Bryan C. Taylor, University of Colorado

Stanley Deetz, University of Colorado

ABSTRACT

I. INTRODUCTION

Studies of organizational communication can contribute to an evolving intersection between organizational and cultural studies concerned with the dialectical relationship between the "culture of production" and the "production of culture" (Carlone & Taylor, 1998; Du Gay, 1997a; Taylor, 1999). As the site of meticulously produced, intensive mega-spectacles of gaming and entertainment, Las Vegas is of course an especially rich case for these investigations. Here, the discourses of organization and culture are particularly conflated, and we proceed by comparing and contrasting various punctuations of this relationship, and their consequences for the analysis of casino organization as communication. We conclude by briefly considering two areas of casino organization in which analysis might be enhanced by utilizing the resources of organizational communication.

II. CILTURAL STUDIES

Cultural studies is concerned with the totality of structures and practices that constitute living and feeling in a postmodern world and with the role of symbolic forms in reproducing and transforming political, economic and social systems of domination. Of particular interest to us in this paper is recent backlash directed by scholars of political-economy against the populist tendency in cultural studies to valorize consumption as inherently oppositional and emancipatory (Garnham, 1997; Murdock, 1997). This tendency has been manifest in the decontextualized analysis by cultural studies scholars of textuality, their adoption of the post-structuralists premise that ontologies of labor and production are ultimately subordinate to the contingencies of discourse, and the failure in American cultural studies to engage issues of class with the same vigor as identity politics surrounding race and gender.

To critics, cultural studies inadequately situate these analyses within the logics of capitalist political-economy (such as commodification and capital-accumulation). Audience sensemaking of cultural texts, for example are actively constrained in the production process. To critics, studies would ideally illuminate how organizational practices function to unequally distribute the resources of access, knowledge, technology, money, and skill required for competent and effective participation in a vital public sphere. In response to these charges, Cultural Studies scholars have moved to develop a holistic project engaging the totality of representation, identity, production, consumption, and regulation surrounding the material reproduction of culture (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay & Negus, 1996), and to deepen "productionist" inquiry into the organizational practices of cultural industries (Negus, 1999).

Scholars in this debate differ on how best to conceptualize the relationship between social structure and practice, but the projects of political economy and cultural studies need not be mutually exclusive. Of particular interest to us here is the recognition by political economy scholars of their own counter-productive tendency to depict media organizations as "circuit boards of cultural power" (Murdock, 1997, p. 93) and conspiratorial flow-charts depicting ownership patterns that "prove" the capitalist determination of cultural life. In this way, some political economists are equally implicated in Billig's (1997) argument that cultural studies scholars would benefit from a more sophisticated focus on the situated discourse through which subjects pragmatically constitute the significance of cultural texts as resources for maintaining and transforming their existing social identities and relationships. With such a view particular studies (e.g., Negus, 1999) may be examined to see how their theoretical and methodological choices (e.g., between interviewing and participant-observation) function to depict organizational activity in ways that alternately preserve its situational integrity, and abstract it as typifications and effects of capitalist determination.

III. VIEWING THE LAS VEGAS SPECTACLE

The tension between political-economic and cultural studies perspectives is evident in two recent postmodern ethnographies of Las Vegas (Borchard, 1998; Gottschalk, 1995). Briefly contrasting their depictions of casino organization clarifies how this tension can produce differing punctuations (or orderings) of the dialectic of production and consumption. Borchard (1998), for example, engages the hyper-textual space of the Hard Rock Café as a reflexive tourist-researcher. In this space, he finds the commodification of image-signs in popular culture, the commercial appropriation and neutralization of signifying practices that are potentially subversive to capitalism, ephemeral architecture (e.g., "oversize signs and bizarre buildings [that] compete for recognition in a cacaphony of chaos"; p. 245) that encourages ephemeral relationships, and the establishment of spectacles of ironic pleasure. Ironically, however, Borchard looks through the workers employed at this site, implying that their performances are significant only as effects or illustrations of hegemonic logics such as commodification (e.g., the bouncer/gatekeeper engaged in selecting patrons with the right "look" for an MTV telecast of the hotel's opening). He also focuses on counter-cultural artifacts that demonstrate these processes (e.g., slot machines and displays commemorating rebellious rock and punk music stars), but the meanings and practices of the organizational employees related to these objects are ignored. His critical vantage is that of the Barthes-ian super-reader. Even the ephemeral "microwave relationships" that he profiles as effects of casino architecture (pp. 259-263) are those conducted between patrons, not employees.

