OR Enactment: The Theatrical Metaphor as an Analytic Framework

Author(s): Jim Bryant

Source: The Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 44, No. 6, Interface between OR
and the Social Sciences (Jun., 1993), pp. 551-561
Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals on behalf of the Operational Research Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2584512
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J. Opl Res. Soc. Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 551-561 0;60-5682/93 $9.00+0.00
Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved Copyright ? 1993 Operational Research Society Ltd

OR Enactment: the Theatrical Metaphor as an

Analytic Framework
JIM BRYANT
Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Theatre provides a powerful metaphor to support thinking about human interactions in organizations.
This paper indicates how a dramaturgical approach can illuminate what goes on in OR interventions
(as well as, incidentally providing guidance in their prosecution). This perspective emphasizes aspects
of the conduct of our work with clients that are too easily neglected, and help us to anticipate how
things may turn out. It has a critical bearing upon the practice of OR and upon the training of OR
practitioners.

Key words: practice of OR, dramaturgical metaphor, OR education, methodology

BEGINNING

1. INT. BREWERY OFFICE RECEPTION AREA. MORNING.

It is a commonplace modern office space: bright clean and neutral, with humanizing foliage.
Copies of 'The Brewer' and 'Management Today' lie on a coffee table in front of one of the
buttoned green leather settees. GILLIAN, a young clerical assistant stands listening as
MARIL YN, the maturely attractive receptionist, nears the climax of a distressingly private tale.
MARILYN: ... back to the clinic ...
[Telephone rings. MARIL YN picks it up and mechanically smiling]
Good morning. J. C. Black Limited.
[Listens for a moment, deftly flicking buttons on the tiny switchboard in an absent-minded way.
Then replaces receiver.]
... to have it enlarged again!
GILLIAN, trying to appear cool, is nevertheless impressed and raises her eyebrows in
involuntary astonishment. At this moment there is a crash as the door bursts open and NICK,
a carelessly bearded student wearing a heavily-studded leather jacket and carrying an incon-
gruous designer briefcase enters: for a moment he stands frozen to the spot as his dense
photochromic lenses adjust to the light
NICK: Uh.
MARILYN: [with glacial smoothness] Are you with Professor Bryant's group? The others have
already gone upstairs. Please take the lift [indicating the door] to the third floor. Someone
will be waiting for you there.
As NICK moves awkwardly towards the lift MARIL.YN and GILLIAN exchange disdainful
glances
2. INT. MR. BLACK'S OFFICE. MORNING.
A spacious room arranged in two main areas. At one end, beside a hearth in which a coal
fire crackles is a heavy walnut desk, strewn with papers. A floppy spaniel dozes on the
fireside rug. Heavy Victorian portraits of grimly bewhiskered patriarchs glare past the solidly
ticking grandfather clock towards the long table at the other end of the room. Here MR
BLACK, lineal descendent of the founders, presides magnificently over a hushed gathering
of deferential faces: the 'management team'. Messrs POCOCK and WILSON, flank him,
while the visitors, PROF BR YANT with LIZ and NASIM, sit facing them across the polished
expanse. All present have a china cup of coffee before them. The door opens and PENNY,

Correspondence: J. Bryant, School of Computing & Management Sciences, Sheffield Hallam University, Hallamshire
Business Park, 100 Napier Street, Sheffield SI] 8HD, UK

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 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 44, No. 6

Black's secretary enters. The dog looks up briefly. Through the door we see NICK loitering
impatiently.
PENNY: Mr Jones has arrived [emphasizing 'Mr.]7
NICK strolls in, pulls out an empty chair to one side of the table, crashing his briefcase gratingly
on the mirrored surface. POCOCK winces.
[To NICK] Would you like some coffee?
NICK: Yeah. Grey, two sugars.
BLACK: [Addressing BR YANT as if nothing has happened: BR YANT transfixed by BLA CK'S
stare cannot acknowledge NICK'S arrival]
Like other brewers no doubt, we have our share of problems, and so I felt that we
should take advantage of your approach. You will appreciate that what we have to say
today must be treated with the utmost discretion [His piercing gaze passes across the
visiting party and rests menacingly upon NICK who has now extracted some paper and
a pen from his case]
I've asked Graham here to prepare a brief for the work.
WILSON: Thank you Mr Black. [Hastily distributes a typewritten sheet to each of the visitors.
BLACK and POCOCK refer to copies which they already have] As Mr Black has just said, we
like to think that the public sees us as a sound Yorkshire brewer, selling high quality ale
through friendly, traditional houses. Unfortunately, these days that doesn't seem to be
enough to protect our estate from competitors, and so we're looking for ways of achieving
greater customer awareness.
BRYANT: But as I understand it, without specifically promoting Black's ales?
WILSON: Right. We have to rely upon far more than beer sales today.
POCOCK: [Disparagingly] We've found that we are in the business of 'Leisure facility
management' as you academics call it.
NICK: AC/DC: screw the buggers whichever way they turn!
[He laughs]
A taut silence during which PENNY enters with a tray on which are a cup of coffee, cream jug,
sugar basin and tongs; the chink of the china is magnified in the stillness; she places the tray in
front of NICK and leaves the room
BLACK: [Wryly] As I'm sure you'll appreciate young man, there can be no holds barred in
commercial penetration.
Audible easing of tension. The suggestion of a smile even crosses POCOCK'S face
WILSON: [Recovering his composure] Which is why we're asking you to carry out this project
to evaluate the marketing opportunities.

