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THE DRAMATISTIC GENRE IN ORGANISATIONAL RESEARCH:
Contributions and Convergence
BRAD JACKSON
Victoria University of Wellington
and
DAVID BARRY
University of Auckland
Introduction
The theatrical metaphor is one of the oldest and most persistent ways of thinking and talking
about life (Overington & Mangham, 1982). Shakespeare’s well worn yet enduring epithet, “all
the world’s a stage” captures a recurrent speculation that pre-occupied classical thinkers and
continues to hold its fascination today. Lyman & Scott (1975) trace the intellectual genealogy
of the dramatistic approach within psychology and sociology through Niccolo Machiavelli,
Nicolas Evreinoff, Sigmund Freud, and George Herbert Mead.
The most obvious strength of the dramatistic approach is that it is rooted in a metaphor that can
be readily and universally understood. It is also a metaphor that most people find intrinsically
interesting--it speaks to the actor, playwright and critic in us all. Encouraging individuals to
look at life as theatre and vice versa is, therefore, not a task that is fraught with difficulty
though it can, on occasion, create some bemusement. Dramatism’s primary area of concern is
also deceptively straightforward. It inquires into the processes by which social reality is put
together or, as Goffman, has stated in typically frank fashion, “what is it that is going on here?”
(Goffman, 1974, p. 8). Unfortunately, the method’s strengths also prove to be the source of its
greatest weakness. Ease of grasp of the approach’s basic precepts and questions is often
confused with full proficiency. Like film noir, the dramatistic genre is widely known and
appreciated, but extremely difficult to master.
We have written this paper from the perspective of people who have been attempting to master
this approach for some time but feel that they are serving a permanently indentured
apprenticeship. While there are a few helpful collections of dramaturgically-oriented
sociological writing (Brissett and Edgley, 1975; Combs and Mansfield, 1976; Hare and
Blumberg, 1988), systematic reviews of the dramatistic approach as it has been applied in
organisational research are few and far between, one notable exception being Mangham and
Overington (1983).
In this paper we want to provide organisational researchers who are curious about the analytical
potential of dramatism with an inclusive and up-to-date roadmap that will help them navigate
through this fascinating yet frequently perplexing genre. Dramatism is by no means a unified
body of theory with well-established and clearly articulated methods; as Catherine Riessman
(1993: 5) aptly states, “There is no one method here.” The term ‘genre’ is a particularly fitting
descriptor of this rather loosely linked body of work that is united only by a common way of
looking at the world.
Our paper commences with a description of each of the four sub-genres of dramatism that have
been the most influential in organisational research: Burke’s system of dramatism; Goffman’s
dramaturgy; Turner’s social drama analysis, and Bormann’s fantasy theme analysis. Each subgenre will be illuminated by a brief discussion of empirical applications that have been inspired
by it. It has been our experience that these empirical studies tend to speak the most eloquently
about the analytical power and potential of this approach.
Having reviewed the theoretical origins and empirical applications of the dramatic genre, the
paper will then compare and contrast the sub-genres in an effort to identify the basis for a more
integrated approach within the dramatistic genre. In the last part of the paper, we will use the
research issue of leading organisational change to exemplify how each of these dramatistic subgenres might contribute to the research effort.
The Four Dramatistic Sub-Genres
Burke’s Dramatistic System
Kenneth Burke is unquestionably the dominant figure of the dramatistic genre (Simons and
Melia, 1989). A literary critic who, over a 50-year period, elabourated a complex, expansive
and frequently perplexing system of ideas which he dubbed “dramatism” and opaquely
characterized as “a method of analysis and a corresponding critique of terminology designed to
show that the most direct route to the study of human relations and human motives is via a
methodical inquiry into cycles or clusters of terms and their functions” (1968, p. 445). Central
to Burke’s system of dramatism is the act. To properly understand the act it is important to
distinguish action from motion. Burke points out that all objects and animals in the universe
can be said to possess motion, but only human beings have action that is purposeful, voluntary
behaviour. Humans are symbol-creating, symbol-using, and symbol-misusing animals. They
create symbols to name things and situations; they use symbols for communication; and they
often misuse them to their advantage. Language functions as the vehicle for action but is,
despite our best efforts, inevitably economical, ambiguous, and emotionally loaded (Littlejohn,
1992).
