The organization which will be described in the context of this paper is a web development company. The services and the products typically provided by the company usually revolve around developing designing websites for customers and providing hosting and publishing services. The company consists of 3 office rooms in which about 8 people are employed. Relating the company to a particular stage act, it can be stated that the type of the act is largely connected to the day of the week and the usual workload. Mainly, the stage act is divided between comedy and a tragicomedy.
The comedy usually appears once there is an off season in work, or week days in which there is lower workload with large or no deadline. A comedy stage can be defined as an act in which humor is the main driving vehicle. Similarly, the employees react and interact during the day through humor. In that regard, the comedy can be deafened as high, where the physical comedy or farce is not common. The interactions occur mostly through irony, sarcasm, and short remarks exchanged between the employees, in order to highlight a particular situation. Usually the play is a one stage actor in which the role of the main lead actor transfers through the employees while the rest take the role of the audience. Certainly, there are leading actors more popular than others, but generally, all employees have their 15 minutes of fame.
Busy days, on the other hand, have little resemblance to the aforementioned description. Nevertheless, it can be stated that there are a few mutual points which can be understood from the definition of tragicomedy. Tragicomedy is defined as “drama that contains elements of tragedy and comedy, which reach a tragic climax but then lighten to a happy conclusion” (Literary Terms). The elements of the tragedy can be seen through the order that all employees have to work on, especially with a tight deadline involved. Accordingly, the happy conclusion comes with the order being completed, switching to comedy as a stage act.
The symbolic forms that can be applied to the aforementioned organization can be described as follows:
- Myths, Vision, and Values – such symbolic forms can be directly connected to the organization described in the previous paragraph, where the vision and the values of the company can be derived from the founding myth of the company. It is not known whether it is a myth or not, but it is said that three of the company’s founders once sat having a beer. Discussing a project of a website a friend had asked one of them to do, they soon switched to their laptops, and nine hours later they realized that they finished the project. Eventually they formed the company, in which the main values state that you can have fun, but you always do what you are assigned to do in time, no matter what. The latter translated into the vision of growing the company into an environment in which young and enthusiastic professionals are being creative.
- Heroes and Heroine – The two founding members of the company are the heroes which represent the values of the organization. They are both down-to-earth funny guys, who love to have fun with all the people around them. Nevertheless, they are very hardworking, and as soon as the company receives a project they transform and accordingly, transform all the employees around them into a working mode. The way they work is known to all the employees in the company and they know that they behave as they are, because they are truly pleasant and hardworking people.
- Stories and Fairy tales – The stories in the company are rather rare, as the company is largely new. Nevertheless, similar to the myth of the foundation, stories are told especially when new employees come to the organization. Such stories usually provide real cases of a specifically hard week, a funny moment, or both. Such stories translate the main values of the company, so that new people understand that the people they are working with are extremely funny, but they do not mix fun with work.
- Ritual – The ritual of the company, which can be seen as common to most companies, is the morning 15 minutes before the work starts. During such times people have their coffee and exchange their latest news. Such 15 minutes are taken every morning, regardless of whether there is work to do or not. Accordingly, after a long project is finished there is a ritual of going somewhere to celebrate the end of the project.
- Ceremony – There are no distinctive formal ceremonies in the company yet, where even some of the events that take place at work do not resemble ceremonies in the sense that the term conveys, mainly due to a small number of employees and an intimate environment. Nevertheless, some of the events that can be listed are the celebration of a birthday of some of the employees and is usually conducted in a ceremonial manner, ridiculing a formal atmosphere. Accordingly, the introduction of new employees in the office might take the same humorous ceremony nature in the company.
- Metaphor, Humor, and Play – humor is an important element of the company, and in that regard, all employees have a good sense of it. A clear distinction exists between fun and work in the office and thus, there are no set rules about it. There are no metaphors to activities or subjects in the office, and also there are no physical activities or games taking pace in the office. The only metaphor that might be used is in reference to clients, where their occurrence is used to describe the upcoming week.
Relating organizational processes to theatrical roles in the company described in this paper, it can be stated that each of the processes can have its strengths and weaknesses in terms of play and performers. Processes, rather than structure, were selected for the theatrical parallel due to the fact that the structure does not have an apparent influence on the social values and myths, nor a specific setting is required for such structure.
The role of meetings can be seen a little differently in the organization, where instead of gathering people with problems and people with solutions, meetings in the organization can be seen as discussion roundtables, in which major announcements are made. The employees are connected with each other and with the management all day long, and thus, they are already aware of the problems that might exits. The weaknesses can be seen in that the “performers” actually do not have a script to perform, where only announcements of recent changes are made. In that regard, it can be stated that the meetings do not serve their purpose as “expressive occasions to clear the air and promote collective bonding” (Bolman and Deal 302).
The closest resemblance of planning can be seen as symbols, i.e. the scale of the company does not imply a massive long-term planning, although such planning might symbolize such scale. Planning, in that regard, can be seen as an approximate view of the nearest future of the company. The strengths of such play can be seen in providing a glimpse for the employees of what the company might grow into, as well as infusing a sense of structure and formality to what might be seen as a small scale garage firm. Such a structure can be seen as an exercise for expanding the staff of the company. The role of the performers in such act totally corresponds to the established purpose of planning.
Assessment can be seen as one of the most important plays of the company, although such aspect might not be a collective action. Such a process is conducted regularly with the main aim of assessing the performance of each employee, rather than the overall performance of the company. For the employees such aspects might imply an appraisal of their work, while for the company such a process is a confirmation of whether they are on the right track or not. Rather than being a group act, it can be described as an individual process, in which only a single performer is involved. Such processes as collective bargaining and power might be seen absent in the organization, possibly due to the nature of the interactions between the employees and management, and the nature of the business.
Works Cited
Bolman, Lee G., and Terrence E. Deal. Reframing Organizations : Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series. 4th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print.
“Unit 1 – Literary Terms”. n.d. Amazon Simple Storage Service. 2010. Web.