation, which stimulated research on newcomer proactivity (Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, & Tucker, 2007; Cooper-Thomas 2009; Crant, 2000; Morrison, 1993; Saks et al., 2007), focusing on how newcomers actively shape their environment and subjectively define their situation within their work context. One of the most influential contributions to a more individual-focused approach to OS was that of Louis (1980), who focused on sensemaking during organisational entry, comprehending past experiences that help to explain surprises during entering a new organisation. She developed a model focusing on how individuals cope with their new organisational environments and make sense of it, thus attributing meaning to surprises occurring at organisational entry. Her cyclical model suggests that when newcomers enter a new organisational setting they have prior expectations about the new work setting, and if these expectations are unmet, they experience ‘shocks and surprises’. According to Louis (1980) surprises are based on the concepts of change and contrast, wherein change refers to the objective difference between the old and the new organisational setting (e.g., location or working conditions), and contrast focuses on the subjectively experienced conditions of this new setting ‘by which newcomers characterise and otherwise define the situation’ (p. 244). Both change and contrast lead to surprise which is defined as the ‘difference between an individual’s anticipations and subsequent experiences in the new setting’ (p. 237). Surprises can be experienced either positively or negatively, and consciously or unconsciously. Furthermore, newcomers attribute meaning to surprises, on which basis they form their behavioural responses. Louis (1980) stresses that newcomers’ use past experiences to compare, interpret and evaluate the new setting, so having limited knowledge about the situation (when compared to insiders), they must interpret and construct their new situation based on initial experiences. However, over time they develop an understanding and are able to interpret meanings attached to events by supervisors and others. Sensemaking, in which newcomers attribute 80
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meaning to the new organisation, occurs through the interplay of past experience, personal characteristics, local interpretation schemes and others’ interpretations. This enables the newcomer to select behavioural responses as well as to update expectations and views of the new organisational setting. Reichers (1987) focuses on the development of a situational identity and the attachment of meanings to organisational reality. This perspective places the primary importance of attributing meaning on the interaction between the individual and the situation. This view suggests that, whilst reality and meanings are socially constructed, individuals are not, in their deepest sense, separable from their environments — ‘individuals and situations mutually determine each other’ (p. 279). Reichers (1987) suggests past research has neglected the impact of relationships with insiders, which he argues is the primary vehicle of socialisation. His model proposes that the rate of socialisation depends on newcomer and insider interaction, suggesting that high newcomer proactivity and a high frequency of interactions with insiders leads to rapid socialisation, which is preferable for organisations. This was partly confirmed by Rollag (2004, 2007), who found that the length of time during which newcomers were perceived as new by insiders was reduced when there was frequent interaction between the newcomer and insiders. The notion that socialisation tactics are adopted by newcomers and the organisation is common in the literature, but Cooper-Thomas (2009) suggests that insider tactics are also an important element of the socialisation process. In the context of cruise ship employment the issue of insider–newcomer interaction may be particularly important, but also rather different to those commonly observed, for two reasons. First, the unusual nature of the work setting means that newcomers are especially reliant on insiders to help them become orientated to the ship, and they are therefore likely to be very active in engaging with them. Second, the relatively high turnover of cruise ship employees means that the ratio of newcomers to insiders is unusually high, many insiders will have relatively short tenure (months rather than years), and the period taken to become an insider may be very short (weeks or even days, rather than months). The ideas of Louis and Reichers are closely linked to the work of Karl Weick on sensemaking, which is particularly relevant to the present study. Sensemaking is the process of construing identity in the context of others, relying on retrospective experiences that help to develop plausible images for prospective action indicating that sensemaking is ‘driven by plausibility rather than accuracy’ (Weick, 1995, p.17). Sensemaking is triggered by events which are unexpected, and stimulate a search to answer the question ‘What’s the story?’ (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). Entry to a new workplace is, therefore, a situation with considerable potential to trigger sensemaking, if reality is different from expectations (Blenkinsopp & Zdunczyk, 2005). It seems likely that unusual work settings, such as cruise ship employment, will be particularly likely to trigger sensemaking at entry and during organisational socialisation, and we, therefore,
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seek to explore how cruise ship employees made sense of their employment situation before, during and after their time on board.
