Drama Performance & Storytelling: Explorations in Leadership and Organisational Change

How do individuals and organisations ensure their objectives, plans and strategies are successfully executed? How do managers and management educators create and pass on practical wisdom? How can artistic and popular literature, drama, theatre and film contribute to developing and educating leaders and managers? How can creativity, play and irony enable managers to overcome limited, non-reflective and traditional expectations of rational-scientific management and develop a more open, reflexive and cosmopolitan alternative?

This research area explores these processes via studies of interventions and organisational change.  It builds on and disseminates findings of cultural studies that view organisations as drama, narrative and performance.  In particular, it explores leadership as social performance, issues of identity, masks and authenticity, and ironic reflexivity in liquid modernity. 

Details

This research also aims to create and develop educational and learning spaces to support management reflexivity of identity and work in organisations, by drawing on organisational research and arts-based management education methods, including storytelling, film and theatre. It outlines the social challenge facing organisations, of overcoming an overly rational and mechanistic mindset, and facilitates a move towards a more open, reflexive and cosmopolitan culture. This allows uncertainties and paradoxes to surface and be discussed while supporting creativity, play and irony.

Research Streams

Action, Reflexivity and Meaning in Management

Management research and education is about action, meaning and reflexivity, not the manipulation of technique or discovering laws. 

Recent doctoral research has identified seven metaphors of leadership transformation, which are informing the educational material we produce at MGSM, and academic and consultancy levels, along with publishing opportunities we have with the Harvard Business Review and our collaborative prospects with Harvard and Yale universities. Our ongoing research in this area focuses on how these and new metaphors emerge, establish, and are challenged during transformational leadership and change management.

Organisations as Theatre

Research in this area focuses on how innovation and change leadership is not merely a set of managerial techniques and tools, but an artful performance requiring the skilful integration of scripts, props, action and persuasion. 

This research stream has been extensively presented at the European Croup for Organizational Studies (2006-11), and extended into a series of publications – the most recent being the ‘Performing Change’ chapter  in the Routledge Handbook on Organizational Change (2011 forthcoming).

The Performative Arts of Management and Leadership

Research focus and educational programs on the performative arts of management and leadership are both personally and practically beneficial for individuals and organisations, and of central significance to innovation and change. Research in this area is found in the MGSM 866 ‘Managing Change’ module, the MGSM/BE Learning Phronesis network, the Collaborative Forum Theatre Change Interventions (St George, ING Direct, Lifehouse), Beyond Harvard Case Studies: Hardwired Human Instincts ‘Zoo’ Experience, the Henley/MGSM China Study Tours and the Copenhagen Business School/MGSM Arts Studio Collaboration.

Ironic and Cosmopolitan Management

Breaking down entrenched, overly rational views of organisational culture is a key yet confronting challenge for researchers and educators – and a central responsibility of business schools. 

Research in this area focuses on developing methods and theories that challenge established rational thinking, to help develop creative and pragmatic alternatives. 

This research has been extensively presented in both EGOS and APROS colloquiums (2006-11) and is summarised on the Ironic Manager website and in the upcoming Copenhagen Business School publication, The Ironic Manager.

 

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