3. INT. BRYANT'S ROOM. AFTERNOON.

WILSON'S proposal continues in sound. In vision we see BR YANT sitting at the desk in his
mean little room at the Polytechnic, surrounded as it were by LIZ, NASIM and NICK. The noise
of a pneumatic drill outside periodically drowns all conversation. Piles of unmarked scripts seem
to pour from every available surface. Flip charts with bold, colourful writing cover the shabby
brown wallpaper.
BRYANT: We're all agreed Liz, that Black is a dictatorial, pompous old sod, but he's the man
who's running the show and we have to carry him with us.
NASIM: Then why did you say afterwards that getting Pocock to support us was so important?
BRYANT: Don't be deceived by the 'Yes sir, no sir, three bags full' game they're playing: Wilson,
Pocock and the rest aren't just ciphers; they're the blokes who run things. Mr B is a
garrulous figurehead -but he does tie the whole scene together.
NICK: This is going to be an easy job isn't it guys?

I am employed to introduce inexperienced young people to the grisly drama of OR. The probity
of this role sometimes concerns me. However, I console myself with the thought that it would seem
unfair were these same individuals pushed willy-nilly into the maelstrom of organizational life with
no more than 'a few cues, hints and stage directions'", implicitly assuming that they already have
in their repertoire sufficient bits and pieces of the performances that will be required in their new
setting, to make a credible job of the part.
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 J. Bryant- OR Enactment: the Theatrical Metaphor as an Analytic Framework

The immediate question is 'What are the patterns of conduct in OR?': and then, 'how can the
sense of these be conveyed to a novice?' I have found that a dramaturgical perspective has helped
me to address these questions with less apprehension.