Methodology This study was based on in-depth interviews with former cruise ship employees who had worked in nonmanagerial positions, which provided rich data about individuals’ perceptions and expectations relating to working on board. Our focus was on differences between prior expectations and the perceived reality once on board, and their awareness or realisation of these differences. Though the research design relied on retrospective data, this is not necessarily a methodological constraint. Blenkinsopp and Zdunczyk (2005) note Weick’s categorisation of sensemaking as retrospective in nature, and argue that specific questions about individuals’ past experiences can trigger sensemaking. As one respondent stated in relation to the question of when she realised there were behavioural differences between the new work setting and her ‘normal’ life at home: ‘I wouldn’t have realised if you hadn’t asked me’. As we envisaged undertaking relatively lengthy interviews, we decided to select a small sample. Based on post hoc analysis of the data generating utility of a typical qualitative research design, Guest (2006) identified that a sample size of 12 interviewees is sufficient to produce data saturation when dealing with a relatively homogenous population (in this case all held nonmanagerial positions on board, were the same nationality, and similar in age), consequently we adopted this sampling approach in our design. The 12 interviews, which were all recorded, were conducted via Skype in May 2010. Skype allowed us to overcome certain logistical difficulties (the participants were based throughout Germany, whereas the researchers were in the United Kingdom [UK]). Sturges and Hanrahan (2004) have tested the comparability of telephone and face-to-face interviews and concluded that telephone interviews did not reduce data quality, and in cases where personal information was required actually enhanced data quality. The average interview lasted one hour, whereas the shortest took 25 minutes and the longest 1.5 hours. At the start of the interview the nature of the study was briefly outlined, and participants were asked about their reasons for working on board, what they expected prior to joining the ship, and where these expectations came from. Following that, questions focused on the first day(s) on board, on how far their expectations had been fulfilled and what surprised them about about life and work on board. The interview contained questions regarding perceptions, behaviours and self changes during socialisation, at the point of time when employees felt that they had settled in. Finally, we asked about their current perceptions of working on board and included questions regarding hierarchy and building friendships on board, and the process of contacting home. Participants were German nationals, aged between 21 and 30 years old, and employed in nonmarine positions during their time on board (e.g., tour guide, chef, housekeeping, reception, waitressing). All had worked on board
for at least three months. The sample represented workers from five different cruise operators and seven different ships. The ships employed people from different nationalities, however, while some ships employed up to 30 different nationalities, others only employed people from Germany and the Philippines. Three respondents were employed as interns and frequently changed departments. We anticipated the interns might have different perceptions and expectations, but their responses were similar to the others — for all participants it was the unusual working environment of the cruise ship which was the key feature of working on board. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2006), adopting a constructivist standpoint, which focuses on ‘theoris[ing] the sociocultural contexts, and structural conditions, that enable the individual accounts that are provided’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 85). Constructivist approaches assume multiple interpretations depending on the research context and the position of the researcher (King, 2004). Following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) guidelines for thematic analysis, the interviews were transcribed, read and re-read. Initial codes were developed focusing on interesting features discovered in the data set. Subsequently, codes were clustered into potential themes which were labelled in a thematic map. Finally, themes were analysed and related back to the literature.
Findings Expectations and Mismatches with Reality With regard to their expectations, eight participants stated they had no prior expectations before going on board and were completely ‘unbiased’, while the other four stated that they already ‘knew how it would be’, and had ‘realistic’ expectations before going on board, including knowledge of the long working hours and limited privacy. I didn’t have expectations before I went on board. I was unbiased and I was well prepared of course. I knew that I had to share a cabin and all these things.