Dramatism is a method of examining and analysing social action and people’s explanations of
social actions (Mangham & Overington, 1983). Drama is employed, not as a metaphor but as a
fixed form that helps us discover what the implications of the terms “act” and “person” really
are. The pentad is Burke’s basic analytical framework for analysing social action. It bears
more than a passing resemblance to the journalist’s mantra: who, what where, when and why?
He states that “any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answers to these
five questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent or
actor), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose).” (1969, p. xv).
Mystification occurs when only one or two of these five elements are presented as the
explanation for what took place, and participants in, or observers of the activity are persuaded
by the simplicity of such explanations. In examining a social act, Burke urges the critic to
examine the relationship or “ratio” between each of the five elements of the pentad to
determine which term in the pentad receives the greatest attention by the rhetor and, thus,
suggests where to look for the motivation of the act. Stories arise when one or more elements
of the pentad are out of step with the others. For example, a man stepping into the women’s
washroom suddenly discovers himself in the wrong place at the wrong time (actor/scene
incongruence), thus creating a story-driving tension that needs to be resolved.
For Burke, guilt is the primary motive behind all action and communication. He uses the term
guilt broadly to signify any feeling of tension within a person such as anxiety, embarrassment,
self-hatred, disgust, etc. Guilt is an inevitable product of humans’ symbol-using nature and
emanates from three inter-related sources. The first source is the “negative” which Burke
argues is crucial for understanding the communication process (Burke, 1969). Through
language, humans have “invented the negative” and, in so doing, have created moral action that
enables them to distinguish between right and wrong. Doing “wrong” generates a feeling of
guilt. The concept of the negative necessarily leads to the establishment of hierarchies
constructed on the basis of numerous negatives and commandments and the degree to which
they are followed (Burke, 1962). The resultant “principle of hierarchy” is “the human impulse
to build society around ambition or hierarchy on the basis of commandments derived from the
concept of the negative” (Foss, Foss & Trap, 1985, p. 17). The hierarchy sets in motion the
“principle of perfection”. Through language humans can imagine a state of perfection, which
they constantly strive for but inevitably fall short of (Burke, 1965).
Getting rid of guilt is the basic plot of human drama (Griffin, 1997). Rhetoric is a continual
pattern of redemption through victimage (Duncan, 1962). In order for guilt to be purged the
rhetor has two options. The first is through self-blame or “mortification” and requires a
confession of sin and a request for forgiveness (Burke, 1970). The second option is via
“victimage” – the process of designating an extreme enemy or “scapegoat” as the source of our
ills (Burke, 1966). In addition to blaming, rhetoric also has the capacity to effect redemption,
rebirth, or a new identity for the individual involved in the social drama. The rhetoric of rebirth
involves movement through three steps – pollution, purification and redemption (Burke, 1965).
This lifelong process is the drama of the self in quest, of building and finding the true self. It
represents attempts to put our selves together and to discover and maintain our identities so that
we can act purposefully, feel at home in the world, and move toward the perfection we seek
(Hart, 1989).
Given the immense scope and density of Burke’s dramatistic system, it is perhaps not
surprising that empirical studies motivated by this system have tended to focus on applying just
one aspect of his ideas. For example, Mangham and Overington (1983, 1987) have
demonstrated how the pentad may be used in the analysis of organisations. Cheney (1983) has
applied Burke’s concept of “identification” to reveal the recurrence of three identification
strategies used in corporate newsletters or “house organs” to foster employee commitment and
belief in the organisation. Case (1999) has used Burke’s system for demystifying the appeal of
the rhetoric of business process reengineering (BPR). Juxtaposing an analysis of the primary
texts of the movement’s leading protagonists, James Champy and Michael Hammer, with
observations from an ethnographic study of an installation of a new computer system, Case
argues that BPR can be read as a “salvation device” which offers cathartic absolution of the
collective guilt associated with information technology mismanagement. Finally, Taalas (1999)
has used Burke’s dramatistic method to explore how organisational actors allocated motives in
their accounts of repertoire decision-making in a Finnish performing arts theatre.
