The Cultural Performance of Control

Abstract

Ideas about control are enriched by attending to cultural performances taking place in everyday organizational life. While much literature conflates culture with control, purists try to exclude control devices altogether, as if these artefacts cannot be expressive of real forms of culture. This view overlooks how managers make an `exhibition' of such artefacts on a daily basis in order to cut a figure of being `in' control. By closely examining which material is made visible and available, and when, the paper also challenges assumptions about the `performed order' being hegemonic. The paper illustrates how everyday `exhibitions' of membership over-lap into `displays' of self as the successful, or charismatic manager. In that cultural performances set a performer apart (as different) at the same time as figuring them as members (as the same), the paper argues that the performed order is always motile to the precise artefacts being made visible and available.