THEATRICAL METAPHOR

As OR workers we are all too familiar with the use of metaphor in organizations, for we use our
own highly-specialized, clearly-structured metaphors (which we usually refer to as 'models') to
represent those aspects of organizational life which we are called upon to investigate. My argument
here is that it is worth turning our application of metaphor upon the OR process itself, for by doing
so we gain new insights into the activity which we daily prosecute.
The need for metaphor in understanding the social world, and the pedigree of the theatrical
model, both in general terms and as a specific analytical device for appreciating organizational life,
have been convincingly and lucidly set down by Mangham and Overington2. Elsewhere3 I have
attempted a crude initial overlaying of this framework upon the OR process. What follows is a
necessary repetition of the kernel of these ideas to serve as a preamble to the use of a dramaturgical
approach to study OR interventions.
Many metaphoric frameworks have been and are being used to interpret what organizations are
about. For example, the notions of organizations as systems, as political arenas, as organisms or
as cultures are each powerful and generative devices, providing fresh ways of making sense of what
is going on. In a similar way, various frameworks have been proposed to illuminate one specific
aspect of activity that takes place in organizational contexts; the OR process. Thus, among many
others3 the role analogies of doctor, therapist, jester, magician and scientist have been attached to
the task of OR, and corresponding ways of looking at and interpreting what goes on (or should
go on) in OR interventions have been suggested. I shall propose in this paper the use of a further
metaphor-that of OR intervention as theatre, with corresponding roles for the OR worker as
audience, actor and director-as a valuable way of looking afresh at what we are about. However,
throughout what follows it is important to remember that we are using just one of a number of
possible interpretive frameworks-albeit one which I believe has much to offer-and that the
metaphor should only be pressed as far and as hard as still to retain the potential for generating
new meanings. Metaphor is useful, not for its own sake, but in stimulating a dialectical process
which contrasts two areas of human experience and which thereby suggests ways of enriching or
developing one through contrast or similarity with the other.
Metaphor provides us with a way of seeing 'this' in terms of 'that'. Theatre is a 'that' which has
proved especially rich in generating new insights into aspects of life that are too easily taken for
granted. It is the ability to provide us with a systematic set of concepts, enabling us to ask pertinent
questions about some social reality that is the strength of metaphor: it is the potential for
'demystifying the constructed nature of action'2 in human organizations that is the particular
strength of the theatrical analogy. The metaphor predicates a world formed by deliberate human
action in the search for individual meaning. That is, it recognizes the active part played by
individuals and groups in making sense of what it is that they are all caught up in, and the
responsibility which we all share for taking action and shaping outcomes.
Organizational life is pretty unproblematic for most of us most of the time: unquestioned and
unexamined, it forms the taken-for-granted context of our individual everyday work. That it is so
stems from the extent to which interactions in organizations are repetitive enactments of a ritual
nature rather than creative improvizations. The jarring failure of routine gives rise to conscious
reflection upon action, which in turn polarizes awareness of action and agent: what Mangham and
Overington' term a 'theatrical consciousness', for it is precisely this distinction between actors and
their parts, between reality and performance, that makes theatre possible. It is the subtle blend of
the scripted with the unrehearsed that commends theatre as a conceptual resource for appreciating
action in the world of human organizations.
The scene which opens this paper illustrates the re-running of a familiar routine as Marilyn
answers the telephone: indeed her revelations to Gillian probably fall into the same category
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as does her treatment of Nick, even if she is momentarily phased by his appearance. The
performance which follows in Black's room is hardly less ritual in character, as all of the
principals (including the visitor Bryant) slip into their expected parts. Even in the third scene
the shape of the interaction is familiar: Bryant offers hoary wisdom and advice; Nick is the joker
with winged feet; Nasim studiously pins the action to the ground. In every scene those involved
have a good idea (most of the time) what will happen. When a departure from the implicit script
occurs, like Nick's interjection in Wilson's explanation, those present wait for Black (as the focus
of symbolic power) to improvise a response: his lead integrates the interruption into the action
and the scene can proceed, to everyone's obvious relief. It is in this instant of uncertainty-like
the onstage hiatus that follows a forgotten line -that those present become momentarily aware
of the infinite potential of the moment and step outside themselves to glimpse their own presence
in the scene as agents for its resolution.

The art of theatre is to create a performance as a 'given': one that is as it is because it just is
as it has to be. This sense of the inevitability of a performance is as much part of everyday social
life as it is of the world of the theatre, for in social life, situations are defined by an intuitive
negotiation between those involved, through their careful management of the impressions which
they give and give off: their performance. To quote Goffman' again: 'we all act better than we
know how'.
Making sense of what is going on for those who are the life of an organization means interpreting
their actions and utterances. A 'reading' of these episodes is as equally important for those who
are active in them as for those who are mute witnesses: the OR worker may be both. The theatrical
model provides a framework for such a reading; one too which permits an holistic appreciation as
well as an elemental analysis.

THIS OR BUSINESS

I want to take a contextualist view4 of OR: specifically to recognize the whole fabric of
interwoven events and scenes which taken together are conveniently labelled as a 'problem-
solving intervention'. What are the intuited quality and the textural components of OR as an
activity?
It has been usual to characterize OR in terms of the services which OR workers offer to
their clients or the payoffs which result from OR intervention: that is, in terms of causes and
effects of OR activity. But what is the flavour of OR? What is its style and character? To be
sure, we need to understand the episodes which define the texture of OR involvement, and I
shall return later to this inquiry using the dramaturgical model. In this section, however, I wish
to dwell upon the holistic enactment of Operational Research and to ask what sort of theatre we
make.
More than most callings, OR harks back to the golden age of its founders5. As a railway buff,
I have some of the same feelings of romantic nostalgia for branch line steam trains, always glimpsed
through the mists of time on some idyllic summer's day. For me this mania is in part an antidote
against the cruelly diminished and rather heartless rail service of today, and I suspect that our
interest in antique OR has similar origins. Perhaps this is a yearning for something that was lost
in those far-off days: some sense of excitement and involvement, of being accepted and listened
to. OR people might have been odd or arrogant but they were versatile and they asked awkward
questions; above all they were understood and they felt useful. Of course, 'good old days' are always
better reconstructed than experienced, but OR today does have a leaner, meaner feel: and a 'sense
of disappointment, of a dream unfulfilled'6. For the practitioner the undoubted sense of OR's
achievement is mingled with regret that it is not better appreciated.
Despite its evolution, the character of an OR intervention remains remarkably unchanged. It is
an exacting and businesslike investigation of someone's perceived world; a study carried out
systematically and seriously, with a rigour that is seldom applied to the management of everyday
affairs. The word 'rational' has been attached7, with barely a dissenting voice, to the sort of
analysis that OR provides. However, the somewhat chill feel that all these words add up to must
554
 J. Bryant- OR Enactment: the Theatrical Metaphor as an Analytic Framework

