The happiest, most dissatisfied people on Earth: Ambivalence and commitment among Amway distributors.

Abstract

The essence of ambivalence is contradiction. The essence of commitment is consistency. A psychological ethnography of Amway distributors explores the relationship between ambivalence and commitment in two interrelated "stories.". The context for both stories is Amway: a multi-level marketing organization that sells products and services outside of a business location through individual distributors. The first story utilizes eight months of participant observation, twenty open-ended interviews, and various archival records to illustrate the role of distributor "dreams," distributor relationships, and "dream-building" techniques in the generation of strong and contradictory emotions (e.g., excitement, love, security, dissatisfaction, fear, and anger) among active, inactive, and former distributors. Moreover, it examines these emotional dynamics within the context of the Amway ideological "system," and the dyadic "mentor-protege" relationships of distributors and their sponsors. The second story applies grounded theory techniques to these qualitative data and indicates that Amway's ideology may be integral to the creation of member ambivalence and its subsequent transformation (or not) into strong positive and negative commitments. The ideology creates ambivalence by transmitting contradictory expectations to members through distributor roles. It helps members transform or "bind" these ambivalences by providing means-end syntheses that order the opposing elements according to causes and effects. The purpose of creating and binding ambivalences in this way is to "produce" distributors that enjoy their connections with Amway (i.e., exhibit positive commitment). Data reveal that some distributors did exhibit this commitment pattern. The data also indicate, however, that some distributors react to these normative contradictions by binding opposing elements in a way that leave them angry towards Amway (i.e., exhibit negative commitment), while others simply compartmentalize the opposing elements. Analysis suggests that the nature of the relationship that distributors have with their sponsors may help predict whether ambivalence leads to positive or negative commitment, or to compartmentalization. Specifically, by mass-customizing the organization's ideology, providing an interpretive context, and serving as a source of psychological safety, these relationships may determine whether members move towards, move against, or alternatively move towards and away from their organization.