Authored and compiled by David M. Boje - copyright 2002 - Please cite accordingly
METASCRIPT - Organizations and plans are composed of many scripts, or what Savall (2000) calls Metascript. It is part of SEAM analysis (Socio Economic Analysis of Management). Metascripting is a combination of ethnography and text/talk analysis methods. Metascripting is also part of corporate and institutional social practice (involving all the Septet elements). The organization is a Metascript in corporate practice is a collection of many scripts, collectively written, that specify what we say and do (Savall, 2000). At the margins there is improvisation, but mostly we work in McDonaldized Disneyfied organizations whose theatre is tightly scripted. The Metascripting social practice are located in a network mixture of genres (talk& text, & translations in between) Characters are trained in their scripts, and punished by the script police, when they deviate from their script. Metascripting is part of chains of social events. Characters are constituted and located in a network of scripted practices. Each script is part of a network of scripts that constitutes what we mean by Metascript (the network of scripts within and among institutions).
Metascripting defined as a network of scripts and con-scripts, is what Foucault (1979) would certainly call 'panoptic surveillance,' specifying our (con) script so tightly, that we monitor what we say and do; being suspended in a network of scripts. A Metascript is a far-reaching network of disciplinary scripts that inculcate our docility. This network of disciplinary scripts is not just within the firm, it is the network of scripts wrought by the institutions of Society, and of Capitalism. The networks script our work life from cradle to grave. The Metascript is a system of surveillance, part of our panoptic society. Scripts produce human bodies that are docile because we are constantly observed to make sure we speak our lines in prescribed ways. Scripts normalize our behavior. Managers and personnel agents write scripts. Executives write scripted plans. The organization is a 'carceral network' of scripts, little disciplinary mechanisms (Foucault, 1979: 298). If you work at McDonalds or Disney and speak outside your scripted lines, there are mechanisms of surveillance and punishment to control you.
Metascripts apply equally to executives and managers. There are metascripts that institutionalize more discreet surveillance. The lines are more improvisational. However, not by much. There are many stakeholders that expect their leaders to stay with in a narrow scripted range of behavior. We expect our leaders to speak their lines. No one deviates too far from their script. There are far-reaching planning, organizing, influence, and control networks to make sure leaders read their lines and perform on cue. Bureaucracies have much more scripted lines, but there is a little bureaucracy in even the most postmodern organization.
By now you have the point - scripts are control mechanisms, programs that turn us docile, make us predictable. Simplistic scripts are job descriptions and those lines that telephone sales people use to bore us to death on the phone.
Ex-Merrill Lynch analyst, John Olson, got in trouble for questioning
Enron's
dealings six years ahead of the pack. He was violating his analyst script. CEO
Kenneth Lay publicly scolded him during an analysts’ meeting.
When did you first question Ken Lay’s projections at Enron? asks the reporter:
Olson: I think it was 1995, because I had wondered aloud at one of the analysts’ meetings. I questioned how they were going to double their earnings over the next five years. At that point, a very exasperated Ken Lay told me and the others around me that I ‘just didn’t get it.’ (See Newsweek, 2002)
Merrill forced Olson to leave the firm in May 1998, replaced by a new analyst, who immediately upgraded Enron’s stock rating. Now he is hoping reforms will ease pressure to bump up stock ratings for employers clients. A few months ago Merrill agreed to a $100 million agreement to settle charges that it misled investors with overly optimistic ratings and research intended to help it win business.
What are examples of METASCRIPT AT ENRON?
There are many examples of Enron metascripting. For instance, on October 12 2001, Enron crafted a script of its soon to be announced down-writing to partners at Arthur Anderson, who say they “strongly objected to the ‘non-recurring’ phrasing as misleading” (Witt & Behr, 2002: A01).
The Oct. 16 news release is described as a masterpiece of modern business spin:
The company emphasized that setting aside the $ 1 billion in "one-time" losses, its profits had actually risen by 26 percent compared with the year before. The company was "very confident in our strong earnings outlook," Lay said in the release (Witt & Behr, 2002: A01).
A second example of Metascripting is the way Enron’s lawyers draft scripts that are used by Enron board of directors to interrogate executives. For example, as October 2001 WSJ articles (e.g. Emshwiller, 2001a) circulated, Charles A. LeMaistre (President Emeritus, University of Texas) decided to question Andrew Fastow, about conflicts of interest in being Enron’s executive and CEO of LJM. He was reportedly “timid about confronting the young executive about how much money he’d mad from LMJ, and asked Enron’s general counsel, James V. Derrick, to “prepare a polite script” that was “just the right tone” (Witt & Behr, 2002: A01):
"We very much appreciate your willingness to visit with us." Armed with the script, LeMaistre telephoned Fastow and posed the question: How much? It was $ 45 million, Fastow said.
LeMaistre wrote in the margin of his script: "incredible."
Enron’s success was masterful dramaturgy in all three Metatheatrical ways (façades to deceive investors, technology to control/motivate employees, and Enron life is theatre). Yet, the Metatheatre interplay of multiple, simultaneous, theatres and stages, disintegrated while its players tried to integrate and control the unraveling dramatis personae of Enron. Enron did dominate, superstar of the energy markets, its theatre held power, but the TAMARA-esque dynamics, self-organized, and veered Enron into mega-scandal.
