PHD Control 1 Study Guide 

Here is your question: Q9 - What is Rhythm of Conscious Capitalism and Control? 

About Rhythm and Time - Let me define time in several ways then show how it relates to rhythm.

1. St. Augustine asks, "What, then, is time?" His answer is that we live in the 3 fold present.
   • Time has no being since the past is no longer; yet we have memory of them.
   • Time has no being since the present does not remain; yet we have perception
   • Time has no being since the future is NOT YET; Yet we have expectation of it.

   Augustine makes the critical assumption that time is never present all at once.  We are therefore not very conscious of the non-being of time or of rhythm.

   Yet Augustine can not conclude that time does not exist (or that eternity does not exist), since such a theory would explode Christianity.

   Paul Ricoeur's book Narrative and Time - makes the point that Narration implies both memory and expectation. He rescues Aristotle's narrative theory of emplotment and combines it with Augustine' 3 fold present, in doing the 3 mimetic moments of the hermeneutic circle. M1= what I call antenarrative. M2= emplotment, M3 = contextualizing and recontextualizing and realizing the plot in the world of action. 

   His restatement of Augustine is:

   • Present of past events (memories)
   • Present of present events (perceptions)
   • Present of Future events (expectations ). 
2. Frederick Nietzsche's theory of time - The Eternal Recurrence - 
   • Take the example of Enron; it does again and again what it says it will not do again (e.g. Lay's speech to the employees of Enron following the Valhalla Rogue Trader megaspectacle scandal of 1987. 
   • Nietzsche believed that when the planets were in a certain alignment that another historical character such as Columbus would once again discover America; or that the Stoics and the Epicureans would coalesce and once again murder a Caesar.  And he meant this Eternal Recurrence as a scientific hypothesis.
   • Nietzsche was influenced by Heine who wrote: " Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of the eternal play of  repetition, all configurations that have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again..." (See Gay Science intro by translator, p. 16). 
   • Point - Augustine's 3 fold presence theory, chops the regenerating heads of Nietzsche's hydra. But, Sartre, I think, repairs the damage done. 
3. Bergson Durée - assumes that on going to the past an event does not cease to be, it merely ceases to act and remains 'in its place" (See Sartre B&N p. 109). 
   • Interesting concept is "interpenetration" (Heidegger term that Mary Parker Follett also adopted in her work). The present is interpenetrated by the past. So the past can be reborn to haunt us. It certainly was reborn to haunt Enron.  But Sartre thinks Bergson got it wrong. 
   • Sartre does dig Bergson's Durée Here there is a point about rhythm; it is a melodic organization of multiplicities. 
4. Jean Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness -  See the Sartre Study guide. Sartre agrees with Bergson that the past is not nothing. Sartre wants to change the Cartesian cogito to read "I think therefore I was." (p. 119). Enron 2001, for example, is originally the past of THIS present.  Enron is a being that has a series of pasts, a series in the flow of nows. Favorite Quote: "Present becomes the Former Future of the Past while denying that it is this Future" (p. 145 B&N). Sartre is aware of Augustine's theory and repeats it without citation (p. 107). In Sartre's chapter on Temporality, he develops the three Ekstases (3 Ekstatic Dimensions):
   • To Not-be what it is
   • To be what it is Not
   • To be what it is Not and to Not-be what it is - within the unity of a perfect referring (p. 137).

   I have used this to analyze Nike. Nike tries to Not-be what it is (an exploiter of 3rd world women in pre-Taylorian factory sweatshops). Nike tries to be what it is NOT (a corporation bringing liberation to women through economic opportunities). Nike tries to be what it is Not while also Not-being what it is (there are people within Nike trying to resist both frames).

   In the Sartre Study guide, I see me being my self (old Dave) in the past, but separated from it (as New David in the present). Yet, old Dave haunts me at every moment of the present. I say I am Not that Old Dave self; Yet it is me Not-being what I am; It is me being that David that Dave is not; and it is both at once.