not be permitted to mislead. OR does not exist to crucify decision-makers on the crosses of their
mistakes, but to support them as they grapple with complex problems in an uncertain world. At
its best, the mood is collaborative and helpful. For successful OR the theatre which we make (the
project which we carry out) has to be shaped and owned by our client-audience. Indeed they are
part of the troupe of players. As in the theatre, the key is the relationships, the politics, of the team,
and how it relates to the wider community which it serves.
For the practitioner, OR is fun. It provides a legitimate channel for organizational voyeurism,
coupled with a modicum of influence over the activities in which other people are caught up. The
practitioner is licensed to challenge orthodoxy in thinking or practice and, within reason, to act as
a catalyst to others doing the same within the constructed bounds of intervention processes.
As Mangham and Overington8 say, to use a Brechtian strategy of startlement to display hidden
explanations for complex human actions. This iconoclasm can be exciting and disturbing for our
clients, and we have to learn to manage it with care, creating a theatre which is challenging and
provoking yet not destructive.
The whole feel of an OR involvement at its best is slightly risky (and risque). Simon Callow
writes9 of acting, 'There's no getting away from the fact that theatre contains an element of
hostility. Every actor knows that. Standing on the stage is an aggressive act.... Certainly, the
audience in the theatre is not far from the audience in the Big Top watching the funambulist,
thrilled by the risk he's taking, but unconsciously longing for him to fall.' OR work has this tension,
both in its concern with the management of the substantive content of organizational problems,
and in its concern with the handling of decision processes in executive groups. In the former, by
using systematic frameworks, the Operational Researcher holds up for a client new ways of seeing
taken-for-granted processes. The analogical models have a fragility which is often well-disguised
but is seldom hard to uncover, and their use depends upon the charitable collusion of all concerned.
In the latter, by creating ways in which people can communicate with and learn to understand each
other and their common predicament, the OR worker acts as a facilitator of a social process. Such
highly-charged political processes are deeply susceptible to interpersonal games, and rely upon
unstated, precarious agreement to act in concert. Notwithstanding these pressures, the OR person
must maintain an element of control if the performance is to cohere as an enactment of OR rather
than becoming something else.
Return to Black's Brewery. Even - perhaps especially - at this 'contract-negotiating' stage
of an OR intervention, the handling of relationships is a delicate matter. Why should Black and
his colleagues invite these clowns to cast a naive eye over their operations? Why should they set
in train a process which may waste a good deal of time and lead to embarrassing disclosures?
Later in this imaginary project, the OR workers have to prove themselves in other ways. Maybe
a model to predict the impact of the marketing mix has been constructed. 'Why should we take
notice of your predictions?' jeer the sceptics. 'We live this business. What can you tell us?'
No-one can force a client into having confidence, any more that a theatre audience can be forced
to laugh. It has to be an emergent property of the collusion yet, as on the stage, the skilled
performer can generate such power as to be able to drive the process with a fluency which brooks
no serious digression. Needless to say, handling this energy requires great care: especially in view
of the addictive 'buzz' which it can give the practitioner.
The OR profession, no less than any other, relies upon a good many artifices to maintain the
impression which it seeks to give off. Some people turn to OR as an occupation because it appears
to be 'useful' and 'relevant' to workaday concerns: others are attracted to it by the prospect of a
career in management or a good starting salary. Whichever is the case, those involved encounter,
and study with due seriousness, a battery of mathematical and statistical techniques, the majority
of which both trainers and trainees acknowledge'0 they will seldom use in their professional
lives. Yet this technical baggage is today part of the impedimenta of any credible OR analyst.
Of course it provides a mental discipline that maintains some commonality in defining situa-
tions across members of the profession (just as the classics traditionally provided similar
commonality for career diplomats), and so it lends cohesion to the movement. More seriously
it provides us with the credentials to poke around and ask questions as we do, maybe even to
maintain clients' expectations of us by overlaying our insights or recommendations with scientism,