Goffman’s Dramaturgy
If Kenneth Burke is the Capra of the dramatistic genre then Erving Goffman is surely its
Hitchcock. A sociologist, Goffman’s eleven books form a singularly unique, quirky yet unified
body of writing dedicated “to unravelling the rules of the game of social interaction in general
and conversation in particular” (Burns, 1982, p. 6).
In his most influential work, The
Presentation of Self Everyday Life, Goffman sought to understand everyday social life and
social intercourse in terms of the crafting of theatrical performances. Performance, as he
defines it, is “all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by its
continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on its
observers” (1959, p. 22). Any performance is a “dramatic realization” in which the performer
seeks to convey a certain impression in order to evoke a specific response from the audience
and avoid embarrassment. The social actor’s problem, therefore, is one of either authenticating,
having doubts about, or refusing to believe in the sincerity of the performances that are
constantly being put on by others and by themselves. The sociologist’s problem, on the other
hand, is to uncover the nature and operations of dramatic practices in everyday life, to analyse
how humans go about “writing”, “casting”, “performing in”, “interpreting”, and “criticizing”
one another’s life drama (Lyman, and Scott, 1975, p. 111).
An important feature of Goffman’s dramatistic schema is the distinction he makes between the
“front-stage” and “back-stage” activity of every performance (Clark, 1995). The former region
refers to the part of the performance which is visible and at which the audience is present. In
the latter region the audience is excluded so that the performer can relax, step out of character
and rehearse her or his role. Because there is always the possibility that the back-stage may be
revealed to the audience and the performer exposed, a considerable degree of risk, danger, and
uncertainty hangs over the enterprise. This risk has to be properly managed in order to avoid
performance failure.
Goffman noted that dramaturgical aspects of formal organisation had been neglected. Yet he
did not make this a central concern of his work. In one of the first attempts to apply Goffman’s
work to organisational research, Thompson (1976) argued that dramaturgical skill was
becoming increasingly essential for maintaining the organisational hierarchy in the face of
advancing specialization. He notes, “The dramaturgical management of impressions about the
hierarchical positions and roles is no longer a sporadic affair depending upon the accidents of
personality. It appears to be institutionally organized” (1976, p. 331). Thompson identifies
three specialized dramas that are typical of the modern bureaucratic organisation: the
“dramaturgy of the superior” through which executives use ritual and status symbols to
communicate their superiority and right to deference; the “management troupe” through which
employees demonstrate their loyalty to, and membership of, their team; and the “subordinate
dramaturgy” through which subordinates create the impression that they are awed by their
superiors and the latter's performance has gone well. However, as Thompson dryly observes,
“it is backstage that one finds what subordinates really think about their superiors” (1976, p.
334).
Although popular management books like Andrew Carnegies’ How to Win Friends and
Influence People (Carnegie, 1936) and Napoleon Hill’s Thinking and Growing Rich (Hill,
1966) had long recognized that impression management processes were crucial to
organisational success, organisational researchers were much slower to accept impression
management as a viable theory. Schlenker and Weigold (1992) have identified in the mid1980s a shift away from a “restrictive view” of impression management which viewed it as a
negative, nefarious, and manipulative function to an “expansive view” of impression
management which sees it as a very broad and common phenomenon (e.g. “the process
whereby people seek to control the image others have of them,” Rosenfeld, Giacalone and
Riordan, 1995, p.4) that is a fundamental part of interpersonal interactions in organisations.
Adopting the latter perspective of impression management, researchers have applied the
impression management perspective to a wide array of organisational phenomena including
performance appraisals (Villanova and Bernardin, 1991), employee motivation (Huber, Latham
and Locke, 1989), and employee sabotage (Giacalone and Knouse, 1990).
While not widely recognized, Goffman’s work has been an important influence on the research
effort that has looked into the issue of emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983; Sutton and Rafaeli,
1988; Van Maanen & Kunda, 1989). Clark and Salaman have shown that Goffman’s
dramaturgical method provides a useful framework within which to illuminate the activities of
management consultants and management gurus (Clark, 1995; Clark and Salaman, 1998).
