Leadership is theatre SEPTET Web Site -  Above former ENRON CEO, Kenneth Lay wears a Carmen Miranda costume, as part of an extravagant Metatheatre gala (concentrated spectacle).  CLICK AND GO TO PAGES in MENU AT TOP or in this BOX

Key Papers to Reference for work with this Web Site . 

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).

THEATRES OF CAPITALISM is my new book which is being published as you read, by Hampton Press in San Francisco. I have put copy of the book on this website (you need a password for this). The book applies a dramaturgy analysis I call the SEPTET to several global spectacles (McDonaldization, Disneyfication, Las Vegasization, Post-11 Megaspectacle War on Terrorism, and Enronization.  Click here to See Book on line THEATRES OF CAPITALISM

Leadership is dramaturgy that is accomplished in the SEPTET (7 dramatistic elements), by directing a cast of (1) characters, in strategic (2) plots, which create oppressive (3) themes. Leadership is produced, distributed, and consumed in (4) dialogs (in talk, in stories, and in discourses). Leadership affects and is affected by the temporal (5) rhythms (seasons, cycles, recurring patterns). Leadership is the championing some (6) frames (ideologies) over others. And, leadership is most of all the (7) spectacle theatrics (four types), a dynamic hybrid of (a) concentrated corporate culture theatre, (b) diffuse theatre on the global stage, the (c) integration concentrated and integrated, and the more and more frequent (d) megaspectacle of corporate scandal turned by media frenzy and spectator appetite into mass entertainment.

Figure 1: Assistant makes Metatheatre entrance wearing a Rebecca Mark mask as Mark looks on at right wearing Harley costume.

I say Enron is dramaturgy run amuck!

Kenneth Burke (1937, 1945, 1972) uses his Pentad to say that Marx is too focused on grotesque and burlesque frames of rejection; Burke prefers Nietzsche’s (1974/1887) more comedic frame of acceptance (Boje, Rosile, Durant & Luhman, 2002) [See Boje 2002a or b for references).  Burke is always uncomfortable with Marx’s dialectic, which only analyzes exploitation. Burke’s proposal is dialectic of frames of acceptance against frames of rejection; in frames of acceptance we accept the tragic and comedic circumstances and our powerlessness to change the system; in frames of rejection actively resist what is considered grotesque or burlesque forms of domination.  

We can demonstrate Burke’s (1945) Pentad (act, scene, agents, agency, & purpose) and Aristotle's (3505 BCE) Poetics,  in the field of leadership. Leaders, for example, (and followers) are characters (actors) in situations (scenes/spectacles) of organizing. The leaders (agents/characters) can enact revolutionary or bureaucratic behaviors (acts/plots) to seek changes in the situation (scene/spectacle), transforming it by their acts of dialog (agency) into either a liberatory or oppressive motivational milieu (purpose). Dialog in Burkean terms is the medium and the agency of transformation. For Aristotle dialog is rhetoric, important to communication, cooperation, and coordination (in Savall's SEAM terms). 

We can add a seventh element (Frames) to the example, but must first define it. Burke (1972: 23) says, "many times on later occasions” he "regretted" not adding a sixth element (Frame) to his Pentad (act, scene, agent, agency, & purpose). Aristotle (350 BCE: 1356a: 2) in Rhetoric also addresses the concept of Frame, but does not list it as one of the Poetic elements. For Aristotle frame is “putting the audience into a certain frame of mind” (Rhetoric, 1356a: 2).  Burke (1937 Attitudes Toward History), on the other hand, views frame as a more macro viewpoint, as dialectic between "Frames of Acceptance" and "Frames of Rejection." Voila, the Septet, defined in Table 1 in more critical postmodern turn. 

My thesis is the Septet elements refuse to cohere (for long) in Metatheatre, and just will not resolve into narrative closure; the ‘cock-ups’ keep emerging (Gabriel, 2000: 60, 148) into more and more fragmentation. I have developed the Septet thesis elsewhere (Boje, 2002a, b), and will focus here on Metatheatre and its more antenarrative relationships.