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for after all we are constructed as a profession by our actions. There may never be any attempt
to hoodwink or deceive a client with a layering of technical mystique - though the temptation
may be strong at times-but all those who would work in OR must take on both the job and its
'front".
The other impressions fostered by OR, which are equally part of its character, include impar-
tiality, honesty (both intellectual and otherwise), competence, integrity, modernity, curiosity,
attention, carefulness, scepticism, skilfulness, intelligence, understanding, empathy, discretion and
sensitivity, with maybe a hint of impiety. This is what our clients encounter, to some degree or
other, depending upon the extent to which we each, as individuals, have a version of this person
somewhere inside us and can make it manifest. As Mangham and Overington2 point out, each of
us 'is a unity of actor and performance' and is 'most fully ourselves when we fully realize a
character'. OR then demands a certain kind of person for its successful enactment, and preliminary
studies " have suggested the nature of this distinctive profile. What does this have to say about the
training of students in OR? I must return to this question in due course, but first I wish to investigate
the plotting of OR interventions.

INTERVENTION ENACTMENT

Simultaneously the OR worker is audience, actor and director in the drama of organizational
interventions: audience, as witness to those scenes of organizational life which provide the context
of and evidence for guiding involvements; actor, as a player who interacts with others to bring
about the unfolding of decision processes and the development of social relations; director, as the
designer of set pieces and episodes through which others may explore their concerns, investigate
their options, and work together to committed action.
The organization-watcher and the playgoer alike must 'adopt an attitude of 'external concentra-
tion', must perceive and structure, must understand and experience and make what he observes part
of his own knowledge'2. As observers, Operational Researchers take in as a totality those scenes
which they encounter in the prosecution of their business. They notice not only the dialogue used
in each episode, but also the setting, dress and whole staging of a scene.
The Black's Brewery project team, for example, first encounter Black himself in the highly
theatrical setting of his office, a venue calculated to give off the most unequivocal impression
of solidity, tradition and authority. Afterwards they talk to Wilson in the relative informality
of his anonymous room in the same building. Later still they encounter Mr Denton, the Chief
Brewer, in his white laboratory coat, who takes them round the site: they see the shining copper
vessels, smell the sweet aroma of hops and malt, feel the chill of the racking area; and everywhere
encounter staff dressed here in white, there in green overalls, here insouciant, there curious. At
every point the setting, the properties, the attitudes and costume, signal how the tableau is to
be interpreted.
OR, of course, has no monopoly on observation. What we may claim to possess is a conceptual
framework that drives us 'to ask a systematic set of questions ... the answers to which help one
to think about problems of a certain type.... The ability to see how they fit together, and hence
to do something with the answers ... is the real skill"2. Others may use less explicit frameworks,
but be better able, maybe through long experience"3 to peer beneath the surface of a script and
recognize the deeper structure of what is going on. Our ability to recognize and read these feelings,
these motivations, these emotions is critical to the eventual success of our involvement. They should
dictate our intervention style. Achieving appropriate intervention style is part of the art of OR.
Take one influence on the quality of an intervention: organizational culture. The performances
which we may feel it best to construct may correspondingly be light-hearted, stolid, reassuring or
melodramatic. We may play starring roles or be bit-part actors. The engineering of OR approaches,
both technically and stylistically, to meet the cultural context is not well understood beyond the
intuitive level, and little guidance can be given to the novice about appropriate methodological
choices. Although we may have a gut-feeling that a method will or will not work in a given setting,
we can seldom justify or explain this feeling on a more rigorous basis than mere instinct. Our
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 J. Bryant-OR Enactment: the Theatrical Metaphor as an Analytic Framework

interpretation depends crucially upon our appreciation of the temporal as well as the organizational
context of the dramas which we view.

The visitors to Black's may be blissfully unaware (unless they have done their preparation
thoroughly) that Wilson and Pocock are rivals in another arena. Pocock is an appointee to
Black's from Group Head Office, an accountant who keeps an eagle eye on local events and has
every hope of supplanting Black sooner rather than later. Wilson is Black's protege, a local lad
made good, but one who is by no means as guileless as he appears.... Consequently a decision
to align the project with Pocock is a political decision, and one which runs a calculated risk of
misfiring; especially if Denton gets caught up in the crossfire, or if Penny should get a whiff of
what is going on and let a word slip, out of loyalty to Mr Black!