Participants claimed either that they had no expectations at all, or that they knew exactly how it would be, yet their claims were in all cases undermined by subsequent answers — it was clear that all of them had gone aboard with expectations about how it would be to live and work on a cruise ship. They identified various sources of expectations — friends, the media (‘I was always passionate about ships and watched the TV soap Love Boat and the German equivalent Traumschiff’), colleagues (‘every chef dreams about working on board at least once’), ‘cruisers’ (‘my neighbour had done a cruise and that inspired me’), culturally prevalent views (‘working on board is seen as something special’), education ( ‘I knew from my studies what it would be like to work on board’), and cruise ship operators’ job advertisements (‘Travel the world … and get paid for it!’ — [Cruise Jobs, 2010]). The predominant reason for applying for a ship based position was being able to ‘see the world’, or indeed, ‘getting paid to see the world’. Other motivating factors were to experience something ‘new’, to do ‘someVolume 18 2011
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thing unusual’, and also to get work experience on board ships, which was viewed as helpful in obtaining employment in a land-based role either with a cruise operator or leading hotel chain. Remuneration was not mentioned as the primary reason for working on board although after asking specifically, participants agreed that it is seen as a good opportunity to save. Participants identified a number of aspects of their initial experiences which surprised them, notably surprise at ‘how strict it was’, at their own ability to continue working and remain smiling even when exhausted, and at how different the crew area was from the guest area. They reported that on their arrival on board they were ‘overwhelmed’, ‘excited’, ‘nervous’ and ‘everything was new’ to them. Trying to interpret this difference, it appears that their prior expectations were either implicit and thus not readily reported to the interviewer, or so obvious that they didn’t think of them as expectations. Blenkinsopp and Zdunczyk (2005) observed a similar problem in their study, noting, for example, that a common unmet expectation on their participants’ first day at work was the absence of a place to work — something only recognisable as a prior expectation through its absence. Living on board represented a change and contrast to what participants were used to, with the cruise ship environment being objectively observed and subjectively experienced as very different to previous organisational settings in which they had worked. Louis (1980) proposed the contrast and change in the socialisation process is what produces the surprises which lead to sensemaking. These surprises experienced in relation to life on board reflect a mismatch between expectations and the perceived reality, and arose even though (as noted) they claimed to have few expectations (or believed their expectations had been realistic). Participants stated they felt well prepared for their new jobs, due to the information provided by the cruise operators or owing to proactive behaviour on the newcomers’ part, such as actively seeking information online. Their surprise appeared to arise from the dawning realisation of the considerable difference between ‘working on board’ and ‘living on board’. As one interviewee stated: Perhaps I was only well prepared for the job, I doubt that you can really be well prepared for the life on board.
Cruise ship workers, or employees in residence, as Weaver (2005, p. 176) calls them, distinguish between work and life, and ‘realistic’ expectations mainly focus on the cruise ship as a work environment highlighting the concrete aspects of working on board, such as the accommodation, rather than the intangible elements. In contrast, surprises result from tacit expectations and a mismatch with perceived reality focus on life/ living on board a cruise ship.
Awareness of the Unusual Sensemaking occurred on the basis of employees’ shared awareness of the unusual work context of cruise ship employment. Consistent with what Gibson (2006, p. 82
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98) has referred to as a ‘unique’ job (long hours and contracts, scale of ship, way of life, structures that support and inform crew), and the sea-based mobility of the ships isolating employees from their previous social lives, respondents’ awareness about the unusualness of cruise ship life was prevalent. Working and living on board was compared to being in a prison: When everybody is on board they shut the door and everybody has to be able to live and work with everybody else. There is no escape.
