Penis-whirling and pie-throwing
Norm-defying and norm-setting drama in the creative industries
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9889403 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bent Meier Sørensen (0000-0003-1019-1288, Copenhagen Business School, corresponding author), K Villadsen (0000-0002-9966-942X, Copenhagen Business School, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 71 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 1049-1071 |
| Publication date | 2018-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Relations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-7267 • E-ISSN: 1741-282X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0018726717733310 |
| OpenAlex | W2765771237 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 42 |
This article explores the drama performed around a self-proclaimed ‘anti-establishment’ executive at a Danish film company, Zentropa. The company prides itself on being against the existing ‘elitist’ and commercialized Danish film industry. Inspired by the thesis that modern capitalism develops by incorporating the critiques directed against it, the article analyses how Zentropa’s Chief Executive Officer invests a ‘progressive’, counter-cultural spirit in his management practices. We describe how a ‘freethinking’ and ‘subversive’ CEO uses his dramatized performances to exercise an authority that violates employees’ privacy and involves public displays of disrespect. We further examine how employees use impression management to cope with norm-violating management practices, including sexual provocations and the dramatic, unjustified dismissal of an employee. In the context of these disruptions, we analyse how order is reestablished through dramaturgical cycles of symbolic events, including sacrifice. In particular, the study provides insights into how theatrically staged, norm-defying performances both disrupt the organization and allow managerial power to be reinstituted. It also demonstrates that anti-establishment management involves and rests upon the occasional exercise of traditional managerial hierarchy and control. Theoretically, the article develops a dramatist perspective, combining Goffman’s symbolic interactionism and Burke’s dramatism to offer a framework for understanding norm-transgressive management in modern organizations
Aesthetics · Drama · Impression management · Norm (philosophy · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Accounting and Organizational Management · Gender Diversity and Inequality · Law · Management and Organizational Studies
Scripting professional identities
Politics of Strategic Decision Making in High-Velocity Environments
The Sacred in Leadership
The Visual Dimension in Organizing, Organization, and Organization Research
“Just be yourself!”
Permanence and change
Engineering Culture
The coming crisis of western sociology
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Shielding Idiosyncrasy from Isomorphic Pressures
The naked manager
Ways of Explaining Workplace Bullying
The Dramatistic Genre in Leadership Studies
Managerialism and “ Infinite Human Resourcefulness ”
Organization as containment of acquisitive mimetic rivalry
A Burkean Inquiry into Leader–Follower Identification Motives
The New Spirit of Capitalism
Managerial elites making rhetorical and linguistic ‘moves’ for a moving (emotional) display
Perceptions of and reactions to workplace bullying
A Note on the Concept of Role Distance
You Can Checkout Anytime, but You Can Never Leave
Managerialism, the therapeutic habitus and the self in contemporary organizing
Goffman on Organizations
Between narration and interaction
Appraising Goffman
Rhetoric of Motives
Asylums
A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Politics
Embarrassment and Social Organization
Fourth Worlds and Neo-Fordism
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |