Hyperion Commentary, Tamara Organizing: Reply to Krizanc

Abstract

This is a reply to an essay that John Krizanc sent to me. Krizanc (1989) is also the author of the Tamara play. I have applied Tamara to organizing (Boje, 1995). Here I want to look at some of the consequences of interactive organizing that is theorized as a postmodern narrative.

Producers and consumers meet in the narrative space we call 'organizing.' As Roland Barthes (1970) put it, “the goal of a literary work is to make the reader no longer a consumer but a producer of the text” (S/Z). In questioning the position of the narrative in relation to the producer and consumer of organizing, this essay challenges the role of consumer sovereignty that makes consumers the sole authors of organizing.