The contained space was the major feature mentioned by all interviewees. Weaver (2005) analysed how the contained space leads to revenue capture of passengers and, in line with Tracy (2000), even defined cruise ships as ‘total institutions’ or ‘environmental bubbles’, which share a ‘common feature [in] that they encapsulate individuals’ (Weaver, 2005, p. 169). In their strictest sense, total institutions strip people from their individuality and prior status (Louis, 1980). Although some characteristics of cruise ship employment conform to the idea of total institutions, employees freely choose to work on board. Being on board does create a spatio-temporal isolation of individuals from their ‘normal’ lives, but technological advances (such as Skype) mean that ships are nowadays much less isolated from the shore, and this allows for psychological escape from cruise ship life. The ‘unusualness’ of the environment confirms what Louis (1980) defined as ‘contrast’ and ‘change’, and triggers sensemaking (Weick, 1995). According to Wenger (1998, p. 54) ‘meaning exists neither in us, nor in the world, but in the dynamic relation of living in the world’, indicating the importance of insiders when making sense of an environment. Results showed that peers and friends, and also supervisors and guests embodied models of behaviour in terms of how to perform on the job and in relation to life on board in terms of what constitutes socially acceptable behaviour, thus the organisations’ insiders acted as sensegivers. The dynamics of meaning negotiation showed changes in newcomers’ perceptions and behaviour over their time on board, which is consistent with the organisational socialisation literature (e.g., Cable & Parsons, 2001; Haski-Leventhal & Bargal, 2008). Cruise ship workers described their experiences in broadly one of two ways. Sometimes they referred negatively to the initial overwhelming feeling experienced in the cruise ship environment, describing feelings of loneliness and tentativeness at the outset, which over time developed into a strong sense of belonging, with newcomers remarking they had become part of the ‘family’. However, in order to achieve this sense of connectedness, it had been necessary to adapt their social behaviour, and participants mentioned having to immerse themselves in social activities despite feeling physically exhausted. The other way in which this early experience of being overwhelmed was framed was through emphasising feelings of excitement and curiosity which, by taking part in social activities, made it easy to quickly become part of the group. ‘Belongingness’ was a key factor in making sense of the environment which was related to taking part in social activities and building
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friendships, but also to drinking behaviour. These two different ways of framing the early experience might seem likely to come from different participants, but the majority of employees appeared to have experienced both elements, referring to excitement as well as loneliness both of which were related to a sense of belonging. In retrospect, both elements demonstrated similar notions of negotiated meanings and viewed the cruise ship context as being ‘another world’.
Between worlds The ‘other worldness’ of the cruise ship produced a particular challenge for sensemaking. Initially viewing their life back home as normal, they inevitably encountered working and living on a cruise ship as ‘abnormal’ — that is, striking different to what they were used to. However, this represented an inherently unstable position. As we noted in the previous section, participants coped best with the shocks and surprises of the early socialisation period through taking steps to engage with the social aspects of the ship. To do so required a degree of acceptance of cruise ship life as normal, even though it differed markedly from life at home. They might, therefore, be expected to experience some degree of liminality — a sense of being betwixt and between two social worlds (Turner, 1995). In fact, although they were aware of the liminal nature of their situation, they appeared to deal with it by embracing the cruise ship world while remaining fully aware that they would return to their own world when they left the ship. Participants stated that they ‘lived in this world at the moment’ but that working on board had a transient character indicating that when they left the ship they returned to their old lives, which they identified as separate from cruise ship life. They noted that they lived ‘from one day to the next’ on board, without having to expend a great deal of effort to be part of both worlds simultaneously. However, differences were apparent with regard to employees contacting home; some cruise ship workers mentioned continual contact, while a large number stated that contact diminished in relation to organisational tenure. Thus for the majority, participating in home life diminished in relation to organisational tenure and the cruise ship environment substituted ‘home’, replacing family, friends and colleagues. A common explanation offered by participants for why their participation in the former world had diminished related to discrepancies in understanding the cruise ship world. Participants stated that peers could not understand the cruise ship life because they had not lived in it. They just didn’t understand the life on board. I didn’t want to listen to their mundane day to day problems. I was living in my world and I was happy there.
This shows that liminal perceptions were not only the result of a mismatch between cruise ship workers’ prior tacit expectations and their perceived reality, but also reveals a mismatch between cruise ship workers’ experiences and the perceptions of their peers outside the cruise ship environment. Interviewees felt that cruise
ship work is misconceived by peers; but rather than striving to deliver the ‘real’ picture of working on board, interviewees indicated the notion that it would be impossible for peers to understand this world. Liminality construction for the cruise ship worker was twofold: on the one hand the different world displayed captivity, indicating acceptance of strict rules and a fixed role in a work context, which is marked by contained space. Captivity not only designates cruise ship work, but also life and employees stated the need to ‘function’ on and off duty, indicating limitations for self-fulfilment. The inability to ‘escape’ also indicated a lack of alternatives for the employee, in a social context as well as a physical one. Several interviewees observed that the distance from ‘real’ life led them to consider the cruise ship world as being an artificial environment, which was marked by luke-warm, functional friendships. Interviewees agreed that it is not impossible to make real friends on board, however a common view was that while you might refer to some of the people you meet on board as friends, these friendships do not reflect those formed in one’s real life. They are rather functional and often developed due to: the lack of alternatives, the limited nature of the time available to get to know people who you really feel connected with, and the contained space on board. One interviewee neatly captured the views expressed by many participants: Friendships on board are lukewarm, I doubt that real friendships exist. Of course you like one person more than another, and I’m not saying that it isn’t possible [to make real friends] but I would call it a friendship of convenience.
