Washington IV

To understand the uniqueness of a particular organization’s communities of practice or technologies of representation/control one must first understand the way in which the corporations presents itself as a sum of its units as well as the individual entities within that sum. Dramaturgy and performativity explain the theatrical elements of a performance and how that said performance is conveyed through the use of words and actions. This includes a number of different factors ranging from the situational acting, the costumes, masks, etc. as well as the course of taking a set action to convey the intended information. These applications are sometimes referred to as the theater metaphor, which in essence makes a correlation to that of the actors of a troupe paralleling that of the business men in a corporation. The individuals in the corporation each have their set role with some being more in the front and some doing more back of the house functions. The main purpose is to achieve the intended goal which comes to fruition through the multiple performances from the various actors/business individuals. It makes a strong correlation with the dress of the individuals conducting business, like that of an actor in a play dressed to convey an implied meaning. The top executives of a corporation establish a rigid hierarchical structure by wearing “top of the line” professional suits establishing their role as being at the top of the totem pole and the others dress accordingly to their acquired position. The thick description implies that subtle differences of symbolic and non symbolic behavior within the context of the organization. Example being that of a casual twitch and that of an implied wink can be interpreted as two distinctive clues to what the sender wants to signify to the receiver within the context of an organization. Having a keen understanding of these frames one can dissect and analyze to a greater extent the communities of practice within the organization. Since the main focus is on examination of how learning occurs through social interaction, one can ascertain that constituents within a said industry will have their own field jargon as well as an established form of non-verbal clues that indicate the implied context or direction of either a conversation or business meeting. Within the confines of each of their “communities” whether it is regional/national/international individuals will develop a set of innate improvisational techniques to accommodate the varying climate of each community. An example being that of a worker who has close ties within the confines of his home office and he acts very relaxed and loose with his colleagues, where information is exchanged in a diplomatic, yet laid back manner and everyone knows one another. However, as the worker has to go to a national conference meeting, his demeanor starts to get a little more polished and more professional, yet the worker still maintains his laid back openness with his national partners. The 180 degree turn to the worker’s manner changes when he enters into the international market and he must be very reserved and respectful of the varying traditions from the different countries present, as well as the cultural climate that surrounds each one, as the worker is unaware of his set place or social role in the international community. At a regional level the worker has a close social structure with personal contacts and the more he expands from the base of his operations, the shared vocabularies both verbal and non-verbal with his new communities begin to become more and more diluted to the point where people could have a completely different set of rhetorical styles and forms of self-expression. The constructed interpretation of the social structures from the worker’s perspective can be gauged and detailed by his inherent dramaturgy, performativity, and thick description that has been assessed by his corporation. In discussing the technologies of representation, one can make the statement that the said “worker” is indeed just a cog in the machine that is disposable at any time he stops performing up to his expected rate. The worker wears his suit and tie and adequately fulfills his role in the “program” day in and day out without interruption. His interaction is mainly through the virtual marketplace of the internet and a good portion of his contacts are all virtual as well. This poses the question on which what aspect of the worker’s life has a shred of “truth” attached to it. The worker has overtime become a routine based simulation that fulfills his obligations with out hiccup and in return he gets to sustain the contentment of living a risk free life because of the calculated performances he continually conducts. This leads into the technologies of control, where through the lack of an identity, the worker has been conditioned for the loss of caring for the truth and instead becoming more preoccupied about being efficient. The worker has a specialized knowledge that is not innate in nature, but conditioned by the corporation through repetition and monotony. His cog fulfills a set specific desire and has little value outside of this context, especially as a means to fulfill one’s own desire to better oneself through the freedom of exchange of ideas and thoughts. The main purpose being perpetuated by the corporate entities is that of conformity, repetition, controllability, efficient, and measurable. The books that come to mind throughout this discussion is that of 1984 and Brave New World. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a constructed utopia is imagined where society is organized to create ideal conditions for human beings, eliminating hatred, pain, neglect, and all of the other evils of the world and through the administration of soma people accept their role as conformist drones and communities of practice becomes leveled on the tier system they have created. In a stark contrast, George Orwell’s is one of the most celebrated novels depicting the negative utopian, or dystopian, genre. 1984 shows the worst human society imaginable, in an effort to acknowledge the potential outcomes that lead toward such a societal degradation. This vision of a post-atomic dictatorship in which every entity would be monitored ceaselessly by means of the televised screen could be terrifyingly possible under postmodern analysis of the technologies of representation and the technologies of control.
References
Hatch, M. & Cunliffe, A. (2006). Organizational Theory