CALL FOR PAPERS!

Stream Title: Theatrics of Capitalism  

http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/conferences/theatres_stream.htm  We seek symposium presentations that integrate theatre with critical management theory and global capitalism. Four thematic perspectives are suggested below.

Conveners:

David M. Boje, Professor of Management, Department of Management, MSC 3DJ, New Mexico State University, P.O. Box 30001/Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001, Phone (505) 646-2391, Fax (505) 646-1372 Email: dboje@nmsu.edu   Home Page http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje  

Timothy Clark, The Management Centre, King’s College London, Franklin-Wilkins Building, 150 Stamford Street, London, SE1 9NN, ++20 7848 4092, timothy.clark@kcl.ac.uk.

Dr. Slawomir Magala, Professor of Cross-Cultural Management Erasmus University; Burg. Oudlaan 50 PO Box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands Phone +31 10408 1943; Fax +31 10 408 9015; Email smagala@fac.fbk.eur.nl 

Dr. Grace Ann Rosile, Horse Sense At Work and New Mexico State University. 2831 Buena Vida Ct., Las Cruces, NM 88011-5056 505-532-1693 (home office) 505-646-5684 (University office) 505-646-1372 (fax), Email garosile@zianet.com

Dr. Raymond Saner, Center for Socio-Economic Development, P.O. Box 1498 Mont Blanc, Geneva, 1211 Switzerland 41-22-906-1720 (work) 41-22-738-1737 (fax) Email saner@csend.org 

STREAM DESCRIPTION:

THEATRICS OF CAPITALISM

We seek symposium presentations that integrate theatre with critical management theory and global capitalism. Four thematic perspectives are suggested below but these are not intended to be all encompassing.

One theme is that theatre can bring change to organizations and society. In Europe and North America, plays are written for specific organizational problems, and staged in front of organizational audiences with the aim to change management and employee’s work behaviors (Clark and Mangham, 2002; Schreyogg, 2001). A critical view would examine, for example, how it is usually management that orders and controls the theatre intervention to raise awareness and to change organizational structures and thinking on the part of spectators (employees and other mangers).   These plays reflect in both their organisation and performance the organisational hierarchy.  The spectators attend to celebrate the heroic endeavours of management as they are portrayed on stage. Consequently, organizational theatre does not forsake the stage or the script, fearing that “improvisatory anarchy” will preempt the official and sanctioned ways of representing power (Derrida, 1978: 239).  This kind of theatre has important links to other genres such as the masques of the Tudor and Stuart courts, which sought to celebrate the achievement of those in power.  Key questions include, how is control exercised, what is the spectators experience and do these plays achieve their objectives?  Is agit prop and forum theatre possible in organizational context?  

A second theme is theatre as metaphor, to look at corporations as performers on the global stage (to look at the spectacle on stage, what is back stage, and what is in the corridor of power between off and on stage). Spectacle work by Guy Debord and others may be a useful critical perspective. Spectacle work of Guy Debord (1967, Society of the Spectacle) has something important and critical to say about how spectacles of production and consumption relate to post-Marxist critique. Another example is Hopfl’s (2001) work on how theatricality of organizations can create and re-create metaphoric appearances that suppress critical differences, mask ambivalence, and sustain a world of make believe would equally apply. Submissions could critically examine how theatre as metaphor enacts a metaphoric space within which critical assessment is marginal or outlawed.

A third theme is complexity and theatrics. If organization and interorganizational behavior is a network of theatrical production, in distributed networks of consumption, then the question is what are the complexity and chaos dynamics?  For example, in the Tamara play, a wandering audience chases a dozen actors on a dozen stages, never able to see all actions at once (Boje, 1995, 2001b). Moreover, Tamara helps explain the dynamics of performers caught in a network of stages, as they make choices of whose drama to participate in next.  Global Theatre is a 'Tamara-land' of many stages, wandering audiences chasing characters from stage to stage, to trace the web of storylines. And off-stage there are characters that never seem to make it into the carefully scripted storylines. For example, if spectacle is the theatre of sanctioned power, then part of the dynamics of complexity is the carnival theatre of resistance, such as the protests against globalism and WTO in Seattle, and the succeeding encounters of spectacle and the street theatre of carnival (Boje, 2001a). Carnivalesque refers to strategies of resistance to power and hegemony that take the form of culture jamming, street theatre, and varied forms of parody and satire of state and capital forms of power.

Fourth, organizations are using theatre to accomplish Disneyfication, McDonaldization, Las Vegasization, and Enronization (Boje, 2002a, b) Each is a different style of theatre. For example Disney organizes themselves explicitly as theatre, where employees are no longer employees but cast members, wearing not uniforms but costumes, and instead of working, being on stage. Disney theme parks are theatres within which people walk on the stages of Tomorrowland, Adventureland, etc. Increasingly we witness organizations and city centers becoming more themed in acts of Disneyfication. Firat and Dholakia (1998) write about the new Theatres of Consumption, the political economy being changed by theatre. McDonald’s uses a more mechanistic theatre, one where every word, gesture, and action of employee and manager is scripted. So, how is theatre inveigling itself into organisational life?  How are these new forms of theatre impacting on employees?  How are they being resisted and modified?  What other genres are in use and emerging?