There was consistency of views on friendships among participants, but we note numerous statements on the Facebook group, ‘Working on board cruise ships’, which make reference to long lasting friendships made between people who met on board. It is obviously difficult to judge the reliability of such data but it suggests further research might be worthwhile. Aside from the captive side of cruise ship life, it also displayed freedom, indicating the possibility to experiment with atypical behaviour owing to the distance or absence from normality. Cruise ship workers stated that freedom was experienced by being distanced from their previous social lives; and they did not connect with this aforementioned life unless they made a concerted personal effort to do so. Trying out identities in this world was also apparent; being away from home but also being safe and separated from former problems enabled experimentation. As Garsten (1999) stated in relation to temporal, liminal work; ‘it may be seen as a seedbed of cultural creativity, where old perspectives on work and subjectivity are contested and new ones created’ (p. 601). Retrospective sensemaking, therefore, facilitated identity construction that emphasised a type of on board identity in which liminality discourse is used as a strategy for rationalising behaviour. Interestingly, freedom and captivity were not viewed as isolated from one another but were seen to operate in conjunction with each other. In what at first glance Volume 18 2011
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appears like Orwellian doublethink, they suggested that the controls and limits of the ship actually created a sense of freedom: Life on board is carefree and secure, in the evenings you know how the next day will be, you know your tasks, the board program, you know what you will wear, you don’t have to iron, you don’t have to go shopping, you don’t have to cook. Whether you want it or not everything is taken care of. And if you don’t want to you don’t have to confront yourself with your real life. If you have problems at home you can leave them there, you don’t have to take them with you on board.
The discrepancy between two worlds highlights the possibility of reality shocks when leaving the carefree environment and returning home, indicating a continuous process of sensemaking. Several interviewees experienced what Gullahorn and Gullahorn (1963) referred to as reverse culture shock, the process of re-assimilating to normality resulting from expectations of returning to an unchanged normality as an unchanged individual (Gaw, 2000), which is often not the case. Although reverse culture shock in most cases did not cause personal problems for the individual, employees needed re-socialisation back to constructed normality and reverse culture shocks contributed to the retrospective realisation of liminality. An interesting insight here is that while the situation is perceived as an unusual one and is recognised as such at the time on board, it is actually only fully recognised when cruise ship workers return to normality. For example, as one interviewee stated in regard to friendship on board: When I was on board I thought I was in a different world and I thought that I had made friends for life, I didn’t want to leave the ship because I didn’t want to leave the people. But now I think, whether or not you made real friends is something that you can only see after you have returned home and have met these people in a normal environment. When you see your old friends at home you have forgotten your friends on board. I have contact with two people although I thought that I found so many good friends when I left the ship.
The cruise ship world replaced parts of family and friends while on board, and interviewees talked about being part of a large community, and having lots of friends. However, they reflected that after leaving the ship they had stayed in contact with very few people, typically one or two only. The interesting point here is that realisation of for example ‘friendships of convenience’ was not epiphanic on board but happened, to a large extent, after the individual had returned to normality (‘I wouldn’t have realised if you hadn’t have asked me’). Therefore, the process of sensemaking is partly retrospective in the sense that it is a response to shocks and surprises and how employees make sense of them, but also in the sense that for many employees it is not until they leave the cruise ship environment and are on land that they realise how different life on board was. Sensemaking draws not only upon their immediate context (the ship) but also upon their prior tacit expectations and their engagement (real and envisaged) with significant others who are and are not on board, such as friends and family. Our findings suggest that the sense84
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making process produces a more balanced view of the nature of this work, incorporating both positive and negative elements. Despite this, findings suggest that because of the impossibility of others understanding the cruise ship world without having experienced it themselves, returning workers tend to stress the positive, and thus perpetuate the more positive image of cruise ship employment to their peers.
