This document discusses how organizations can be viewed as theaters that stage performances for both internal and external audiences. It describes how organizational structures, processes, and activities often serve symbolic and ceremonial functions aimed at maintaining legitimacy and confidence, even if they do not achieve their intended practical outcomes. Organizations employ dramaturgical elements like structures, scripts, costumes, and meetings more to sustain an impression of rational management and address of problems, rather than to drive actual performance or problem-solving. Maintaining the right organizational "drama" reassures stakeholders and helps the organization conform to external expectations.

1. Chapter 14
Organization as Theater

2. Organization as Theater
 Dramaturgical and Institutional Theory
 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage
Revisited…”
 Organizational Structure as Theater
 Organizational Process as Theater

3. Organizational Theater
 Theater plays to both internal and external
audiences
 A convincing dramaturgical performance
reassures external constituents, builds
confidence, keeps critics at bay
 Drama may have happy endings (like Polaris
case) or tragedy (like Hurricane Katrina)

4. Dramaturgical and Institutional
Theory
 Dramaturgical theory: internal focus (organizational
participants as players in a drama)
 Institutional theory: external focus on how
organizations project images to external audiences
 “Institutionalized organizations” focus more on
appearance than performance
 When goals are ambiguous and performance hard to
measure (as in universities and many government
agencies), organizations maintain stakeholder support
by staging the right play, conforming to audience
expectations of how the organization should operate

5. DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage
Revisited…”
 “Isomorphism” – process of becoming similar to other
organizations in the same “organizational field”
 Coercive isomorphism – organizations become alike
because law, regulation or stakeholders pressure
them to do so
 Mimetic isomorphism – organizations become more
alike by copying one another
 Normative isomorphism – organizations employing
the same professionals become similar because the
professionals have similar values and ideas

6. Organizational Structure as
Theater
 Structure as Stage design: an arrangement of lights,
props and costumes
 Makes drama vivid and credible
 Reflects and expresses current values and myths
 Public schools reassure stakeholders if…
 The building and grounds look like a school
 Teachers are certified
 Curriculum mirrors society’s expectations
 Colleges judged by:
 Age, endowment, beauty of campus
 Faculty student ratio
 Faculty with degrees from elite institutions

7. Organizational Process as Theater
 Activities (meetings, planning, performance
appraisal, etc.) often fail to produce intended
outcomes, yet persist because they help
sustain organizational drama
 Scripts and stage markings: cue actors what
to do and how to behave
 Opportunities for self-expression and forums
for airing grievances
 Reassure audiences that organization is well-
managed and important problems are being
addressed

8. Organizational Process as Theater (II)
 Meetings as “Garbage cans”
 Attract an unpredictable mix of problems
looking for solutions, solutions looking for
problems, and participants seeking
opportunities for self-expression
 Planning as ceremony to maintain legitimacy
and reinforce participants’ bonds
 Plans are symbols
 Plans become games
 Plans become excuses for interaction
 Plans become advertisements

9. Organizational Process as Theater (III)
 Evaluations
 Often fail in intended goals of improving performance
and identifying strengths and weaknesses
 Ceremony signals the organization is well-managed
and cares about performance improvement
 Collective Bargaining
 Public face: intense, dramatic contest
 Private face: back-stage negotiation, collusion
 Power
 Exists in eye of beholder – you are powerful if others
think you are
 May be attributed based on outcomes

10. Conclusion
 Organizations judged by appearance
 The right drama:
 Provides a ceremonial stage
 Reassures stakeholders
 Maintains confidence and faith
 Drama serves powerful symbolic functions
 Engages actors in their performances
 Builds excitement, hope, sense of momentum