Turner’s Social Drama Analysis
Victor Turner was an anthropologist who, perhaps because of his early exposure to theatre,
goes beyond Burke and Goffman in his knowledge and exploration of the links between theatre
and social life (Mangham, 1996). Drawing on extensive fieldwork and study of historical
documents, Turner notes that a community’s movement through time repeatedly takes a
“dramatic” or proto-aesthetic form. He described this form as a “social drama”. According to
Turner, social life is “characteristically pregnant” with social dramas (1982, p. 11). Social
dramas are “units of aharmonic or disharmonic process, arising in conflict situations” (1974, p.
37). They can be isolated for study at all levels of scale and complexity and follow the same
processural or temporal structure irrespective of culture.
Typically, social dramas are marked by four phases of public action. First, a breach is made of
regular norm-governed relations between individuals or groups within a social system. Second,
a phase of mounting crisis supervenes during which the breach can be either sealed off or
widened and extended. Turner observes, “we have become somewhat more adept in devising
cultural modes of confronting, understanding, assigning meaning to and sometimes coping with
crisis” (1982, p. 11).
In the third phase, redressive action by leaders is taken in order to limit the spread of the crisis.
Redressive action can be undertaken through three social processes: political, legal-judicial and
ritual. The ritual process was Turner’s primary focus throughout his career and will be
explored more thoroughly below. In the final phase or “act” of the social drama the disturbed
group is either reintegrated and peace and “normality” are restored among participants or the
“irremediable and irreparable schism” between the contesting parties is socially recognized and
legitimated (Turner, 1974, p. 41). If, however, redressive action fails, there would be a
reversion to the first phase of the social drama, namely crisis. This cycle might be repeated
until the point that the revolution may ensue and the group itself might become radically
restructured, including its redressive machinery. Turner noted that it is at this fourth and final
phase that the scientific observer has the opportunity to analyze the temporal structure
synchronically.
In order to make sense of what takes place in the ritual process, Turner drew on the three
phases of the “rites of passage” identified by Van Gennep (1960): “separation”, “margin” (or
“limen”, signifying “threshold” in Latin), and “aggregation”. In Turner’s mind the second or
“liminal phase” was the most significant as it was “a no-man’s-land betwixt-and-between the
structural past and the structural future as anticipated by the society’s normative control of
biological development” (Turner, 1990, p 10). It is in the liminal phase that the dominant
cultural genres of performance in societies at all levels of scale and complexity make their most
significant contribution to social life. Turner shows how cultural genres of performance have
evolved from the “liminal” genres of technologically “simpler” societies in which all members
of the community actively participate in the ritual process to the considerably more specialized,
segmented, and secularised “liminoid” genres of technologically “complex” societies. In this
way he reveals similarities between the “leisure genres of art and entertainment in complex
industrial societies and the rituals and myths of archaic, tribal, and early agrarian cultures”
(Turner, 1977, p. 43). In complex societies stage drama emerges in its various subgenres as “a
performance mode sui generis” (Turner, 1992, p. 26). Turner describes a reflexive rather than a
merely reflective relationship between drama as it is staged and the wider social drama stating:
The manifest social drama feeds into the latent realm of stage drama; its
characteristic form in a given culture, at a given time and place, unconsciously,
or perhaps pre-consciously, influences not only the form but also the content of
the stage drama of which it is the active or “magic” mirror. The stage drama,
when it is meant to do more than entertain – though entertainment is always
one of its vital aims – is a meta-commentary, explicit or implicit, witting or
unwitting on the major social dramas of its context (wars, revolutionaries,
scandals, institutional changes) (1990, p. 16).
