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- Title
An ethnographic study of organizational performances in business services: Space, staging and materiality.
- Authors
Cluley, Robert
- Abstract
It is said that all the world is a stage. But how do organizations physically stage performances such as sales pitches and research presentations? Drawing on a 14-month-long ethnographic study at a Fortune 500 strategic research company, this article explains how. Emphasizing the active role of human and non-human actors, it uncovers three staging practices that organizations use to transform spaces into stages. Organizations theme stages by populating them with certain objects. They produce a style of performance by arranging relationships between performers and audiences. Finally, they order movements from one stage to others so that plots emerge. Theorizing these staging practices through a materialist dramaturgy, the article challenges existing organizational theory that tends to focus on the ways organizations control and script performances. The article shows that organizational performances in service and knowledge organizations can be improvisational. They are not preordained but they are organized.
- Subjects
ASSOCIATIONS, institutions, etc.; CONFINED spaces (Work environment); MATERIALS management; INTERDISCIPLINARY research; SOCIAL theory; DRAMA; ETHNOLOGY research; QUALITATIVE research; BUSINESS; INTELLECT; RESEARCH funding; MANAGEMENT; DATA analysis; MEDICAL coding
- Publication
Human Relations, 2023, Vol 76, Issue 11, p1802
- ISSN
0018-7267
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/00187267221116865