5. ON TO RHYTHM - Look at James Gleick's (1987) book, Chaos: making a New Science (Penguin). Check out the Chapter on Inner Rhythms.
   • Patterns, motions, fluctuations and the system is trying to control amplitudes, frequencies, errors, erratic behaviors, SEAM dysfunctions, and schizophrenia. 
   • The organizing system has rhythms that are nonlinear (and some linear ones), and the system seeks stability through self-organization. 
   • Chaos theory, then, is the study of non-linear dynamics (seeking chaos solutions).
   • Rhythm is not noise and it is not disorder, it is a chaos solution pattern that emerges.
   • I am a non-linear dynamicist studying schizophrenic rhythms of late modern capitalism hoping it will Not-be what it is (a threat to Gaia). 
   • POINTS
     • Managers need to understand the rhythms of global complex systems.
     • Managers need to learn to listen to the rhythms that are invisible and silent so that the disorders can be understood (4th Voice in Boje 4 voices of leadership).
     • Managers can fine tune feedback mechanisms to control rhythms (e.g. Boal's 7 Gates Theatre exercise; E.g. the Chaos theatre event we did in class).
     • Managers can learn to listen to rhythms for their periodicity and their pathological addictions as well as their dynamic system patterns.
     • Enron, for example had many antenarrative rhizomes (irregular heartbeats) that went undetected by Wall Street analysts and Business College professors. 
     • Patterns of antenarratives offer clues to irregular rhythms and pathways to control. 
     • What are blocks to rhythm in your organization?
     • What are lines of flight rhythm that veer out of control?
     • There are many rhythms in the jobs of managers and leaders (and auditors - ask Arthur Andersen).
     • SEAM is a study of time rhythms that obscure root causes or that are root causes of symptoms. 
     • Rhythm can be defined as a pattern recognition problem. In Chaos theory terms:
       • Bifurcations
       • Strange Attractors
       • Swooshy patterns (think Nike)
       • Contractions
       • Convergences and divergences
       • Triggers
     • Parts of Enron appeared to be working in rhythm, but the whole goes fatally awry (paraphrase of p. 284). The root causes of errant pattern rhythms come into our view only after the collapse. Enron's rhythm patterns were not recognized by stock analysts, SEC, politicians, or business professors -- not until Enron was dead, on the operating table of the bankruptcy court. 
     • In retrospect we see the timing of the various rhythms that brought down Enron.  

BRINGING THE TIME AND RHYTHM POINTS TOGETHER

1. Nietzsche - sees the eternal recurrence of scandal, and the business person-s refusal to understand the theatre and spectacle they are within. The patterns eternally recur. 
2. Bergson - We see the past of Enron reborn to Haunt its present
3. Sartre - we see the 3rd Ekstatic dimension which says it all: To be what Enron is Not (via charade and facade) and to Not-be what Enron is (behind the veil).
4. Best and Kellner (2001 book Postmodern Adventure, Guilford Press). Chapter 5 Globalization and the Restructuring of Capital. 
   • Great quotes on Smith, Marx, Martin Luther King, and Microsoft on p. 205. Each is related to time and rhythm. 
   • Their Point - We are restructuring the patterns of Nature, Animals, and Human Beings in the rhythm of the Spectacle, and in Megaspectacle wars and scandals, and in cyberspectacles (think of the movie Matrix). And these inter-spectacles are the new forms of domination and the new rhythms of global imperialism remaking our very DNA to accommodate the new rhythm of time demanded in late postmodern capitalism (they want our body clock to be able to handle rotating shifts and 24/7 life styles of the eternal mall the 24/7 Las Vegas work and consumption life). 
   • Point - There are costs and benefits to the New rhythms and temporality of global complex capitalism. There are some good things, some places to resist through the virtual community, for example, that takes on WTO. 
   • The Megaspectacle is an escalation of the spectacle (see Boje's Enron paper). It escalates in Size, Scope, and Intensity (B & K, 2001, p. 227).
   •  

In sum, the rhythm of the new carnivalesque resistance movements are resituating the rhythm of the WTO, IMF, and WB. The carnivalesque resistance to Frankenfoods and the Biotech Century (Rifkin's work) is a resistance to what the Spectacle does to our rhythm of work and consumption. We are not tied to the season or to the cycle of day and night; as we move away from that rhythm to the 24/7 rhythm there are costs and benefits. 24/7 is a very problematic Metatheatre.  It pulls in some bifurcations and strange attractors, and I can hear Swoosh sounds. 