The interrelation of social drama to stage drama is not an endlessly repetitive, cyclical pattern,
but a spiralling one that responds to inventions and changes in the mode of production in the
given society. Drawing on both Turner and Goffman, Rosen (1988) has argued that
organisations are systems of domination, which mystify meaning for the purpose of achieving
and maintaining a bureaucratic social order. From his ethnographic study of an advertising
agency, Rosen has produced two compelling accounts of key rituals for the office. The first
provides a detailed dramaturgical analysis of the agency’s annual business breakfast meeting
(Rosen 1985). At the agency’s annual Christmas party, Rosen (1988) reveals how the
hierarchically arranged relationships of the office are temporally stripped and levelled in a
liminal moment. Through these and other rituals, Rosen shows how a formal community is
systematically cultivated within the agency that enables and obscures the underlying network of
instrumental relationships and preserves the existing power relations. Along similar lines,
Elmes and Costello (1992) have lucidly explicated the social drama of a communications skills
training seminar.
Bormann’s Dramatistic Method Of Rhetorical Criticism
Fantasy theme analysis (FTA) emerged from the collective efforts of the ‘Minnesota Group’
centred at the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Minnesota. FTA is
founded on a general theory of communication called symbolic convergence theory (SCT)
which attempts to provide an explanation that accounts for the creation, raising, and
maintenance of group consciousness through communication (Jackson, 1997). The process of
symbolic convergence is “symbolic” because, “it deals with the human tendency to interpret
signs and objects by giving them meaning” (Bormann, 1983, p. 102). “Convergence” refers to
the way “two or more private symbolic worlds incline toward each other, come more closely
together, or even overlap during certain processes of communication” (Bormann, 1983, p. 102).
The central unit of analysis for FTA are rhetorical visions – widely shared images or composite
dramas of how things have been, are, or will be (Bormann, 1972; 1982). A rhetorical vision is
constructed from “fantasy themes” which are the means through which the interpretation of the
rhetorical vision is accomplished in communication. As people seek to make sense of their
environment and events around them, they come into contact with fantasies that have been
chained out from other groups. “Fantasies” are defined as, “the creative and imaginative
interpretations of events that fulfil a psychological or rhetorical need” (1976, p. 434). If they
speak convincingly to the individual’s “here-and-now” problems in a dramatic form (i.e. as a
setting, or piece of action or as a character), fantasies can be consolidated into a credible
interpretation of reality or “theme”. Fantasy themes are organized, artistic interpretations that
are removed in time and/or space from the actual activities of the group. The sanctioning agent
of the rhetorical vision is a source that justifies its acceptance. Bormann notes that when a
rhetorical vision emerges, participants in the vision come to form a “rhetorical community”.
They share a common symbolic ground and respond to the message in ways that are in tune
with the rhetorical vision. As such, the vision serves to “sustain the member’s sense of
community, to impel them strongly to action and to provide them with a social reality with
heroes, villains, emotions and attitudes” (1972, p. 398).
Bormann’s fantasy theme criticism has been used widely in the communication research field
but has been used only on a limited basis in organisational research. Three studies are
particularly noteworthy in this regard. Kendall (1993) has used SCT to discover and interpret
corporate dramas inherent in the language of the “boiler plates” (chairman’s message) of the
annual reports of the 30 companies comprising the Dow Jones Industrials. Koester (1982)
discovered the “Female Manager Vision” from a fantasy theme analysis that she conducted of
28 popular self-help management books for women published between 1970 and 1979.
Jackson (2001) has used fantasy theme analysis to produce detailed rhetorical critiques of three
popular management fashions instigated by management gurus during the 1990s:
reengineering, effectiveness and led the learning organisation.
Comparing the Dramatistic Sub-Genres: Towards Convergence?
The preceding exposition supports Littlejohn’s observation that dramatism “still remains
basically an ‘interest group’ or coalition of theories that share a metaphor rather than any
particular set of theoretical terms or principles” (1992, p. 189). In the section that follows, we
ask whether this necessarily must remain the case. While individuals will undoubtedly
continue to work in splendid isolation within each of the four fields, we believe the time may be
ripe for fashioning, if not a unified theory of dramatism, at least a more convergent genre that
creatively joins key elements of the individual theories. Our call echoes Mangham and
Overington’s sentiment: “our choice of work in the dramaturgical mode is conditioned by a
sense that somewhere between the elaborate, categorical sweep of Duncan’s grand design and
the unsystematic brilliance of Goffman’s insight, there is a place for more systematic
elabouration of the theatrical metaphor which could still provide cultural and historical density
in the analysis of human action” (1982, p. 207).
