Theatre and Organization: Editorial Introduction

Over the past decade or so, there has been a steady increase of scholarly interest in exploring the relationship between theatre and organizations. This in part has been stimulated by various attempts to broaden the scope of organizational analysis and to gain fresh insights into organizational dynamics from a range of new perspectives. For many years, organizational theorists have drawn on art and theatre as metaphors for their work. Recently, theatre, in particular, has been used to examine both organizations as theatre (theatre as metaphor) and theatre in organizations. These approaches were what initially prompted us to attempt to bring together the various strands of this debate in this special issue. The articles of this special issue have been selected from a larger group of contributions submitted to Organization Studies, responding to our call for papers issued in 2002. Before presenting the articles of the special issue we turn to some general considerations that mark the theatrical field and salient research questions.