MORE POINTS to PONDER:

If consumers, workers, and managers become more conscious, and understand conscious capitalism, they may choose to be controlled by spectacle, and go on with the status quo.  In addition, whatever move that Conscious Capitalism makes, will be appropriated (co-opted) by spectacle. What is the dialectic relationship here?  It does not seem to be a synthesis of thesis (spectacle) and antithesis (carnival/festival). Rather, as spectacle appropriates festival, festival develops more counter-moves.  

To get at the Theatre of Control means taking an anti-TQM, anti-reengineering perspective on control, along with a P-SEAM (Psychoanalytic SEAM) perspective on metascript and hidden theatre.  Your challenge is to look at The resurrection of Taylorism: Total quality management's hidden agenda and Restorying reengineering in terms of the Theatre of Control. Boje and Winsor (1993) argue that the gaze gets internalized in TQM, and Boje et. al (2000) look at restorying as promising to debureaucratize the control processes, but in effect resulting in more bureaucratization and rigidity. There is definitely a control game going on here.  Thousands of managers attend quite expensive workshops each year to learn how to TQM and how to reengineer control systems. In the Theater of control, they are recruited to play in a facade.  That is, to behave inside the Spectacle scripts of control without addressing issues of hegemony, and the nature of Hidden Theatre. 

TQM gets romanticized as the Frame (ideology) and meanwhile the dominant global practice of control results in predatory sweatshop hypercompetitive capitalism.  The script of discontinuities and disorder in the multinational corporate metascript is provoked by the hypercompetive strategies coming not just from the product-process technological control, but also from aggressive marketing, finance, and brutal and predatory strategists (See Alejandro Ruelas-Gossi Example). It is exactly this hypercompetitive corporate culture that created Enron's spectacles. 

OK, so check out th Control Hints gray button, look at SEAM and root cause analysis, then on to a Ph.D. treatment of Psychoanalytic SEAM, hidden theatre, and metascripts of control. The issue is to trace out in your own work stories, how the game of control is enacted. Can you write a Forum Theatre script that will take the unconscious players of control theatre and let them experiment with being conscious.

Without script changes we will stay within the phantasm of capitalist theatre, doomed to play our part in the tragic production. To evolve to a more festive theatre of capitalism, we can become more conscious producers and consumers.

• Click for BOAL Slide Presentation

• Global Theatrics of Capitalism.

• Ionesco's Theater of the Absurd
• What is Spectacle, Festival, & Carnival Theatrics of Control?
• Theatrics in personal life, organization, & society

In the words of William Shakespeare (1599) in "As You Like it," Act 2, Scene 7, 1-39). 

All the World's a stage

And all the men and women merely players

They have their exits and their entrances

and one man in his time plays many parts

The second line of thought I am taking looks at what life would be like in Vegetarian Capitalism. I do not mean that the entire planet and all its humanoids would become vegetarian. Everyone eats vegetables, at least a little bit. No human is a complete cannibal or carnivore.  I think it is possible to expand organic farming, vegetarian products and services, and move away from predatory and hypercompetitive forms of capitalism (or at least put these in a new balance).  Some vegetarians eat fish, eggs, or an occasional steak. Others are vegan and have none of this. This is the point of the Vegetarian Capitalism Article (Boje, 2001v). 

Step 3 - In this answer, RESITUATE. 