Though historically there has been little contact between the four thinkers, closer inspection
suggests that conceptually at least, the prospects for overlap are reasonably sanguine; as Wexler
(1993, p. 247) has pointed out, “The dramatist notion of science is artful: it sensitizes rather
than sharply delineates”. Boundary blurring is reflected in the career paths of each of the four
theorists. Kenneth Burke was the quintessential intellectual “jack of all trades” and “gypsy
scholar” who never found or looked for a permanent institutional home (Weiss, 1996; Foss,
1985). Even though just before his death, Goffman became the President of the American
Sociological Association, he consistently maintained his maverick and outsider stance with
respect to sociology and any other disciplines (Manning, 1997). While Turner and Bormann
were more closely aligned with their home disciplines they both demonstrated a ready
willingness and a generous capacity to move with ease between the disciplines. Certainly, all
four writers were committed to developing methods that could help scholars to bridge the
intellectual schism that has opened up between the humanities and the social sciences after the
Enlightenment for the mutual enrichment of both enterprises.
Some authors have already begun this quest for convergence. Semantically, Perinbanayagam
has attempted to articulate a connection between Burke’s dramatism and Goffman’s
dramaturgy. Though the two separate terms might appear redundant he suggests that
“dramaturgical analysis, as used by Goffman in many of his works, is an examination of the
techniques of communication that actors use, and dramatism, as used by Burke, is the analysis
of the terms used by poets, dramatists and philosophers to establish certain communicative
transactions” (1982, p. 263).
Bormann’s theory has been subject to a number of criticisms (Gronbeck, 1980; Mohrman,
1982), and while Bormann and his colleagues have systematically responded to many of these
(Bormann, Cragan and Shields, 1994) they have not adequately spelled out the theory’s
underlying ontological assumptions. They show how drama is a powerful persuader for
humans but never properly explain why. Jackson (1999) has provided a bridge between
Bormann and Burke, using Burke’s categories of motive to strengthen the explanatory power of
Bormann’s theory in his analysis of management fashions. Along similar lines, Cheseboro
(1988) has located in Kenneth Burke’s later writings, an intriguing possibility for bridging the
philosophical gap between Burke and Bormann by adapting his “ontological-epistemic
dialectic”. Given Burke and Bormann’s mutual investment and passion for the dramatistic
metaphor, we believe that this suggestion is worthy of further investigation as it may ultimately
serve to clarify and, thereby strengthen SCT/FTA and the dramatistic method in general.
While these pioneering efforts to explore cross-linkages between two of these sub-genres are
welcomed as a step in the right direction, we also believe that it is important to begin the task of
comparing each of these four sub-genres in a more systematic fashion. We present Table 1
below as an initial attempt to do this. The table demonstrates the transdisciplinary nature of the
genre. It also shows that the way in which the theatrical methapor was utilized by the four
authors varied quite significantly. For Goffman life is like theatre, for Burke life is theatre
(Mangham, 1990). Turner’s use falls somewhere between Goffman and Burke, where life is
mirrored by theatre and theatre draws from life. And for Bormann, life is known through
theatre. In terms of level of analysis, Goffman’s scheme tends to be the most micro, with its
focus on face-to-face interaction. Turner and Bormann move between the meso and macro
level, while Burke’s focus remains mostly at the macro, societal level.
