The Dramatistic Genre in Leadership Studies: Towards an Integrated Framework

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, leadership theorists and researchers have appreciated the significance of leaders as makers of meaning. While this understanding has stimulated a greater need to link leadership to organisational symbolism and organisational sense-making issues, the focus on these issues has resulted in not insignificant dissatisfaction with conventional approaches to the study of leadership. In response, this thesis provides a novel yet complementary alternative focus for theory and research in the leadership area. It theorises and researches the symbolic and relational aspects of leadership as highlighted in three subgenres of dramatism namely: Kenneth Burke's dramatism, Erving Goffman's dramaturgy, Victor Turner's social drama analysis. The thesis unfolds with the case for the development and use of an integrated dramatistic perspective as a research method. It builds a rationale for this methodological choice by locating the perspective's established intellectual roots, and thereafter, enumerates its most useful aspects. This discussion incorporates explanations about the method's potential to satisfy some of the concerns that have been raised by leadership researchers in the mainstream literature. Locating the three subgenres in the interpretive tradition, the thesis seeks a fuller theoretical appreciation of the dramatistic tradition available in Burke's literal (life is drama); Goffman's metaphorical (life is like drama) and Turner's meta-theatrical (life and drama are mutually interdependent) perspectives. The thesis highlights and discovers the usefulness of each perspective to the understanding of extant leadership theory and research and builds three analytical frameworks based on this understanding. The empirical part of this thesis uses a case study approach. It demonstrates the applicability of the three frameworks in the analysis of the fall of leadership as exemplified in a case featuring the company Air New Zealand. The multi-textual data that were collected on the case from the public domain and media accounts for the period 1999-2001 are systematically analysed using the three dramatistic frameworks. The Burkean analysis explains the fall of leadership at Air New Zealand as the drama of struggle between nationalistic norms and commercial norms. The Goffmanian analysis draws attention to the considerable amount of face work employed by the Air New Zealand leaders as they encountered predicaments that arose as a result of their decision to purchase Ansett Australia. Turner's social drama analysis highlights the conflict regarding foreign shareholding limits for the national airline. The analysis explains the drama as a collective gesture or a mass-enactment of national identity in which nationality emerged as the central agency principle underlying all influencing processes. To that end, findings depict the imperatives faced by chief executive leaders at the national airline, an institution that needs to locate itself within the constraints of nationalistic worldviews, and yet survive in an increasingly global world. The study also undertakes an integration of these theoretical and empirical insights to arrive at a holistic appreciation of the relative merits of the three subgenres. The study concludes with the acknowledgment of the ontological and epistemological implications of the three dramatistic perspectives. In addition, it evaluates the recent concerns that have been variously raised regarding the heuristic value of the theatre metaphor. This concluding discussion highlights the limits of the theatre metaphor and uses the empirical insight from the case study to surface important aspectual dissimilarities between leadership and drama. Overall, the thesis ascertains the value of an integrated dramatistic perspective in helping understand leadership as and as well as beyond drama. The thesis illustrates that the skills of performing arts are necessary but not sufficient for leadership. Implications for leadership studies, the broader contributions of this thesis, and avenues for future inquiry are also identified.