Abstract
In Reframing Organizations, Terence Deal and Lee Bolman suggest that institutions can operate as a form of theater. Organizational drama, they write, is characterized by a group’s internal practice of self-definition: when participating in institutional culture, members collaborate to promote their group’s values, and engage in dynamic actions that portray the organization to itself. Deal and Bolman’s allegory of the theater has fascinating analogues in the contemporary theater proper, where practitioners like Ariane Mnouchkine (Theâtre du Soleil, Paris) and Anne Bogart (SITI Company, New York) emphasize the degree to which the internal culture of the rehearsal room–and the extension of networks through educational initiatives–serve as primary aspects of dramatic art. Based on this collocation of terminology and concept, my paper explores the function of analogy in the literature of organizational studies, where a fruitful cross-pollination appears exists between the frameworks and vocabulary of creative production, and best practices for business. I investigate this state of affairs by seeking novel approaches to the role of technology in organizational drama, and grounding literature that addresses this form of collaboration—between human and machine actors—in analogues from alternative frames of reference: (1) The tradition of confronting the non-human in dramatic art, with roots that extend, with Aristophanes’s The Clouds , to the classical Athenian stage. (2) The use of technology to preserve and grow traditional cultures, as introduced in Mikyarra Media’s enlightening approach to experimental anthropology, Phone & Spear (2019), which shows how smartphones may be put to use in preserving and expanding aboriginal traditions.
Presenters
Allison VanouseGraduate Writing Fellow, Editorial Institute, Boston University, Massachusetts, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Organizational Intangibles and Tangible Value
KEYWORDS
Leadership, Organizational drama, Anthropology, Cultural studies, Posthumanism