ASSUMPTIONS and DEFINITIONS:

1. What is Conscious Capitalism By conscious capitalism, I mean a world where producers, distributors, and consumers understand Fetish and the relationship between spectacle, carnival, and festival theatres of capitalism... Conscious capitalism is an awareness of the inter-theatrics of spectacle, carnival and festival. (Source: Scene 16 of Theatres of Capitalism book). 
2. We work in organizational theater, our roles, lines, and scripts controlled in many ways.
3. What is Hypercompetive? Hypercompetive is materialistic over-consumption, status conscious, mo money, mo money, mo speed, mo stuff, out of control, while you try to drive your competitor out of business.
4. What is Hegemony? Hegemony means the unconscious processes of power and control. When we become aware of power and control, then it is no longer hegemony.
5. Boje Lecture notes on Leadership
6. Study Leadership In the Box - to get at basics of trait, behavior, & situation leadership. 
7. NASA - see Pat Hynes Study Guide
8. What is CONTROL? See MPW Control Chapter 6  = What is Controlling? Evaluating and measuring performance of persons, teams, and organizations to ensure desired goals are achieved with efficient use of resources and highest quality levels.
   
   PRE. SLAVE. Controlling was according to patrimonial system of class privileges and rights over lower classes.
   
   MOD. INSPECT. Controlling is by impersonal inspection to assure normative compliance and standardized human behavior. 
   
   POST. CHOICE. Controlling is de-differentiated and de-centered so that people make more diverse, individual, and co-responsible choices in settings that balance efficiency with environmental and social audits.
9. Postmod control gets at issues of Theatre of Control 
10. You have a personal experience story of influence and addiction. I'll bet you it has many theatre elements. Write it up now. Then apply what you read below to your story. 
11. You will want to select a reading from the Grandparent Inventory. 
12. Review the following lecture Notes.

 STUDY GUIDE for Control Theatrics by David Boje, Ph.D. 

May 15, 2002

Choose one more to include in your references.

1. Theatres of Capitalism Book chapters on Festivalism and Conscious Capitalism
2. Tamara Theatrics
3. SEAM 4 Leaf Clover Model
4. SEAM TD Study Guide
5. SEAM for SMALL BUSINESS Web Site
6. SEAM Hidden Costs
7. SEAM Codebook
8. Augusto Boal's Theatrics
9. PSL-2 problem solving study guide - covers games organizations play in their metascripts
10. Theatrics presentation for August, 2001 Academy of Management
11. What is control? Ch 6 MPW
12. Theatrics of Control
13. Theater of the Oppressed (Augusto Boal)
14. Existential Theatrics of Leadership
15. Theatrics of Leadership
16. Global Theatrics of Leadership/ control
17. What is Postmod Theatrics? S&F - Ch 11 Postmod Theatrics
18. Ch 5 & 6 ROT
19. Conclusion PMOT
20. ROT- Chapter 2 looks at Bureaucracy as Control
21. Green Accounting Gameboard
22. S&F - Ch 12 Postmod Narrative
23. Bank paper with some reference to Horkheimer and Matrix
24. Boje, D. M. (2001a) Tamara Manifesto. Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. Vol. 1 (1): pp. 15-24. http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara  Background on Tamara construct and its relation to Nike and Athletic Apparel Industry.
25. Boje, D. M. (2001b). Athletic Apparel Industry is Tamara-land. Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. Vol 1 (2), pp. 6-19. http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara/
26. Boje, D. M. (2001c). Carnivalesque Resistance to Global Spectacle: A critical postmodern theory of public administration. Administrative Theory and Praxis, special issue on Radical Organization Theory. Vol. 23 (3) September pp. 431-458.
27. Boje, D. M. (2001d). Antenarrating, Tamara, and Nike Storytelling. Paper prepared for presentation at “Storytelling Conference” at the School of Management; Imperial College, 53 Prince’s Gate, Exhibition Road, London, July 9th, 2001. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ethnostorytelling.htm
28. Boje, D. M. (2001e) "Editorial: Athletic Apparel Industry is Tamara-land." SPECIAL ISSUE ON Corporate Predators and Nike, Tamara Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. Vol 1 Issue 2 pp 6-19.
29. Boje, D. M. (2001f) "Global Theatrics of Capitalism." Contains examples of culture jamming art, missing absent referent photos, and analysis of relation between Athletic Apparel Industry spectacle of disinformation, and carnivalesque acts of street theater resistance. Appendix of 10 College of Business theatrics training experiential exercises.
30. Boje, D. M. (2001g) "The Sexual Politics of Sneakers: 'Common Ground' and Absent-Referent Stories in the Nike Debate." Organization and Environment. vol. 14 (3): 356-363. Pre publication version at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/77/Fourth_sexual_politics_of_sneakers.htm  
31. Boje, D. M. (2001n). Flight of Antenarrative in Phenomenal Complexity Theory, Tamara, Storytelling Organization Theory. September 24 & 25, 2001 invited Complexity Theory conference presentation in La Hague, Netherlands for Professorship of Hugo Letiche. Paper examines the the transition form pre-story to full blown urban legend of there antenarratives. First, the Kathie Lee Gifford story composed by  in 1996 that spawned the AI, which led to the FLA and WRC. Second, the Kukdong story in 2001, which began with a January 10th letter by Nike/Reebok worker,  Josefina Hernandez Ponce. And third, the January 17th, 2001 Jonah Peretti "Design a Nike Shoe" stitched with the word "Sweatshop" email, that everyone in the world got a copy of, and it grew to urban legend status. All three antenarratives have been significant in linking the word "sweatshop" to corporations such as Wal-Mart, Nike, and Reebk. Stories are powerful, and dangerous.
32. Boje, D. M. (2001v) Vegetarian Capitalism. Presentation to the Goa, India meeting of the Asian Vegetarian Congress. http://www.zianet.com/boje/vc/vegetarian_capitalism.htm 
33. Boje, D. M. (2000b). "Phenomenal Complexity Theory and Change at Nike: Response to Letiche."
34. Boje, D. M. (2000c). Revolutionary and Oppressive Pedagogies of Leadership: The Enron Spectacles. March 3 2002. Has chart comparing Aristotle' Poetics, Burke's Pentad, and Boje Septet. 

