Iain L. Mangham

Scripts, Talk and Double Talk

This paper is about the role of talk in the creation, development and instating of a new script within an organization. For a long time I have been interested in how we recognize the patterns of behaviour that we have become accustomed to, how we sustain them and how, if we so choose, we modify them. Elsewhere I have made extensive use of the metaphor of the theatre in characterizing these processes, depicting the social world we inhabit as a place of settings, scenes, acts and scripts and ourselves as dramatists/dramaturges, performers, audiences and critics (Mangham, 1978, 1987, 1988; Mangham and Overington, 1986). In my work with members of organizations, I have utilized this frame to invite them to step back from their own performances, appraise them, rewrite them, try out the new scripts and work towards a long run of their new creations. Here I report on the role of talk in one such intervention.

Beyond goffman: Some notes on life and theatre as art

This paper discusses two events: a scene from a performance of ‘Waiting for Godot’ and an incident from a team development meeting for a group of senior managers. The focus is upon the nature of the experiences of the respective audiences not upon the instrumental value of the performances. Drawing upon the work of Heidegger and Shklovsky in particular, the author comments, compares and contrasts the two events. Particular emphasis is given to the notion of art as an “unconcealment” and upon the notions of imaginative and present truth.

Book Reviews : Conceptual Foundations of Organisational Development Newton Margulies and Anthony P. Raia New York: McGraw-Hill 1979

Approaches to participation need to deal with problems whose symptoms are absenteeism, stress, psychosomatic illness, ’fiddling’ and ’work avoidance’ as well as strikes, go-slows, sit-ins etc. Overall this is a solid, worthy book rather than an exciting one. It will inform the careful reader, but it might deter the ’skip-reading’ manager (or management teacher!). If it does so, then this is really a pity, for the whole question of participation is crucial to our society at this time, and it ought to be exciting to think around ways of overcoming current problems and creating new organisational forms.