Another good example of metascripting combined with Metatheatre is the early morning preparations of Tuesday October 23 2001. Lay is huddled with a small group of advisors in a conference room adjoining his 50th-floor office suite. They are rehearsing “a carefully worded script” prepared by Enron’s publicists and several executives (Witt & Behr, 2002: A01). Lay is to preside over a live webcast chat with security analysts in an effort to quench the media firestorm about Fastow’s role in LJM partnerships. The script “suggested that no one at Enron was responsible for the LJM partnerships. Failure it would seem, was an orphan” (Witt & Behr, 2002: A01, bold is mine).
With minutes to spare before the conference, Ronald T. Astin, a lawyer with Enron's outside law firm, Vinson & Elkins LLP, was asked to help fix the script. He rewrote it to say that it was Fastow who presented the LJM proposal to the board.
Fastow read Astin's changes and exploded, Astin later told investigators. Fastow yelled that Astin was wrong about who was responsible for LJM. "It was Skilling!" he shouted.
At 8:30 a.m. Houston time, financial analysts from Boston to San Francisco joined the conference by phone and Internet.
"There has been a lot of recent attention to transactions Enron previously entered into with LJM, a private equity partnership,"
Lay said, addressing LJM and Fastow head on. "Let me reiterate a couple of things. We clearly heard investor concerns earlier this year, and Andy Fastow, Enron's chief financial officer, ceased all affiliations with LJM."
Lay added that Fastow was doing "an outstanding job."
"We're very concerned the way Andy's character has been kind of loosely thrown about over the last few days in certain articles," Lay said. Fastow's role at LJM had been monitored rigorously so that Enron's interests would never be compromised, he said.
For more on ENRON METASCRIPT - see 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
HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO ME?
REFERENCES FOR METASCRIPT THEORY AND METHODOLOGY.
Boje, D. M. (2000a). Global Theatrics and Capitalism. November 12. Web text accessed May 15, 2002 at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/global_theatrics_and_capitalism.htm
Boje, D. M. (2000c). Theatrics of Leadership? Web text accessed May 15, 2002 at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/leader_model_boje.htm
Boje, D. M. (2000c) X,Y,Z model of leadership and Revolutionary Pedagogy.
Web text accessed May 15, 2002 at
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/revolutionary_pedagogy_of_leader.htm
Boje, D. M. (2001a). Narrative
Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London Sage.
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
Boje, D. M. (2002c) Theatres of Capitalism. Book being published by Hampton Press (San Francisco). Available until publication, on line, at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/theatrics/index.htm (password is required).
Boje, D. M. (2002d). Leadership Theatre Events.
Contains guides fo Image, Invisible, and Forum Theatre
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/leadership_theatre_event.htm
Boje, D. M. (2002e). What is Situation? Feb 19, 2002. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/what_is_situation.htm#septet_table_1 Contains Septet table.
Boje, D. M. (2002f). Leadership in a Postmodern Age: Notes on Enron December 3, 2000; revised April 2, 2002 http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/leadership_in_a_postmodern_age.htm
Boje, D. M. (2002g). Exercises in Games of Power and Leadership. February 26. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/games_of_power.htm Contains definition of Oppression, examples, and self-survey of oppression.
Boje, D. M. & G. A. Rosile (2002a). The Metatheatre Intervention Manual. To be published by ISEOR Research Institute of University of Lyon 2, France. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/theatrics/
Boje, D. M. & G. A. Rosile (2002a). Theatrics of SEAM. Paper to be
published in Journal of Organiztional Change Management Special Issue on
Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM), guest edited by Henri Saval.
Freire, Paulo (1970).
Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. NY: The Seabury
Press (A Continuum Book).
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline And Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated from the French by Alan Scheridan. NY: Vitage Books (A Division of Random House).
Newsweek (2002).‘Don’t Brainwash Analysts’ Newsweek 2002 http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_email.asp?/news/793737.asp
Savall, Henri (2000). More on Metascripts and SEAM analysis. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/sbc/pages/structure.html Part of SEAM analysis (Socio Economic Analysis of Management). See http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/sbc/pages/seampage.html for interactive model.
To Navigate this web site there are convenient menus at top (press here to go to top). The SEPTET elements menu gives basic definitions and examples of characters, plots, themes, dialogs, rhythms, frames and spectacles (the critical dramaturgy dimensions for any corporate theatre analysis). The menu on Enron applies the SEPTET to the Enron chronology and theatrics between 1985 and 2002. Links will take you to the Out of the Box leadership web site. Enjoy. CLICK AND GO TO PAGES in MENU AT TOP or in this BOX
| ENRON EXAMPLES | DEFINITIONS |
| SEPTET DEFINITIONS | ENRON EXAMPLES |
| 1. Characters | 1. Characters |
| 2. Plots | 2. Plots |
| 3. Themes | 3. Themes |
| 4. Dialogs | 4. Dialogs |
| 5. Rhythms | 5. Rhythms |
| 6. Frames | 6. Frames |
| 7. Spectacles | 7. Spectacles |
OTHER ITEMS
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|
Related Theory, Metascript