Table 1. The Four Dramatistic Sub-Genres Compared
Disciplinary
Source
Use
Theatrical
Metaphor
Burke’s
Dramatistic
System
Goffman’s
Dramaturgy
Turner’s Social Bormann’s
Drama
Dramatistic
Analysis
Method
Literary
Criticism
Sociology
Anthropology
of Life is theatre
Life is
theatre
Communicatio
n
like Life
and We know life
theatre
are through theatre
mutually
dependent
Primary Level Societal
of Analysis
Inter-personal
face-to-face
interaction
Group,
community
and society
Data Gathering Text
Modes
Unsystematic
Observation
and systematic
observation
Text
Small
and
large
group
communicatio
n processes
Text
Interviewing
Text
Major Analytic Pentad
Concepts
Motive
Key
Motive
Contribution to
the Dramatistic
Genre
Definition of Social Drama
the Situation
Liminality
Front
Stage
and
Back Communitas
Stage
Scripts
Phases
Rhetorical
Vision
Fantasy
Themes
Rhetorical
Community
Fantasy
Finally, the key emphasis of each varies in accordance with their view of whether life is drama
or runs parallel with it. Thus, Burke’s emphasis is on the drivers of actions (motive), while
Goffman’s concern lies in organising the actions (script). Turner, with his conception of life
and drama as interdependent, focuses on the movement or phasing between the two. For
Bormann, it is the deep, often unconscious thematic fantasy that is central; the fantasy provides
the drive/motive, organises action, and determines phasing.
Connecting the four might be done in some of the following ways:
•
Using a levels of analysis approach to create a more complete picture of a given
organisation’s functioning.
•
•
using a combination of the analytical concepts to dynamically examine a
communication phenomenon over time.
applying the analytic concepts to various content areas such as leadership to create a
more complete explanation of those area’s dramatistic properties.
With respect to the first direction, it would seem a useful exercise to apply the four approaches
across organisational levels, from micro to macro, in the same way that we apply such concepts
as goal setting, leadership, strategy, conflict management, etc. to span various levels. Perhaps
meta-dramatist researchers could use the same ‘interlocking’ system so successfully employed
by the discourse analyst Norman Fairclough (1989) and his followers; there, each discourse
area (text, text production, and social influences) is seen as influenced by the others. While
Fairclough takes pains to say that researchers should not proceed through these levels in a
linear way, he does suggest that movement should go back and forth until dense description and
“crystallization” is achieved (Richardson, 1994, p. 522).
If strategy analysts, for example, were to apply this form of cross-linking, they might use
Goffman’s scheme to capture a specific exchange between two members of a planning
committee, say, whether to merge with another company. Stepping further back, Burke’s
theory could be used to determine the direction the exchanges might take--how do actor/scene
discrepancies seem to be fuelling the stories of how the merger might work out? Further back,
Turner’s approach might then be used to locate that exchange within the ritual system of the
organisation--is the exchange a movement towards or away from the liminal? Are the
strategists trying to rescue their company from uncertainty? Or, are they attempting to open up
new areas of endeavour because their own operations have become overly rigid? And further
back yet, Bormann’s theory might be used to link the various fantasy themes and rhetorical
visions being used to give shape to both the phase of planning and the articulation of dyadic or
group discussions. Perhaps there is a rhetorical vision of ‘partnering’ and ‘marriage’ at the
societal level that is fuelling a local fantasy of ‘keeping the cannibals in the family’--such a
view might temper how the strategists view the possible merger target--as a groom or as a black
widow spider. In terms of phasing, links to this vision might suggest that the company is
moving from a stage of freewheeling singlehood to responsible partnering, from youth to
maturation.
A second way in which the four dramatistic approaches might be productively combined would
be in conducting a dynamic analysis of organizational change processes. This might involve
using Burke to identify the spark of an action, Goffman to show how that action becomes
framed (both frontstage and backstage), Turner to trace how the action sequence becomes
linked to other rituals, and Bormann to show how the action contributes to a given fantasy
theme.
Returning to our strategy duo, the merger discussion might have been triggered by a
purpose/action split; that is, the current actions of the company were incongruent with its
purposes (maybe it was not meeting its social goals). From here, the discussion might move
into a series of frontstage and backstage encounters, primarily around trying to decide just what
the company’s purposes should be. This indecision about purpose might be a shift into
Turner’s liminal phase and result in fantasy theme discussions about other possible purposes.
In both these examples, we have moved from the left side of our table to the right; however,
there is no reason why the sequence might not go some other way.
Similarly, a rich analysis could result from simultaneously considered each approach as an
action sequence unfolded. So the inception of strategic planning could be looked at from the
vantage points of motive (Burke), staging (Goffman), separation (Turner), and the beginning
formation of a fantasy theme (Bormann). Later stages could be linked to progressions in each
of the four author’s theories--implementation of planning might simultaneously be an instance
of guilt reparation (Burke), face saving (Goffman), aggregation (Turner), and fantasy theme
enactment (Bormann).
