Hybrid of Half Man and Half Robot
Metatheatre and metascripting has critical dramaturgical dimensions, I call the SEPTET (click on SEPTET in top menu to explore this further). The two areas are inseparable and related to my analysis of quasi-objects of Enron..
Enron’s financial reengineering was accomplished with quasi-objects, antenarrating, and Metatheatre. Enron’s LJM partnerships are an example of quasi-objects, the hybrid of theatrics to economics that sustains fraud in ways that seduce spectators to suspend their disbelief. An antenarrative, quasi-object, and metatheatric analysis of Enron’s LJM partnerships has important implications for organizational behavior, organization theory, and strategy. I contend that underneath Enron Metatheatre are competing Tamara-esque antenarratives, the stories-a-making, the Septet elements refusing closure. And I want to analyze the off-the-balance-sheet partnerships known as the RAPTORS, using quasi-object theory. In particular, I have been analyzing the LJM1 and LJM2 partnerships. My intended contribution is to develop a critical dramaturgical theory of the trajectory dynamics of Enron’s Tamara-esque storytelling organization, tracing how official linear narrative trajectories interweave with antenarrative ensembles in Enron’s alleged LJM fraud. Click on Boje (2002a,b) below or click on the Menu at TOP of this page labeled ENRON. In the (2002 a,b) papers I focus on the more theatrical aspects of Enron’s Poetic oppressions (themes in SEPTET terms, and how LJM is accomplished in Metatheatre and metascripting (terms defined above).
Quasi-objects bring together network of institutions, which would otherwise not be linked, in a way that shapes (constructs) identity and carries relationships of axes of ‘power, knowledge & ethics’ (Foucault, 1997: 318). Like Latour’s (1996) novel, Aramis, or the Love of Technology, Enron is a tale of an economic dream gone wrong, realized in dramaturgy run amuck. Enron’s quasi-object is ‘Enrononomics,’ a fictive-economics (an interpenetration of metatheatre and economics). Enron’s quasi-object is the main metatheatre character, a financial technology project, known as the ‘Gas Bank’, an antenarrative that morphs into the energy-trading floors of the Enron building. Enrononomics is a New Economy innovation that is to lower energy rates through acts of deregulation, while creating a virtual corporation that makes bets on energy Wheels of Fortune. The deregulation change and Gas Bank development work involves a transorganizational, public and private network of institutions, whose dynamics change antenarrative trajectory during the “life” of the innovative project. The Gas Bank project lasted from 1989 to 2001, and is more than a collaboration of many public and private institutions, Wall Street analysts, Harvard and Stanford MBAs recruited to be traders, and politicians from countries around the world.
LJM, A Quasi-Object - The L in LJM stands for Lea, as in ‘Lea,’ Andrew Stuart Fastow’s wife (also heiress to a Houston real estate fortune); J and M are initials of their two children (Maier, 2002). Fastow has admitted that he pocketed $ 45 million from the off-balance-sheet partnerships he created, with names like LJM, Raptor and Chewco. His chief lieutenant, Michael Kopper, managed (along with Kopper’s domestic partner, William Dodson) to net more than $ 10 million; two other associates parlayed investments of $ 5,800 into $ 1 million.[i] “Those who knew Mr. Fastow at Enron described a man with twin personalities” (Barboza & Schwartz, 2002: 1). Quasi-objects contextualize, decontextualize, and recontextualize over time. For example Vince Kaminski, the top risk analyst at Enron, says he opposed the LJM partnerships from the get go, and when he raised questions, he was first ignored, then transferred to another department. Recent work on Quasi-objects by Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, Pierre Lévy, and Niklas Luhmann has significantly changed actor network theory. Serres (1983, 1987) and Latour (1987, 1988a,b, 1996) show how quasi-objects mediate and transform personal and collective identity and network relations (Serres & Latour, 1995). Quasi-objects are unstable, realizing and derealizing at every turn. Jeffrey McMahon, Enron's treasurer, says he also complained about the LJM partnerships, and he also was transferred. And a UBS PaineWebber broker, says he too opposed the partnerships from the get go, but was also ignored, then transferred to another department. When he advised investors to dump Enron stock, he was fired when Enron executives complained to his bosses.[ii] The quasi-object of fictive-economics is a Metatheatre change in the network of theatres, and in the game of networking, in the Metascripts and in the antenarrative trajectories.For the rest of the antenarrative and quasi-object analysis of Enron in all
its Metatheatre and Metascripting, see Boje, D. M. (2002b) Enron
Metatheatre: A Critical Dramaturgy Analysis of Enron’s Quasi-Objects. Paper
presented at the Networks, Quasi-Objects, and Identity: Reintegrating Humans,
Technology, and Nature session of Denver Academy of Management Meetings. Tuesday
August 13, 2002.
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/enron_theatre_LJM.htm
REFERENCES FOR METTHEARE THEORY AND METHODOLOGY.
