Juggling care and commerce: care and business logics in Dutch funeral homes

Funeral work is challenging because directors are expected to organise personal death rituals under time pressure, in collaboration with a family they usually don't know, in an increasingly commercial context. In this article, we adopt the institutional logics framework to study how funeral directors cope with potentially conflicting work demands. Ten semi-structured interviews with Dutch funeral directors of large or medium-sized companies unveiled that a so-called 'care logic' dominates. In this institutional logic, directors devote time and attention to bereaved families, to organise a personal funeral that reflects the identity of the deceased and honours the wishes of the bereaved. However, simultaneously, funeral directors adopt a 'business logic' that centres around profitability and time-efficiency. To some extent, these logics proved to be compatible and may even strengthen each other: excellent care for families is considered a good business proposition, and a professional business-like back-office facilitates excellent care. However, particularly when many (complex and personal) funerals need to be organised, funeral directors experience tension between the institutional logics and they struggle to devote the time families 'deserve'. Ultimately, funeral directors tend to prioritise care over business, sometimes at the expense of their own work-life balance, or the business' profitability.