Vita Contemplativa: The Drama of Organizational Life

This article documents aspects of my life as a contributor to what has become known as the dramaturgical perspective on social and organizational life. Beginning nearly 40 years ago, when I was a graduate student, it traces my growing enthusiasm for the ideas of symbolic interactionists such as George Herbert Mead, and in particular for those — like Erving Goffman and Kenneth Burke — who held that theatre was a master metaphor for understanding and describing our everyday activity as citizens and employees. The article reflects the use I and others made of these ideas as teachers, researchers, writers and consultants during the latter part of the 20th century during which time the notion of management as performance struggled to articulate itself as an important aspect of an ars poetica of organizational practice.