We encourage proposers to consider alternative presentation modes (dramatizations and other performance formats).

IMPORTANT DATES and PAPER FORMAT ISSUES:

·         Potential contributors send abstracts to dboje@nmsu.edu by 18^th October 2002

·         Include: Title

·         Authors (affiliation, contact details)

·         Body of Text

·         References

·         We make accept/reject decisions available to potential contributors and us by 13^th December 2002

·         The finalized contributors’ abstracts are put on web by conference organizers by 20^th January 2003

·         Formatting requirements for extended abstracts which are to be included on the web and in the bound proceedings for participants.

·         Maximum length 1500 words

·         Title

·         Authors (affiliation, contact details)

·         Body of Text

·         References

·         Full papers due to dboje@nmsu.edu  by 15 April 2003

·         Submissions must be prepared in Word (version 97 or higher) or RTF. All authors are required to provide the following information on the first page:

·         Title of the submission

·         Stream of submission

·         Contact information for the first author, including name, organisational affiliation, e-mail address, mailing address, phone number, and fax number.

·         Contact information for all authors, including names, organisational affiliations, and e-mail addresses

·         The remaining pages should include the main body of the submission and all references, tables, figures, etc. Papers are restricted to 7000 words, including all figures, tables, and references (but not including the title page). They should be no more than 25 pages in length. All papers must be single-spaced, prepared using at least an 11-point Ariel font, and be formatted for A4 paper (21cm * 29.7 cm).

Track convenors send full papers to Lancaster by 31 May 2003; Papers arriving after 31^st of May 2003 will not be included in the proceedings.

·         Papers put into proceedings on CD June 2003

·         Distribution of Conference Proceedings (CD) 7-9 July 2003              

Conference Announcement & Call for Stream Conveners
3rd International Critical Management Studies Conference

Date: 7 - 9 July 2003
Location: Lancaster University, Management School, Bailrigg, Lancaster, UK

Conference Organizers:  Alessia Contu, Carole Elliott, Steve Fox, Niall Hayes, Lucas Introna, Mike Reed, Sharon Turnbull.
Main Advisor to the Organizers: Hugh Willmott.
Further Advisors:  Irena Grugulis and John Hassard.
Conference Secretary: Teresa Wisniewska.  t.wisniewska@lancaster.ac.uk

References to Theatre Papers

Boje, D. M. (1995). Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as Tamara-land. Academy of Management Journal. 38 (4), 997-1035.

Boje, D. M. (2000) "Phenomenal Complexity Theory and Change at Disney: Response to Letiche." Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 13(6): 558-566. Prepublication draft at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/Disney_phenomenal_complexity.html

Boje, D. M. (2001a). Carnivalesque Resistance to Global Spectacle: A Critical Postmodern Theory of Public Administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis, Vol. 23 (3): 431-458.     http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/carnivalesque_resistance_to_glob.htm

Boje, D. M. (2001b). Global Theatrics and Capitalism. Presentation to Academy of Management Conference, Washington D.C., August.

Boje, D. M. (2001c) "Las Vegas  Spectacles: Organization Power over the Body." M@n@gement, 4(3): 201-207. Special issue on Deconstructing Las Vegas at http://www.dmsp.dauphine.fr/management/PapersMgmt/43Boje2.html

Boje, D. M. (2002a). Critical Dramaturgical Analysis of Enron Antenarratives and Metatheatre. Plenary presentation to 5th International Conference on Organizational Discourse: From Micro-Utterances to Macro-Inferences, Wednesday 24th - Friday 26th July (London). http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ENRON_critical_dramaturgical_analysis.htm

Boje, D. M. (2002b) Enron Metatheatre: A Critical Dramaturgy Analysis of Enron’s Quasi-Objects. Paper presented at the Networks, Quasi-Objects, and Identity: Reintegrating Humans, Technology, and Nature session of Denver Academy of Management Meetings. Tuesday August 13, 2002. 
  http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/enron_theatre_LJM.htm 

Clark, T. and Mangham, I.L. (2002) ‘From dramaturgy to theatre as technology. The case of corporate theatre’, Journal of Management Studies, (forthcoming).

Debord Guy (1967). Society of the Spectacle. La Société du Spectacle was first published in 1967 by Editions, Buchet-Chastel (Paris); it was reprinted in 1971 by Champ Libre (Paris). The full text is available in English at http://www.nothingness.org/SI/debord/index.html It is customary to refer to paragraph numbers in citing this work.

Derrida, Jacque (1976). Writing and Difference. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Firat, A. Fuat & Nikhilesh Dholakia (1998) Consuming People: From political economy to theatres of consumption. London/NY: Routledge.

Hopfl, Heather (2001). Organization theatre and the site of performance. Presentation to Academy of Management Conference, Washington D.C., August.

Saner, Raymond (1999). "Organizational consulting: What a gestalt approach can learn from Off-Off-Broadway Theater." Gestalt Review vol. 3 (1): 6-34.

Saner, Raymond (2000). Theatre and organizational change. Presentation to Academy of Management Conference, Toronto, August.

Schreyogg, Georg (2001). Organization Theatre and Organization Change. Presentation to Academy of Management Conference, Washington D.C., August.