An ethnographic study of organizational performances in business services: Space, staging and materiality

Abstract

It is said that all the world is a stage. But how do organizations physically stage performances, such as pitching for new business, presenting reports and entertaining clients? Drawing on a 14 month-long ethnographic study at a Fortune 500 strategic research company, this paper explains how. Emphasizing the active role of human and non-human actors, it uncovers three staging practices that an organization can use to transform a space into a stage. Organizations theme stages by populating them with certain objects. They produce a style of performance by arranging relationships between performers and audiences. Finally, they order movements from one stage to others so that plots emerge. Theorizing these staging practices through a materialist dramaturgy, the paper challenges existing organizational theory. It tends to focus on the ways organizations control and script performances. The paper shows that organizational performances in service and knowledge organizations can be improvisational. They are not preordained but they are organized.