Scientific knowledge is conventionally distinguished from the everyday knowledge of lay people that is transmitted in stories-narrative knowledge. Recently, however, a call for redeeming narrative knowledge in the humanities and social sciences in general and in organization studies in particular can be heard. The present article considers whether there is enough ground for reintroducing the narrative knowledge into a research tradition, which until now has been imbued with the logoscientific knowledge. Several existing and emerging traditions within organization studies are intent on achieving such a rapprochement: for instance case studies, studies of organizational stories and a variety of interpretive approaches. A collective reflection is needed to consolidate such attempts. Such reflection, which this paper initiates, might aim at interpretation which lies beyond the hermeneutic tradition of separating the material world from the symbolic, and at a conscious development of a genre which will speak to practitioners as well as to theoreticians.

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This paper explores three crucial roles of the organizational theatre: managers, leaders and entrepreneurs. Changing fashion in the organizational theory debate as well as in organizational practice puts different roles in focus at different times. Organization theory should, accordingly, shift its attention toward studying the contexts in which a given role acquires dominance, in place of an unreflective discussion of the relative functional advantages of each of them. This paper argues that none of the three will ever go out of fashion, as they can be seen as enactments of archetypes, embodying the different fears and hopes of those who create organizations by their daily performance. Leadership is seen as symbolic performance, expressing the hope of control over destiny; management as the activity of introducing order by coordinating flows of things and people towards collective action, and entrepreneurship as the making of entire new worlds. The sociohistorical context needs to be considered as the stage-set wherein these roles gain prominence.

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