OR is not enthnography: there is an engagement with the people concerned. In any OR intervention
the OR worker is one of a troupe somehow assembled to address a complex of issues or concerns.
In this context it is worth considering both the nature of the ensemble performance, and the
individual's own contribution.
When I took my first full-time job in industry I found it difficult not to be convulsed with
laughter whenever someone suggested we arrange a 'meeting' to discuss an issue. Somehow the idea
of dignifying a desultory chat with so grandiloquent a title seemed faintly absurd. Yet now I do
it all the time: such is organizational socialization! But beyond this most general level of occupa-
tional encoding, far more specific and local management of meaning is achieved in teamwork.
Working with others is not just a matter of accommodating them or of altercasting'4-though it
is this too-but it involves a quite positive joint staging of a group line. The OR person, as one
of an investigating team, feels a responsibility to his peers and to his team-mates.

For example, in my running illustration, it seems most unlikely that Black's management would
not have established a clear view about the involvement of a Polytechnic project team, and of
the work which they should undertake: so much is implied in Wilson's brief. For their part the
Polytechnic team would have defined the parameters within which any study should fall. The
meeting represents a crucial merging of these interests (what Goffmann terms 'dramatic
interaction'), and the formation of a new grouping to pursue the investigation. Inappropriate
conduct or open disagreement about the definition of a situation within such groups strains the
bonds of reciprocal dependence, and threatens their cohesion and credibility. In the final scene,
we are privy to some 'backstage' discussion typical of that used by teams to maintain a common
front: such discussions can represent subjects in ways which are quite de rigueur within the wider
forum.

Additionally, other groups emerge as a context for OR interventions: Friend and Hickling'5
give a detailed picture of these, which shows the degree of overlap commonly present. Each
individual may be torn in several directions by allegiance to the different groups of which he
is a member. Coping with these discrepant roles may be quite a strain even for the practised OR
worker.
Performing as an Operational Researcher raises issues of characterization. As for any actor, the
performance must be one that is fully owned. Our performances must be intuitive and quicksilver
fresh as we explore and respond to the other parties to the intervention: we must be possessed by
the role. Such conviction stems from our individual ability to construct such a character, and this
in turn means drawing upon the hoard of our own observation. Callow9 imagines Shakespeare as
'merely a channel in which the world around was converted into metaphor, action and character.'
As he says, 'that's what it's like being an actor'. More mundanely, those of us who play at OR
produce ourselves out of experiential fragments, and are helped to sustain these definitions by those
others in organizations whom we work alongside.

Pocock, the jaundiced Commercial Manager at Black's, labels Bryant at once as an 'academic'.
In doing so he uses two-dimensional stereotyping derived perhaps from hearsay and slight
contacts. It is up to Bryant to prove himself not to be simply a stock character; to have expressive
depth. Such richness is theatrical in nature, and the analogy reminds us to recognize this
openness in our interpretations of the social as well as the theatrical drama.

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Just as we are defined, so we define others. It is critical for the OR worker, both as audience and
as actor to perceive 'the repertoire of roles"6 which together constitute each individual, and to
respond to them on these terms.
Even the most dyed-in-the-wool OR traditionalist is a dramaturge at times: few projects fail to
involve at the very least a presentation of findings to management. More significantly, those
working in the new problem-structuring paradigm7, frequently operate as process facilitators,
helping to structure and handle the debate between participants in work groups. In either situation,
the OR worker has to make something happen and, as in the theatre, each episode must be carefully
'framed' for those taking part so that they can make sense of what is going on. Emplotment 17 -
the interpretation of episodes using the concept of dramatic plots - is a neat contextualist approach
to understanding such human interactions.
Theatrical framing is assisted by the environment and the physical setting, the properties and
costumes, the attitudes and manner of those taking part, as well as by their gestures and dialogue.
I shall deal briefly with these elements in turn below: a fuller treatment is given in Bryant'.
Taking seriously an episodic view of OR interventions, design choices relating to the scheduling
and relationship of these episodes, one to another, arise. Some methodologies such as Decision
Conferencing 1 customarily centre upon short intensive workshops; others may extend through a
number of scenes with perhaps some guiding principle informing the precise schedule (e.g. Eden's
notion'9 of the 'psychological week' as a maximum elapsed time between contacts). Necessarily
such plans must mesh with other demands on participants' time.
The identity of participants in the successive and simultaneous scenes of which an OR interven-
tion is comprised is a matter for skilled judgement. It may well also be guided by some notion of
an overall design for the intervention, for example, along the lines indicated by Bennett and
Cropper20. Specifically, they suggest that it can be helpful to open up the problem fabric through
individual interviews with members of the client group, with a plenary session following some
'backroom' integration of the concerns raised: they might then proceed through an informal
alternation of group sessions and technical analyses, until the problem was deemed to be 'finished'.
This pattern even appears to apply quite neatly to OR work carried out in the traditional paradigm.
Whatever the guiding format, selecting people to involve must be a carefully considered process,
taking account not only of their specialist contributions or formal position, but also the mix
of personalities brought together. Designed group processes (e.g. Nominal Group Technique21)
may be essential in order to smother discrepancies in individual rank, power or knowledge and
encourage participative collaborative working. Even in common-or-garden presentations, mutually
acknowledged, if unstated, rules and etiquette guide the behaviour of those present.