Boje, D. M. (2000a). Global Theatrics and Capitalism. November 12. Web text accessed May 15, 2002 at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/global_theatrics_and_capitalism.htm
Boje, D. M. (2000c). Theatrics of Leadership?Web text accessed May 15, 2002 at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/leader_model_boje.htm
Boje, D. M. (2000c) X,Y,Z model of leadership and Revolutionary Pedagogy.
Web text accessed May 15, 2002 at
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/revolutionary_pedagogy_of_leader.htm
Boje, D. M. (2001a). Narrative
Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London Sage.
Boje, D. M. (2002a). Critical
Dramaturgical Analysis of Enron Antenarratives and Metatheatre. Plenary
presentation to 5th International Conference on Organizational Discourse: From
Micro-Utterances to Macro-Inferences, Wednesday 24th - Friday 26th July
(London).
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ENRON_critical_dramaturgical_analysis.htm
Boje, D. M. (2002b) Enron
Metatheatre: A Critical Dramaturgy Analysis of Enron’s Quasi-Objects. Paper
presented at the Networks, Quasi-Objects, and Identity: Reintegrating Humans,
Technology, and Nature session of Denver Academy of Management Meetings. Tuesday
August 13, 2002.
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/enron_theatre_LJM.htm
Boje, D. M. (2002c) Theatres of Capitalism. Book being published by Hampton Press (San Francisco). Available until publication, on line, at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/theatrics/index.htm (password is required).
Boje, D. M. (2002d). Leadership Theatre Events.
Contains guides fo Image, Invisible, and Forum Theatre
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/leadership_theatre_event.htm
Boje, D. M. (2002e). What is Situation? Feb 19, 2002. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/what_is_situation.htm#septet_table_1 Contains Septet table.
Boje, D. M. (2002f). Leadership in a Postmodern Age: Notes on Enron December 3, 2000; revised April 2, 2002 http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/leadership_in_a_postmodern_age.htm
Boje, D. M. (2002g). Exercises in Games of Power and Leadership. February 26. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/games_of_power.htm Contains definition of Oppression, examples, and self-survey of oppression.
Boje, D. M. & G. A. Rosile (2002a). The Metatheatre Intervention Manual. To be published by ISEOR Research Institute of University of Lyon 2, France.
Boje, D. M. & G. A. Rosile (2002a). Theatrics of SEAM. Paper to be
published in Journal of Organiztional Change Management Special Issue on
Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM), guest edited by Henri Saval.
Boje, D. M. ,G. A. Rosile, and Simon Malbogat (2000) "Festival, Spectacle and Carnival: Theatrics of Organizational Development and Change." Presentation to ODC division of Academy of Management, Toronto, August, 2000.
Brown, Steven D.
(1999). Caught up in the rapture: Serres translates Mandelbrot. Presentat at the
CSTT/ESRC “Poststurcualism and Complexity” workshop at Keele University, 15
January, 1999. Accessed on the web December 29, 2001 http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts./stt/cstt2/comp/rapture.htm
Brown, Steven D. & Geoff Lightfoot (1999). Quasi-objects, quasi-subjects: Circulation in the virtual society. Paper presented at “Sociality/Materiality: The status of the object in social science” at Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK, 9-11th September 1999. Accessed on web December 29, 2001 http://www.devpsy.lboro.ac.uk/psygroup/sb/quasis.htm
Clarke, Bruce (1999). Constructing the subjectivity of the quasi-object: Serres through Latour. Presentation to conference, “Constructions of the Self” The Poetics of Subjectivity,” University of Sought Carolina, April, 1999. Accessed on web December 29, 2001 http://english.ttu.edu/clarke/quasiobject.ht
Freire, Paulo (1970).
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Latour, Bruno
(1987). Science In Action. How to
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Latour, Bruno
(1987) Science in Action Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Latour, Bruno
(1988a). The Pasteurization of
France. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno
(1988b), 'A Relativist Account of Einstein's Relativity', Social Studies of
Science, vol. 18, p. 3-44.
Latour, Bruno
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Aramis, or the Love of Technology. Tr.
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Latour, Bruno
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Lévy, Pierre. (1995a). L'Intelligence Collective: Pour une Anthropologie du cyberspace. Paris: Éditions La Découverte.
Lévy, Pierre.
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Lévy, Pierre.
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Witt, April & Peter Behr (2002). Losses, Conflicts Threaten Survival: CFO Fastow Ousted In Probe of Profits. The Washington Post. July 31, Pg. A01
ENDNOTES
.[i] The quasi-object of fictive-economics is a Metatheatre change in the network of theatres, and in the game of networking, in the Metascripts and in the antenarrative trajectories.
[i] See The Washington Post, August 03, 2002, Saturday, Editorial; Pg. A18
[i] The major concern in Lévy's writings (1983, 1995, 1997, 1998) is with the relations of community and personal identity to "cyberspace" or, as Lévy so often puts it, to "the virtual."
[ii] IBID The Washington Post, August 03, 2002, Saturday, Editorial; Pg. A18
Please contact dboje@nmsu.edu to offer suggestions that will develop the SEPTET of Leadership and Theatrics.
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