ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the role of positive relationships in cultivating a sense of community at work when this kind of continuity is absent. It focuses on what cultivates a sense of community when conditions for community development are unfavorable—when employment is temporary and individuals working together are relative strangers interacting in the short term. The chapter identifies a gap in the organizational literature with respect to how community at work develops when workers are temporary, thereby lacking membership, a past, or a future in the organization. It presents the authors findings regarding what constitute sense of community for temporary employees, how they perceive it to be created and cultivated, and how it impacts them. Sense of community reflects people's attraction to each other, but is partial in that members of the community may not share all aspects of their identities and may have a sense of belonging with other communities.