35. Boje, D. M. (2000d). "Nike Corporate Writing of Academic, Business, and Cultural Practices." Management Communication Quarterly, "Essays for the Popular Management Forum," Volume 14, Number 3.

36. Boje, D. M. (2000e) "Faciality of Nike Corporation." Working Paper. September 16th. 

37. Boje, D. M. (1999a). Is Nike Roadrunner or Wile E. Coyote? A Postmodern Organization Analysis of Double Logic, Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship. Special Issue (March, Vol. II) 77-109. This is an analysis of the relationship between Nike activists and Nike. This is a pre publication draft.
38. Boje, D. M. (1999b). TD Green Wash Accounting - Ernst and Young Environmental Audit Report of Nike and other Horror Stories.
39. David Boje & Robert Dennehy (1999). Managing in the Postmodern World. Web text accessed on May 15, 2002 at  http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/mpw.html - Control Chapter 6
40. Boje, David M., Grace Ann Rosile, Robert Dennehy & Debra J. Summers. Restorying reengineering (1997). Communication Research. Vol. 24 (6): 631-668. 
41. Boje & Rosile (2000). Empowerment Debate - If you grew up on Guru-empowerment theory, this one tells the other side of the story. If you want to learn more about Mary Parker Follett, this is for you.
42. David M & Robert D. Winsor (1993). The resurrection of Taylorism: Total quality management's hidden agenda. Journal of Organizational Change Management. Vol. 6 (4): 57-70. 
43. Ruelas-Gossi, Alejandro  (2002).  "The Knowledge-Disequilibrim-Performance KDP, a proposed paradigm for an economy characterized by disequilibrium and rapid or radical change."  PDF Version at http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/downloads/schoolseminar110202.pdf 

44.  

45. Select and Grandparent to connect to your stories of narrative frames. 

• Difference in three types of Influencing scripts can be reflected in your story analysis:
  1. Pre = SOLACE
  2. Mod = COMPLY
  3. Post = INDIVIDUAL

23. Pick your level of critical thinking logic.