Reframing Organizations, 6th Edition

Chapter 14Organization as Theater

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It

More than 400 years ago, Shakespeare captured an enduring truth we sometimes neglect in our love affair with facts and logic. Much of human behavior aims at getting things accomplished. The assumption of linear causality works sometimes when outcomes are tangible and a link between means and ends is clear. A factory, we surmise, rises or falls on what it produces. But the logic falters when outcomes are less tangible and the connection between actions and outcomes is more elusive.

Think about a church or ...