Table 1: Poetic, Pentad, and Septet Grammars of Dramatis Personae

Key: * = Discussed, but not one of their main dramaturgical elements (Source of Table, Boje, 2002c). Appendix A offers re-readings of Aristotle, Burke, Boal, Freire, Debord, Best and Kellner, to set out the new Septet re-definitions.

Table 1 (above) is from paper Boje (2002a,b) which are on line (press here). 

Burke (1945: 231) aligns Aristotle’s (350BCE) six Poetics elements with the five dramatistic terms of the Pentad. Burke’s “plot would correspond to act,” “character would correspond to agent,” theme to purpose, dialog and rhythm combine in agency, and spectacle is classed under scene. Boal (1979) also bends Aristotle's Poetics, but takes it along a much more critical postmodern turn, while integrating Freire's (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed with Poetics into a Poetics of the Oppressed. Spectators can be invited to become actors on the stage, or actors can invade the audience. In Boal’s (1991) terms spectators become actors critically reflecting upon their complicity in situations of oppression as spect-actors.

What is Antenarrative?

Antenarrative is defined as a bet that a pre-story can be told and theatrically performed that will enroll stakeholders in intertextual ways that transform the world of action into theatrics; at the same time the antenarratives never quite get there. Antenarrative theory (Boje, 2001a) is closely tied to Kristeva (1980a: 36) and Bakhtin (1981), who suggest that each text has an intertextual “trajectory” that is historical and social (Boje, 2001a, O’Connor, 2002). And it relates to Fairclough’s (1992) critical discourse analysis, i.e. his advancing the idea that the intertextual trajectory is embedded in hegemonic struggle. Antenarrative shifts the focus narrative analysis from “what’s the story here” to questions of “why and how did this particular story emerge to dominate the stage?” Used as an adverb, "ante" combined with "narrative" or "antenarrative" means earlier than narrative. Story is an account of incidents or events, but narrative comes after and adds, more "plot" and tighter "coherence" to the story line. Antenarratives collect events and characters into their psychic economy. Antenarrative rhizomatic flight continues as long as there is context left to transform (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Antenarrative is about ontological ways of being in the world; it is not sensemaking, it is world making; antenarratives feed on new contexts, they consume contexts, they recontextualize.

What has TAMARA theatre got to do with Enron?

Enron is Metatheatre, defined here as the TAMARA-esque contending, fragmented, simultaneous, and multiple theatres that constitute the global economy. Critical dramaturgy is enscripted in Krizanc’s (1981) play Tamara, which has simultaneous scenes occurring on multiple stages, and where spectators do not stay in their theatre seats, but walk and run to chase the actors from stage to stage in a network of plots and unfolding storylines (Tamara, 2001; Boje, 1995).  Enron is theatrics in ways I think restructures capitalism; it is the Theatres of Capitalism (Boje, 2002a); it is the commodification of daily life in Theatres of Consumption (Firat & Dholakia, 1998); it is the theatre of Debord’s (1967) Society of the Spectacle; and it is the theatre of the Megaspectacle (Best & Kellner, 2001). There is not the space for a full literature review of organization theatre (see Oswick, Keenoy, & Grant, 2001). In brief, there are four main corporate theatre paradigms: (1) Goffmanesque metaphoric sociology of theatre (most applied in leadership studies); (2) Burkean/Shakespearean (organization life is theatre); (3) managerialist theatre (a technology managers purchase to control/motivate employees using professional actors & playwrights); and (4) Debord’s Society of the Spectacle theatre (spectacle façades to deceive investors). See Boje (2002 a, b) for more on this. (press here). For original work on TAMARA theatre analysis of Disney (See Boje, 1995 Tamara-land). 

What is Metatheatre?

Metatheatre is defined as the TAMARA-esque evolution and revolution in dialectic cycles of theatric-integration and disintegration, the networking of simultaneous stage-crafted performances seeking to instruct and control spectators and actors; these erupt into more fragmentation. Each integrating attempt of leaders and directors to evoke spectacular theatre, to control the center stage, to enroll a cast of characters, that will influence spectators, soon disintegrates as the pull of multiple scripts, plots, and characters spin Metatheatre out of control. 