The final report on the marketing project for Black's Brewery was given in the Boardroom, some
six weeks after the initial briefing. The handling of the presentation was entirely in the hands
of the student team, part of whose assessment depended upon their management of the event,
so Bryant was present simply as an observer.
The session began abruptly once Mr Black had arrived. Uncharacteristically, Liz had not arrived
by the scheduled start time, so Nasim had to begin without the visual aids which Liz had been
designated to bring. However, Nick, dressed unexpectedly in a smart pinstripe suit, pulled the
student team together and not only acted as link-man during the presentation, but fielded
questions expertly and generally controlled the production. It was a pity that the screen for the
slides which the group used was so badly placed near the window, but no-one seemed to mind
(Bryant felt that there was far too much information crammed onto each one in any case), and
the management group made polite noises all round at the conclusion.
Whether anything came of the project is another matter!
Interventions take place in environments which can drastically affect their nature and effects. In
a theatrical sense, the setting predisposes us for what may happen, and helps us rapidly to 'read'
the nuances of relationships between those who have created or are to operate in them.
Encountering individuals in organizational settings, as OR workers do every day, there is a need
to recognize how their use of space emblematizes the position which they seek to give off and the
relationships with others that this implies. Offices communicate not only hierarchy and authority-
for instance, through the presence or absence of a carpet or pictures -but also are suggestive of
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style: scientific, creative, orderly, informal or whatever. Environment (and here I include such
factors as lighting and ventilation, as well as furnishings, decoration and room layout) also matters
greatly within designed OR interventions. At the most fundamental level, the ownership of the
spaces in which an episode occurs shapes the way in which it unfolds: for instance, meeting 'away
from home' can help to release inhibitions (as well as reducing the chances of interruptions), though
there is always a danger that it will work so effectively that the event is treated simply as a frivolous
irrelevance. Beyond this, the actual disposition of a working space strongly influences what goes
on within it. Some rooms are simply useless for particular purposes though ideal for others.
Hickling22 has given detailed specifications of what he regards as an ideal setting for facilitated
group workshops; others have created spaces and proposed layouts for use with particular
technologies23 or to support particular methodologies24. Much has been written in the general
management literature about set design for purposes such as presentations.
Properties no less than setting influence interventions. Their use may not only symbolize concepts
like power or control, but may actually determine them. For example, 'taking the floor' in a
conventional meeting, wielding the flip-chart pen in a workshop, using a pointer or a microphone
or a dais in a presentation, are all devices which command attention and affect the dynamics of
what goes on. The use of flip charts rather than an overhead projector rather than a whiteboard
shapes the group processes which are possible: the availability of an accessible archive of group
thinking modifies the subsequent development. Using arrangements of 'Post-Its' to organize and
reorganize problem structure, or sticky dots to manage a voting procedure, similarly have a
disproportionately strong influence upon process options. Beyond this lies the whole area of
computer support for decision processes, in itself a field offering a massive variety of choices for
the OR dramatist. These and related topics have been ably addressed by various contributors to
Eden and Radford25, a strongly recommended text.
And so to the performance itself. It is, of course, impossible to generalize about the shape or
content of an episode. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to draw on the theatrical analogy to
distinguish a period of rehearsal and one of performance; and within the latter to use a distinction
employed in sociodrama26 to identify periods of warm up, enactment and sharing.
Much OR is backroom work, rather than being carried out 'on the hoof'27. There is no need to
restate what has already been said about the work carried out in backstage regions by performing
teams. Here it is worth noting that much of this may be preparatory to specific enactments -
drafting of reports, planning of workshops, running of computer simulations -and may involve
detailed plotting (in the theatrical sense of establishing moves and responses, arguments and
ripostes). The aim of this period is to establish the authenticity of the subsequent performance; to
make it fluent and inevitable.
The performance, whatever form it takes, usually involves some warm up: that is, a period in
which those present prepare to work together and to focus on the present. It may simply take the
form of round-the-table introductions, or else it may be a more substantial scene in which personal
agendas are aired and maybe formally recorded. Rarely in OR does it involve any physical activity
or exercises. As director, the OR worker has to judge when the group is ready for action. From
here on in the difficult task of process facilitation ensues. The tasks and problems of such a role
have already been ably expounded28. Suffice it to say that the pace and mood of the performance
has to be skilfully managed. At the same time, the OR worker will usually be seeking to capture
aspects of the substantive problem content using an appropriate conceptual framework to do so.
Again, a range of developed methodologies exist, and have been expounded elsewhere7. The
critical point is that such approaches provide a language for plotting an enactment, but do not and
cannot determine the plot itself. Finally, some sort of sharing -that is, taking stock of what the
enactment means and determining a way forward -takes place. While this may form a part of the
overall scheme of the performance (as, for instance, in the use of a 'commitment package"5 to
summarize the outcome of a Strategic Choice workshop) it can often just take the form of some
concluding resolutions, or even be left ambiguous and open, at least to some of those present (as
in the last episode at Black's Brewery above).
Throughout this section I have used a dramaturgical framework rather loosely to suggest a
direction of attack upon the nature of OR interventions. What it does, perhaps better than most,
is to highlight the choices which we have open to us in our OR practice: choices of which we are

