At a mid-size tech company in Silicon Valley, whenever a salesperson secures a meeting with a potential customer, they sound a gong in the main office. This action does not directly produce a profit, and yet North American corporations devote considerable time and resources to these types of exercises, which constitute a form of ritualization. Ritualization ranges from simple acts, like making everyone close their eyes to listen to the mission statement, to flashy conferences and award ceremonies. Companies that use ritualization effectively can attract and retain workers in a competitive market, in part by harnessing religious-like feelings. In reference to the pageantry strong brands display and the zeal they inspire, observers sometimes compare these companies to cults, which challenges the prevalent conception of capitalism’s markets as secular. Titled "Business Ritualization: Religious Performance in Corporate North America," this research project draws on the academic fields of ritual studies, performance studies, and organizational behavior to examine how ritual activity and the religious sentiment it generates remain central to human coordination in secular economies.

Corporations do not distribute ritualized attention evenly among workers, nor do all types of firms use ritualization in the same way. This study aims to compare the types and degrees of ritualized attention directed at different worker roles within a technology ecosystem. What do North American corporations gain by ritualizing the work environment? How does ritualization promote brand loyalty among workers who may not be direct employees?

To address these questions, this study will do the following:

1. Compare the types of ritualized behavior directed toward different worker roles within an ecosystem.

2. Analyze the performance elements that compose these ritualized behaviors (set design, script, props, costumes, choreography, etc.)

3. Assess the feelings workers report about their relationship to the brands they represent in light of their participation in ritualized activities

The project takes Salesforce.com as its first case study because the more than 70,000-employee firm sustains a “partner ecosystem” five or six times the company’s size that includes independent software vendors who have built their own businesses on the Salesforce platform, consultants who help Salesforce customers integrate third-party applications with Salesforce cloud services, and administrators (known as “Admins”), developers, and software architects who specialize in Salesforce products but are employed by Salesforce’s corporate customers. To help the participants of this vast network feel like a community, Salesforce creates events like its annual user conference, called Dreamforce, in addition to fostering more than 250 regional conferences and empowering Salesforce professionals to organize local community groups. As a case study, the Salesforce ecosystem therefore encompasses a wide range of ritualization strategies directed at diverse worker roles, as well as at partners and clients. 

This project uses qualitative methods, meaning that it uses words to describe and interpret the thing people do rather than numbers to quantify and model those activities. The project's two primary qualititive methods consist of:

1. Participant observation

2. Semi-structured interviews

Participant observation:

In 2019, Dr. Joy Palacios launched the project (thanks to a research Start-Up grant from the University of Calgary) by observing the Dreamforce annual user conference in San Francisco. With the help of her research assistants, the team observed the online Dreamforce-to-You conferences in 2020 and 2022. when the pandemic ended, Dr. Palacios attendeed the 2022, 2023, and 2024 Dreamforce conferences, as well as Midwest Dreamin' 2022 and CenCal Dreamin' 2023.

Semi-structured interviews:

The research team has conducted over 30 interviews via Zoom with people who work in the Salesforce ecosystem, and especially with Admins, Developers, and Architects. These interviews are "semi-structured" in that we have a list of starter questions to get the conversation going but will also allow each interview to unfold organically as participants tell their stories. We continue to conduct interviews and would appreciate hearing about your experiencing working in the Salesforce ecosystem.

We are also recruiting participants who work as technology evangelists or angel investors. Interviews conducted with evangelists and angels will contribute to a book chapter that contextualizes ritualization by examining the various kinds of relationships that structure technology ecosystems, with a special focus on roles whose titles have religious connotations.