Addiction to Working On board All participants felt strongly connected to the cruise ships they had worked on, reporting a strong sense of nostalgia, a desire to return and wanderlust, especially if they see ‘their’ ship in port, or even on TV: Working on board is an addiction and it is hard to say no. It is a parallel world to your ‘real’ world and if you don’t have something fixed at home that gives you stability in life, it is hard to leave the ship.
The nostalgia appeared to arise from reverse culture shocks, and the notion that the cruise ship environment will forever remain another world, accessible only to themselves and to fellow cruise ship workers. The metaphors of cruise ship work/life as a virus or an addiction were frequently invoked by employees and many felt the desire to go back, although several interviewees stated that they would not return due to their current circumstances. Cruise ship work was viewed as ‘a great experience’, ‘something I’m glad that I did’ but also something which ‘you cannot do your whole life’ because of its unusual features.
Conclusions Before exploring the implications of our study, we need to acknowledge a number of limitations. The study was undertaken with a relatively small sample and although, as Guest (2006) suggests, this appears to provide for data saturation it would be useful to undertake similar research with a larger and more diverse sample; for example, different nationalities, different backgrounds and levels of prior experience, and different types of employment on board. It certainly seems likely that the experience will be different for employees (e.g., those in managerial roles, the entertainment staff, and the marine staff) because of their different motivations for working on board and the different working conditions they experience on board (accommodation, autonomy/freedom). This study examined newcomers’ sensemaking experiences on board cruise ships. Findings showed that although participants stated they had no prior expectations, or had realistic expectations, before joining the ship, their responses to direct questions about surprises they encountered on joining the ship showed they had many tacit expectations. The newcomers’ sensemaking of the subjective reality of the cruise ship environment resulted from a mismatch between these tacit expectations and experienced reality, highlighted through reality shocks when arriving on board. Participants articulated a shared awareness of the unusualness of working on board which was portrayed as secure and carefree. Indepth interviews showed the interesting notion that freedom and captivity were not seen as being opposites,
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instead captivity created a sense of security that enabled the cruise ship worker to adopt an on-board identity, which may be quite different to their identity on shore. Participants differentiated between work and life, revealing a preparation which led to a realistic picture of the job. They reported difficulties in preparing for life on board and questioned the possibility in having realistic expectations of the life on board. The perceived unusualness of the cruise ship environment led them to apply the metaphorical lens of liminality, indicating a different world, one which is impossible for others to understand. This led them to experience reverse culture shocks when returning home, resulting from expectations of returning to an unchanged normality as an unchanged individual. Interestingly, it was not until they had left the cruise ship environment that they fully realised how different it was from normality. The mismatch between peers’ expectations and the employees’ subjectively defined reality supported nostalgia towards working on board and cruise ship workers shared that notion that working on board is a ‘good experience’. Perhaps the most important contribution of this study is the significance of the workers’ construction of the cruise ship as another world which had implications for the organisational socialisation process. Their sense of coming from one world (home) to the other world of the ship, knowing all the while that they will return, is rather different to the more linear movement from newcomer to insider assumed in the organisational socialisation literature. Further exploration is needed here in how employees construct their other worldness. In addition, the relatively short employment cycles of cruise ship workers are becoming less unusual, as more and more workers find themselves employed on a short-term or project basis, so the socialisation processes we observed for cruise ship workers may become more relevant to other occupational groups. This article provides cruise operators with an insight into employee experiences of working on board and how they make sense of it. This article has shown that the cruise ship environment constituted change and contrast for employees in relation to their previous experiences. Whereas employees related change, the objective difference of the work setting and the specifics of the job, towards the ‘work’ on board, the life on board was marked by contrast. Employees stated that they felt well prepared for their jobs, indicating positive experiences with cruise operators preparation regarding the jobs as well as objective specifics of the surroundings (e.g., where do I wash on board, what does my cabin look like). However, future cruise operators should provide as many information as possible regarding change (e.g., experience reports from cruise ship employees). Although several web sites exist where employees discuss their onboard experiences, most focus on general experiences, not on specifics with specific cruise operators/ships. Web sites from cruise operators for future crew would allow people to get to know each other beforehand and in a forum get answers from the right people before they actually join the ship.
