Communication Currents

Communication studies spans a wide variety of methods and objects of study, ranging from survey results that we analyze using computers to observation and interviews that take hundreds or even thousands of hours, and interpersonal relationships to mass media. One thing that links this widely varied scholarly field, is a focus on the processes by which human beings coordinate a sense of reality. Yet sometimes, particularly in organizations, it seems efforts toward coordination and productive collaboration are futile, particularly when it comes to conflict involving race, gender, nationality, or other cultural identity groups. It is precisely these unavoidable (and seemingly not resolvable) conflicts that benefit from an innovative integration of performance and organizational communication theory.       

To demonstrate the practical utility of this theoretical intersection, we offer three principles we used to analyze the racial power dynamics of two racially divided school board meetings that took place during 2005 in Durham, NC. By highlighting these principles, we illustrate how understanding the intersections of performance and organizational communication theory can help organizational members better understand and navigate the everyday complexity of their workplace, more quickly assess and address conflict, and create opportunities and possibilities that more thoroughly meet the needs of multiple parties with multiple interests.

Principle #1: Organizations are Fragmented Performances  

One way we examine organizational practice is to pay attention to how members follow implicit “scripts.” Organizational members fill roles, enter and exit on cue, speak on cue, talk about prescribed topics while avoiding others, etc. An equally important question is who builds these scripts? In organizations, scripts are not stable. They are constantly negotiated through interaction. When we understand that organizations are performed, we stop thinking of organizations as fully stable performances containing already established scripts. Instead we see that each organizational member follows a script they have developed based on their own cultural, life, and work experience. This often results in incompatible scripts in a single situation. When we say that organizations are fragmented performances, we mean that organizations emerge as members negotiate and coordinate many different scripts they bring into the organization.

In the case of the school board meetings, this principle allowed us to see that racial controversy manifested through two different scripts for “proper” school board performance that were at odds with one another. One was based on a business model that emphasized efficiency and task orientation of the board itself. The other was based on a public service model that emphasized responsiveness to and relationships with the audience. Although school board members thought they were on the same page, they were unwittingly performing according to different scripts, with different goals, norms, and rules for how a board “should” perform.

Principle #2: Performances Organize 

A central idea in performance theory is that performances “make” rather than “fake.” When we examine performances (including organizational performances) according to this principle, we do not see them as reflecting cultural ideas and values, but helping “make” those ideas and values. Among those, performances not only create and disseminate aesthetics ideals (the beautiful and the ugly), they also create and mark political and cultural divisions. They organize people into “us” and “them:” those who are on stage, those who are backstage, and those who are in the audience; those who “get” the performance and those who don’t; the intended audience and those whose approval is inconsequential. Thus, performances are not simply entertainment. As we build scripts based on experiences, performances imitate or repeat a particular version of the past in a way that simultaneously creates and/or maintains organizational structures in the present.

Consequently, the conflict over performance of school board as business or public service is simultaneously conflict over organizational structure. Are board members the legitimate actors who “get things done” amidst a hierarchical structure in which the audience is primarily an interruption? Or, is the board there to serve the community in an egalitarian relationship with the audience? These questions are particularly significant when we note that the board is controlled by a majority of white individuals who always vote as a bloc[1] according to the business script, and the audience is occupied primarily by black individuals that call for a public service based performance.

Furthermore, some of the African American board members resist the hierarchical structure by paying lip service to a business-based script while using body language and tone to perform their dissatisfaction with the business script for sympathetic members of the audience. For example, one board member, who grew “disillusioned with the whole process” facetiously complements the white board members stating “You all just doing your same stuff. You know, so that’s alright. You all are doing good work…And I really admire all of you for the hard work that you all have done.” These performance acts aren’t just matters of unruly entertainment: they are attempts to re-organize the hierarchical structure fostered by the business-based model of the school board.

Principle #3: Establishing legitimate or “preferred” performances is a power-laden process (rather than a neutral one) 

Given the fragmentation of organizational performance, people must negotiate a common or “preferred” version of organizational performance in order to work together. This doesn’t mean that non-preferred performances disappear. It does mean that members who believe in preferred performances as “natural” or “normal,” find it difficult to see or understand other performances taking place, or it is easier for them to dismiss the different performances as inappropriate or unreasonable. When we use Principle #3 to acknowledge that what appears to be the “natural” or “normal” organizational performance is actually a result of power-laden negotiations, we better understand the conflicts that underpin seemingly “unruly” or “inappropriate” organizational performances.

Among other actions, the board members established the hierarchical structure as the only legitimate performance by passing policies (along racially divided votes) that severely constrained what audience members could say, and granted the chairperson the ability to have members forcibly removed for behaviors she interpreted as inappropriate. Even though a racially divided vote created a hierarchical structure between the dominantly white board and dominantly black audience, and even though the policy was used to remove audience members who repeatedly pleaded for the board to address racial tensions within the school system, these “normal” business scripted performances were treated as non-racial, non-personal desires to “get things done” according to the preferred business-based performance established by white members of the board.

On the contrary, performances of non-white actors on the board and in the audience that attempted to challenge this hierarchical structure were perceived as racially charged disruptions that interrupted the preferred performance of the school board. Thus, the legitimized performance is read as “normal” via the guise of business efficiency, even though it is based on white peoples’ votes, arranges the room in racial hierarchy, and silences voices that challenge that structure. When we analyze this legitimized performance as power laden, rather than “normal,” we begin to see the cultural and political function of seemingly “unruly” behaviors.

Conclusions 

In increasingly global and diverse work environments, organizational actors need increasingly sophisticated tools to understand how culture (or any difference of perspective) affects organizational interaction. These three principles help show how unequal power relationships are re-enforced despite the best intentions of individuals. When faced with seemingly intractable conflict, we encourage professionals to first search for the fragments of different performances, then question the way these different performances organize people in different ways, and finally, examine who has the power to establish the “legitimized” performance and to whose benefit. Ultimately, we believe these three principles will help professionals develop more detailed understandings of their workplace environments and the importance of communication.

[1] Their one exception is the vote to end a meeting early. It is noteworthy that the black members of the school board do not always vote as a block.