Gottschalk's (1995) portrait similarly emphasizes the disorienting scale and intensity of the surreal Vegas spectacle, but he engages more directly the interests of labor: "In the Strip casinos, the spectacular opulence produced through the endless circulation of capital diverts the players' attention away from the silent shuffle of an invisible minority casino proletariat. Homogenized in uniforms, they are endlessly cleaning carpets, emptying ashtrays, carrying huge trays of drinks high above their heads, pushing heavy carts of change, and wiping benches. At impossibly minimal wages and under constant surveillance." (pp. 200-202). A cab driver relates a tale of union suppression by the casino structure as "organized crime" (202); passing tourists dismiss a sidewalk demonstration by striking casino workers as a shabby and dissonant element of the overall spectacle (203); the inherent diversity of a globalized workforce is effaced under the regimentation of uniforms and scripted customer service (216). Illustrating how Las Vegas collapses distinctions between production and consumption (e.g., in the way that some professional gamblers treat gambling as their craft and livelihood), Gottschalk cites an advertisement depicting a casino as a "money factory" (p. 206). This ad, of course, elides the extent to which this "grind" (a vernacular term which, significantly, connotes both the experience of monotonous and exhausting labor, and the volume of routine gambling coveted by casino operators) generates profit for the casinos versus payouts to the players. In this image, slot- machine players and assembly line workers seem equally oppressed by the technologies of production. "In such a logic, the boundaries between production and consumption, raw resource and commodity, business and leisure, exchange value and use value all collapse" (p. 206). Still, in this process, Gottschalk glosses and typifies organizational sites (and enfolds them with community racism) as evidence of capitalist forces in Las Vegas which combine "spectacular flaunting of infinite economic possibilities [with] the systematic enforcement of violent poverty on designated Others" (p. 205). In his analysis of the Caeser's Forum Shops, for example, Gottschalk emphasizes how management has mis-appropriated the Greek institution of the agora—historically devoted to public debate—as marketplace. The potential distinctiveness of these organizations and their employees is collapsed as a symptom: "The underlying logic under [sic] all these disguises is always the same" (215).

This blurred organizational vision is not unique to the fields of political economy and cultural studies: it is arguably conditioned by the history of political and intellectual debates about gambling in American culture, in which the role of meso-level mediations between micro- and macro-social phenomena have been systematicaly avoided (McMillen, 1996b). These debates have occurred between a variety of liberal-democratic discourses concerned with the spiritual and psychological integrity of the gambling individual, and the ability of the state to impartially adjudicate between the competing claims of prohibitionists and entrepreneurs in the design and enforcement of regulation. What is consistent in these discourses is an emphasis on gambling as consumption, not production. McMillen notes that "very few . . . studies have recognized that legal gambling is organized along business lines with organizational characteristics and commercial objectives similar to other industries. Most ignore the fact that gambling is commercially stimulated by public and private enterprises to the extent that it has become a major transnational industry operating within a complex system of nation states and cultural globalization" (1996a, p. 23).

IV. MANAGERIALISM

This glossing and deferral of casino production is of course not universal. The organization of casinos is also a site of contestation between other discourses. Depictions of casino labor provided in rare empirical studies can be contrasted with the more prominent discourse circulated by pro-management boosters, academics, consultants and operators. These depictions diverge dramatically in their engagement of the complexity, politics, and ethics of actual organizational communication.

Enarson's (1993, p. 231) observed that "analysis of Nevada's gaming industry rarely includes labor issues." She chooses not to elaborate, but a review of the small literature indicates the obvious dilemmas of access and reputation facing researchers in a company town who publicize employee dissatisfaction with various elements of autocratic management. These elements include: increasingly intensive bureaucratic and technological control systems; corrosive and institutionalized conflict between operators and labor unions; regimentation of personal appearance; de-skilling (e.g., in the use of mechanical "shoes" to distribute cards to table players); low pay, autonomy and job-security; high routinization, turnover, and mistrust; and the sexual commodification of female employees's demeanor as "customer service" (Enarson, 1993; Frey & Cairns, 1988). However threatening to operators, these depictions are important for providing texture and poignance to images of casino employees. These studies clarify the tensions and dilemmas they experience between achieving "personal" goals of subcultural affiliation and financial security, and satisfying management demands for efficiency, reliability, and profitability.

These depictions of organization contrast dramatically with the ambitious and optimistic discourse of casino managerialism, as it is circulated by managers, consultants, boosters, and functionalist academics. This discourse fails to conceptualize communication as the ongoing reproduction and transformation of relations of power (e.g., when viewed as talk between equivalent and essentialized "individuals"), achieved through the evolving and precarious construction of shared meaning in the concrete and historically-conditioned practices (e.g., the organization of turn-taking, the attribution of identity, etc.) of situated verbal and non-verbal interaction (Deetz, 1992). No attention, further, is paid to how differing occasions (e.g., the meeting; the performance appraisal) and genres (e.g., the memo; homosocial mentoring) of discourse alternately enable and constrain the possible production of meaning between participants. Clearly much could be illuminated by problematizing communication.

This perspective involves a more sophisticated conception of organizations as houses of bristling dialogue, in which multiple, subcultural discourses based on diffuse and potentially idiosyncratic knowledge interanimate and contest to determine the meaning and consequence of mission statements. In this perspective, subcultural differences are not so much "problems" or barriers, as inevitable and rich conditions of human organizing whose eradication in the service of standardization also erases the diversity essential for effective and ethical operations.

V. CONCLUSION

The ethically- and politically- reflective analysis of casino organization may be enhanced by employing a more sophisticated and sensitive analysis of communication. Potentially, this analysis restores to consideration the material micro-practices by which the social structures privileged in dominant perspectives are actually reproduced and transformed. In this way, we might begin to see past the powerful and hypnotic glare of the Vegas spectacle that obsesses both its architects and critics to preserve what remains of human dignity and agency in such hyper-organized conditions. We do not mean to present communication here as the perfect or ultimate topic of casino analysis. Instead, we hope that we have demonstrated the consequences for managerial practice and theorizing of its neglect: mechanical, abstracted, and potentially depoliticized accounts of the reproduction of social structure.

REFERENCES upon request