Finally, the four theorists might also be convergently used to describe phenomena within
specific fields of inquiry. One area of research that would seem to be particularly ripe for
dramaturgical analysis is in the field of leadership studies.
Applying a Dramaturgical Analysis to Leadership Studies
Within the leadership literature much attention has been devoted to describing charismatic
leadership and explaining its increased significance in a mass mediated world (Conger and
Kanungo, 1988). However, scholars have left unexplored the strategies that leaders use to
nurture and validate their charisma and thereby forge and solidify a charismatic relationship
with their followers. Gardner and Avolio (1998) have attempted to create a conceptual bridge
between the charismatic leadership and impression management literature.
Using a
dramaturgical and interactive perspective, they examine the roles that the environment, actor
(leader), and audience play in defining the situation and in jointly constructing a “charismatic
relationship”.
Another fruitful dramaturgically-oriented direction for leadership researchers stems from
Czarniawska-Joerges and Wolff (1991) who have contrasted the role of “leader” with those of
manager and entrepreneur in the “organisational theatre”. They propose that all three roles
should be viewed as symbolic expressions of the collective hopes and fears played out or
“performed” on the organisational stage.
In addition to having a sense of the dramatic in their lives, Starratt (1993) has suggested that
leaders should have a sense of responsibility for the drama. Because of their strategic position
in the social drama, leaders can “mobilize the participants to restore the drama to its human
purposes” (1993, p. 132). Education is seen as having a critical role in instilling this sense of
responsibility. Following similar logic, Gardner has argued, “it is critical that organisational
members recognize various impression management tactics and the motives behind them, thus
becoming intelligent and discriminating actors and audiences in the daily drama” (1992, p. 37).
Unfortunately, as Mangham (1990) has observed, management education has tended to restrict
rather than promote the performative aspects of management. He argues that “a sound
education for managers (as for anyone else) should provide a setting for performance that is
relevant to the real interests of the students and the situations that they confront on a day to day
basis. It should be structured so that the student’s reading of his or her self can be tentative,
exploratory and flexible” (1988, p. 114). To partially temper Mangham’s pessimism, there
have been some encouraging signs that, in addition to guiding insightful organisational
research, the theatre is also becoming increasingly recognized as a powerful medium for
facilitating learning within training and development (Carley, 1996; Heimes, 1997) and
management education (Brans & Marcharis, 1997; Kirkman, 1987; Roach, 1986).
Conclusion
This paper’s discussion of the theoretical and empirical contributions of the dramatistic genre
has shown that it has provided a much needed transdisciplinary focus for organizational
researchers. In the process it has helped to broaden the scope of what is considered
researchable within the field. As Czarniawska has remarked, the dramatistic method provides
“a spacious device for a spacious material” (1997, p. 29). Moreover, in striving to bridge the
intellectual schism between the social sciences and the humanities, the dramatistic genre’s
transdisciplinary perspective makes it possible for researchers to present highly personal yet
systematic analyses of explanations for human action. As Mangham and Overington surmise,
through the dramatistic perspective, “we gain access to a metaphorical resource--the theatrical
perspective--which is so rich with conceptual possibilities that one can stay entirely within it
when inventing a conceptual framework for social action” (1982, p. 218).
Its historical contributions notwithstanding we have also seen how convergence between the
dramatistic sub-genres might be fashioned, ranging from semi-systematic progressions from
one theorist to the next (i.e. across organisational levels and across time), to the crafting of
creative blends (e.g. the application to leadership studies). Our illustrations are just that—
simply examples of possible integrative devices. Moving from the realm of convergent
possibility to the full integrative utility will require more than speculation, however.
Researchers interested in more fully utilising dramatism theories will need to experiment with
different analytic progressions and blends, applying them to actual organisations to see whether
some combinations provide more explanatory power than others. Hopefully such experiments
will also help us find ways to move dramatism from being merely post-hoc and descriptive to
becoming more predictive and re-scriptive.
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