Fongzi, dragons and corporate culture: An analysis of corporate dragon-boat paddlers’ motivations

Abstract

This research focuses on corporate companies’ involvement in dragon-boating in Singapore and, in particular, employees’ motivations for joining and remaining in this sporting culture. Two very different theories are applied to interpret data collected from semi-structured interviews with four corporate dragon-boat paddlers. Findings demonstrate that dragon-boating offers paddlers important social connectivity but that the associations which paddlers construct tend to be for their free time, and operate as ways of sharing and bonding to escape the adversity of the workplace rather than making the workplace more democratic and empowering. Indeed, it appears that a tension may exist between the friendships that paddlers build in and out of the office.

Keywords:

• dragon-boat
• corporate culture
• workplace empowerment
• habitus
• Confucianism

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Lim Swee Yee for her help in collecting the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.