Management/Leadership as Performing arts
Business is Show Business: Management Presentations as Performance
Journal of Management Studies
While there is continual scholarly interest in the ‘organization as theatre’ metaphor, extant dramaturgical... more While there is continual scholarly interest in the ‘organization as theatre’ metaphor, extant dramaturgical perspectives limit the ability to account for aesthetic experiences in theatrical situations. This study provides a different methodological lens for looking at ‘theatre’ in organizations and illustrates that an inclusion of performance theory can be particularly valuable for understanding aesthetic techniques which are increasingly employed in organizations. Responding to calls for aesthetic studies, this article analyses large-scale management presentations such as annual general meetings, press conferences, and analyst meetings ‘as performance’ instead of re-labelling them as if they were drama. Drawing on the latest theatre theory and introducing a tool for performance analysis, the study accounts for the aesthetic experience and describes the complex interplay of scenography, lighting, clothing, managers' performance style, rhetoric, and audience interaction, showing that these organizational events are co-created and contested theatrical performances with a potential for resistance and possible change as well as for persuasion.
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Leadership (Special Issue: Leadership as an Art, ed. by Donna Ladkin & Steven S. Taylor)
Comparing leaders to actors has a long tradition, and researchers and practitioners in the organizational field have... more Comparing leaders to actors has a long tradition, and researchers and practitioners in the organizational field have tried to learn lessons from theatre. For developing this approach, this article takes an interdisciplinary theatre studies perspective and discusses how leaders in organizations compare to actors in the theatre. It makes the assertion that the actor’s role in (dramatic, epic and postdramatic) theatre over several historic epochs can be seen as a complementary, opposed practice that confronts and challenges audiences rather than ‘playing to them’. Theatre does not provide us with ideal or charismatic leader characters but, quite the opposite, teaches us about contentious and problematic heroes. Theatre presents a fundamental disrespect for tenability and positive affirmation and may offer more critical ideas about aesthetic interaction, leadership performance and leader-follower interaction. This illustrates that aesthetic features do not alone turn leadership into an art. ‘Leadership as an art’ through this lens includes critical interaction through increased aesthetic awareness from the viewpoint of followers.
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