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frequently seldom very aware. My use of the metaphor has been halting and tentative. Nevertheless,
I believe that even in such an experimental exercise, the analogy has paid its way, and I hope that
this example will encourage others to make use of it even more productively than I have been able
to do here.

BECOMING AN OR WORKER

At the outset I indicated my personal interest in training persons for OR, and the suceeding
discussion has highlighted a number of areas in which our current provision is woefully inadequate,
both in formal academic programmes and in in-company training. That this is so results from a
limited view of what OR involves.
Let it be clear at once that I regard those formal techniques for handling problem content, which
have become synonymous with OR, as remaining a key part of our professional 'front'. As Eden29
points out, the special expertise of the OR consultant-and something which is not offered, for
example, by the OD practitioner-is an ability to manipulate and handle the substantive content
of clients' problems in ways which will illuminate what is going on and which may suggest
worthwhile courses of action. However, it is my view that these tools are useful at least as much
for the way in which they encourage and instil logical thought, rigorous investigation and analytical
competence, as for any direct application which they may or may not possess. To this educational
base should be added a proficiency in those emerging methodologies7 which guide designed
interventions wherein problem content and group process are simultaneously managed. These
alone are, however, not enough and must be augmented by education in those skills which will
enable the practitioner to understand clearly what is going on in the organizational pools into which
he jumps. The theatrical metaphor has suggested key areas in which OR workers should be better
versed. The need to take seriously the ideas of social interactionism and organizational psychology,
to use two immediate labels, must surely be apparent. In order to help others to understand what
is going on, the OR student needs better to understand this whole process of the individual
construction of meaning.
We can also extract some guidance as to appropriate vehicles for education. What is not wanted
is a simple presentation of ungrounded theory. Nor are those denuded case studies, so familiar in
management training, likely to prove worthwhile, for the value of a case rests in the realism of its
rich complexity, and it is the art of imiaking sense of situations involving ambiguity, uncertainty,
discontinuity, and partiality, that is our key concern in OR. In contrast to these threadbare
narratives we need spicy sagas, gripping yarns, lurid tales: we need the sounds and the smells and
the flavour of interventions. What is needed is first-hand experience of the process of OR and of
organizational interventions, coupled with a learning-through-doing of those dramatic and direc-
torial skills which are essential in any designed session. Understanding and supporting group
problem management requires us to assume new roles and shape new processes: the skills and
outlook of the theatre actor are directly relevant. We have based OR training on script readings
for too long: it is time we moved forward to performance.

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