What has Antenarrative got to Do with Metatheatre?

Antenarratives is about the bet that a prestory can be told that will take flight and in theatrical performances enroll a cast of characters and spectators to willingly suspend disbelief. I contend that underneath Enron Metatheatre are competing Tamara-esque antenarratives, the stories-a-making, the Septet elements refusing closure. 

My theory is that for Enron, an antenarrative rhizome process ends up in mega scandals packaged to entertain and re-educate us, but the Septet elements refuse to cohere; the force of Metatheatre to control and instruct in clever dialog and romantic plot is met by a counter-force in Metatheatre to disenroll characters, disintegrate plots into tragic-comedy, surface oppressive counter-themes and frames to the dominant play, and all the multiplicity of the poetic elements create disrupting rhythms, so that the spectacle decontextualizes, veering out of orbit. Metatheatre enrollment in galumphing Enron antenarratives took over a decade; a casting call signed up characters to play roles in eight intertextual antenarrative clusters we will analyze (Table 2); but it was unraveling from the very beginning in ways antenarrative theory makes clear. 

Table 2 presents examples of SEPTET analysis of Enron spectacles in paper by Boje, Rosile, Durant, & Luhman (2002). 

  ENRON METATHEATRE is worked out at the example of the SEPTET of Leadership.  You can click on the menu at the top of this page to find definitions of Metatheatre, Metascript, Quasi-Object (LJM & Raptors), and see the SEPTET elements applied to Enron (i.e. characters, plots, themes, dialogs, rhythms, frames, & spectacles). 

METATHEATRE INTERVENTION Manual by D. Boje and G. A. Rosile is available on this Website

The Metatheatre Intervention Manual is being published by the ISEOR Institute in Lyon, France. It applies Metatheatre and SEPTET to the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM).  

TO CITE THIS WEBSITE: In your papers and articles, please cite these documents as follows:

Boje, David M. (2002c) LEADERSHIP IS THEATRE: Septet Elements of Enron's Leadership and Metatheatre. Accessed (put in date of access) at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/septet  

RELATED DOCUMENTS

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. (2001a). Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London Sage.

Boje, D. M. (2001b). Carnivalesque Resistance to Global Spectacle: A Critical Postmodern Theory of Public Administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis. Vol. 23 (3): 431-458.

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

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., Ann L. Cunliffe & John T. Luhman (2002). A dialectic perspective on the organizational theatre metaphor. Paper under review.

Boje, D. M. & G. A. Rosile (2002a). The Metatheatre Intervention Manual. To be published by ISEOR Research Institute of University of Lyon 2, France.

Boje, D. M. & G. A. Rosile (2002a). Theatrics of SEAM. Paper to be published in Journal of Organizational Change Management Special Issue on Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM), guest edited by Henri Saval.

Boje, D. M., Grace Ann Rosile, Rita A. Durant & John T. Luhman (2002). Enron spectacle theatrics: A critical dramaturgical analysis. Under review at Organization Studies, for special issue on organization theatre. 

Gabriel, Yiannis (2000). Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, fictions, and fantasies. London: Oxford University Press.

Krizanc, John (1981/ 1989). Tamara. Toronto, Ontario: Stoddart Publishing Co. Limited (Dates are for first and second edition).

Oswick, C., Keenoy, T. & Grant, D. (2001). Dramatizing and organizing: acting and being. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 14 (3), 218-224.

Purpose LEADERSHIP IS THEATRE website is to advance the proposition that organizations are Metatheatre within the Theatres of Capitalism, and that Enron is not to be blamed upon a few errant executives, but on Tragic Flaws of the global system of capitalism, and we are all players, making entrances and exits on in a network of TAMARA-esque stages. In short, Life is Theatre.

Please contact dboje@nmsu.edu to offer suggestions that will develop the SEPTET of Leadership and Theatrics.

INSTRUCTIONS

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

  SEPTET Dimension, Enron Characters