Another point would be for cruise operators to provide good access to the Internet which eases crew members to be part of two worlds simultaneously rather than create the notion of being betwixt and between worlds. Although newer ships offer Internet facilities for crew members, it is not the general rule on board every ship yet. However, further research is needed here in order to analyse the impact of technology on cruise ship life of being betwixt and between worlds — it is possible that it may actually be advantageous to be able to immerse oneself in the onboard world, and being in touch with the world back on shore may make it more difficult to settle in. Weick (1995) stresses that sensemaking is a retrospective process in nature, so it has been useful in the present study to gather retrospective accounts. However, it would also be interesting to explore organisational socialisation of cruise ship employees through gathering contemporaneous accounts of their experiences, perhaps through a longitudinal ethnographic study. This would also respond to the call from Papathanassis and Beckmann (2011) for wider studies of ‘social life and human behaviour’ on board cruise ships in order to provide greater understanding of issue such as sensemaking and identity. Future research might also examine the importance of person-organisation fit, focusing on who is working on board and who is most suitable for this environment, an important issue for cruise companies (and prospective employees), as it could reduce employee turnover by ensuring they hire the ‘right’ people.
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Papathanassis, A., & Beckmann, I. (2011). Assessing the ‘poverty of cruise theory’ hypothesis. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(1), 153–174. Reichers, A.E. (1987). An interactionist perspective on newcomer socialisation rates. The Academy of Management Review, 12(2), 278–287. Rollag, K. (2004). The impact of relative tenure on newcomer socialization dynamics. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(7), 853–872. Rollag, K. (2007). Defining the term ‘new’ in new employee research. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80, 63–75. Saks, A.M., Uggerslev, K.L., & Fassina, N.E. (2007). Socialization tactics and newcomer adjustment: A meta-analytic review and test of a model. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 70(3), 413–446. Schneider, B. (1987). The people make the place. Personnel Psychology, 40, 437–453. Sturges, J.E., & Hanrahan, K.J. (2004). Comparing telephone and faceto-face qualitative interviewing : A research note. Qualitative Research, 4(1). 107-118. Tracy, S.J. (2000). Becoming a character for commerce. Management Communication Quarterly, 14(1), 90–128. Turner, V.W. (1995). The ritual process. Structure and anti-structure. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter. Van Maanen, J., & Schein, E.H. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. Research in Organizational Behavior, 1, 209–264. Weaver, A. (2005). Spaces of containment and revenue capture: ‘Supersized’ cruise ships as mobile tourism enclaves. Tourism Geographies, 7(2), 165–184. Weick, K.E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Weick, K.E., Sutcliffe, K.M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking, Organization Science, 16(4), 409–421. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
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Appendix A
Interview questions Prior to joining the ship: Why did you want to work on board? Where did you get the idea from to apply for a position on board a cruise ship? How did you think it will be before you joined the ship? Why did you think that? How did your peers (parents, friends, colleagues) react when you told them that you were going to work on board a cruise ship? What do your peers (parents, friends, colleagues) think about working on board? How would you describe working on board?
Joining the ship: Please describe your first day on board. How did you feel? What was different than you expected? What was just as you expected? What surprised you in the beginning? Have your expectations been met? When you had settled in:
When did you feel settled in? Was there a specific event when you realised that you had settled in? What did you think about working on board? How did you feel when you had settled in? How did you become a member of a group? How did you react towards newcomers? What did you think? Has your attitude towards working on board changed? Did you behave different onboard than you normally do at home? If yes, how and when did you realise that? Have your peers told you that you have changed?
When you returned home: Please describe how it was when you returned home. What picture did your peers get from working on board based on your stories?
Now: What do you think now when you think back about your time on board? What did you like most? What did you like least? Would you like to work onboard again? What do you think when you see a cruise ship/the ship you were working on? Why do you think people are working on board ships for years?
Generally: What did you learn during your time on board? What do you think about: Friendships on board With how many people are you still in contact with? How many people did you meet after your time on board? Acceptance by colleagues Uniform (impact on your life?) Contacting home Work-life balance Stress Influence of passengers on your life Illness on board Hierarchy Is working on board a lifestyle? Did working on board leave a mark on your life? Someone said that you can only understand the life when you have lived it. Would you agree? Volume 18 2011
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