Organisational culture

Many of the volunteers in URK emphasise the importance of building a social network.

This could also be a part of a strategy to convert into economic capital, if their social network is used for getting a job. This tendency of transforming capitals does not seem present in FDF.

“We have a lot of silly rituals in the unit…Our summer camp – everything we do from we get up to we go to bed are silly, old traditions…We have this tradition…

I actually don’t quite know why we do it…”

How the peculiar traditions appear to the respondents is, in Bourdieu’s terms, doxa. The traditions remind them that they are not socialised, because they do not understand the rituals. The traditions are unsaid, but permeate the organisation and this may seem overwhelming to new volunteers.

As became clear in the empirical section, all the volunteers threw themselves into the role as a volunteer before considering what values FDF stood for, what responsibility the role as volunteer demanded or any considerations at all. Doxa is allowed to dominate due to this construction of actions in FDF. As the culture cannot be explained, it results in a certain pattern. As the general secretary describes it:

“Words do not come before action, but action comes before words. That means that the leaders ‘just do it’. When asked, what they actually did, the leaders an-swer, but if they are asked to elaborate on it, they haven’t really considered it”

(Interview 2).

It is a positive thing that the volunteers act, but it becomes a hindrance to the volunteers, and especially the external volunteers, when they do not know how to articulate what being a volunteer does to them or the children. A very internal culture is created when things are unsaid and doxa becomes dominant, because there is a certain way of doing FDF work, but no one can express it.

As respondent 4 mentioned, she saw her leaders as role models and she wanted to be the same role model to her children. In this way, it is possible to see how the image of a volunteer is generated again and again. Doxa is maintained and becomes almost coercive as a role model sets a standard you have to live up to. Another way you can see the influence of doxa, is when we asked the internal and external volunteers how they would educate a new volunteer in FDF. We expected that the internal volunteers would find this easy as they know the organisation so well. Also we expected that the external volunteers would be able to introduce FDF properly, as they had been new themselves, and knew how difficult it was. The introduction could have entailed the structure of the organisation, the organisational aim or the traditions in FDF. But the internal and external volunteers describe something completely different. The internal volunteers describe something about the general conditions of being a volunteer, however they do not mention basic knowledge about FDF and this shows how doxa has influenced them as they take basic

knowledge for granted. The external volunteers mention practical experiences that they have learnt themselves and one volunteer does not even know what to say at all. In this way, they pass on what they have learnt and are not able to explain the greater picture of being new in FDF. Doxa is preserved and inherited from one generation of volunteers to the next.

If the culture was more expressive, the volunteers would be conscious about what values the children become exposed to and then the children would learn to articulate values themselves. The internal volunteers both say that what they learned as children was something they weren’t conscious about, but as they have become socialised today, they realise what FDF has given them and how it has shaped them as persons. A very characteristic sign of doxa is how respondent 5 has been indoctrinated to know that Christianity is important, but when he has to consider it further, he is experiencing difficulties:

“I believe Christianity is pretty important, but I still don’t quite understand why.”

Another interesting aspect is that respondent 4 and 7 use the same words to describe how FDF is valuable. They both use the word ‘free space’. Later, respondent 7 mentions another central word that FDF must always be on the ‘children’s premises’. This phrase is also used by respondent 8. We do not believe that this is a coincidence. It shows that there are words that are perceived as typical to describe FDF, and the adoption of these expressions show doxa: The respondent may have heard these words being used by other volunteers in his unit and in that way he senses that this is the right thing to say – if this is the case it is an expression of a normative language founded in doxa. Doxa is also a way of exercising symbolic power. The elder volunteers come to dominate the new and young volunteers and the new and young volunteers accept the symbolic violence by adapting to doxa. It is also interesting how the volunteers do not even reflect on their own title as leaders – are volunteers in FDF actually practising leadership? And are they aware of their leadership?

Or has it simply become a doxic term rather than the appropriate title?

Doxa in URK

URK is not dominated by many traditions or rituals. The volunteers barely mention any.

The only exception is at summer camps; as the oldest activity in URK, the volunteers mention a few traditions such as the clap and an internal humour. Generally, strategies and action plans set the stage for the organisation. Based on these conditions, URK is not dominated by doxa as strategies are explicit; it is something volunteers can read about

and get to know and thereby it is cultural capital and not doxa. When the new volunteers find the organisational structure or the internal language of abbreviations difficult, it cannot be not defined as doxa, but again cultural capital that they can achieve. Doxa is the unsaid and underlying structures of an organisation, but in URK everything is explicated.

One reason why doxa has not become dominant is because of the relatively short time the volunteers engage and the high volunteer turnover. Doxa cannot become settled as values change with the new volunteers and URK has adapted to the volunteers. This will be further explored under the relational perspective.