Learning from the Arts: Comparing postmodern Theatre and postmodern organizational consulting : Stream Theaters of Capitalism

Organizations of the private and public sector have already been compared with the theater (Mangham, Overington, 1987; Vail, 1990; Schreyögg, 2001) and many authors focusing on organizational culture have consciously or unaware borrowed from the repertory of theater and dramaturgy, especially when using terms like heroes, scripts, plots, internal audiences, myths, legends etc. While such cross-fertilization has helped illustrate some of the dynamics of organizational life, little has been done in regard to direct comparison between contemporary theater and contemporary organizational practices. The goal of this presentation is to move closer to both worlds and to directly compare the most recent development in both fields, namely Off-Off Broadway Theater with contemporary Management consulting or Off-Off Wallstreet Consulting (OOW). The basic findings suggest that both OOB and OOW show manifestations of postmodernism and that both are signs of the times pointing at a possible paradigmatic shift of Western industrialized countries towards a postmodern way of being in this world or possible heralding a reverting back towards a pre-modern state of being analogous to the previous turnof-century period of symbolism and neo-classicism.