Thursday, February 21, 2008

Organizational Culture Theory in "The Office"



The clip above is of an episode of NBC's hit "The Office" condensed, or JAMMED as its called, into the ten minute block allotted by YouTube. The show focuses on the Scranton branch of the paper company of Dunder-Mifflin. "The Office" as a series has many examples of organizational culture but for the purposes of this blog we will discuss examples from the episode "Safety Training".

The first example of cultural performances in organization is in the opening seconds, where Andy Bernard and Pam (Jenna Fischer) show examples of social performances by greeting each other and exchanging small talk while Pam welcomes Andy back to the office, after his stint in anger management. His conversations with Jim ( John Krazinski) and Dwight (Rainn Wilson) seem to be more political performances than social, although they may start out as social. Jim refuses to give Andy power by calling him by his "new" name and Dwight shuns Andy in an Amish fashion. While Jim and Dwight had always been at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton, Andy was one of the workers who eventually came from the Stanford branch, and they continue to exercise their power over him, as no one likes Andy.

There are many examples of ritual performances and enculturation rituals throughout the episode. Both Darrell's and Toby's safety training rituals are enculturation rituals; they try, and fail, to teach the office about different types of safety. It is also mentioned that these safety orientations are supposed to take place once every year or after every accident, and it is noted that they never make it a full year. This is also an example of passion performances. Michael Scott's "performance" of a safety orientation is more of a combination of an enculturation performance and a passion performance. After Pam points out to Michael that Darrell's lecture was more captivating because it had visuals he takes it upon himself to stage a suicide attempt in order to "inform" on the dangers of depression. It attempts to be informative, in Michael's eyes, but is really exaggerated and over the top.

The constant betting is an example of ritual performance; it is a social ritual. They bet on how many jelly-beans are at reception, how long it will take Kelly to explain NetFlix to her boyfriend Ryan (B.J. Novak) and how many times she will say "awesome" and mention romantic comedies, and if Creed will notice that the apple he was eating was replaced by a potato. The Dunder-Mifflin employees often make bets in the office and play pranks on each other; they have even created an Olympics stemming from invented games played during the workday. Michael's eccentricities and Jim and Dwight's fighting are also social rituals that the rest of the office is used to, almost so that they are task rituals, as common as checking one's voice mail. Those in the office are used to having to save Michael from himself. Each of these rituals have been introduced to viewers, much as they were introduced to Ryan, the temp, during the pilot and first few episodes.

4 comments:

Yifeng Hu said...

I think you meant "enculturation performance" instead of "enculturation ritual."

jpColeman said...

The American version of The Office is really a great tool to use to show the funnier side of organizational culture theory. It puts the mundane tasks, interactions, and relationships of the workplace in a funny context by using the extremes of human nature in the mold of the workplace. Dwight, the ultimate overachiever, Michael Scott the guy who will do anything to have his employees like him, Jim the joker and prankster, and the rest of an ensemble cast brilliant with their abilities to interact with each other. No other show besides the original British Office have been able to recreate the office politics and cohesiveness that is in Steve Carell and crew's show.

Charles Rosenberg said...

When I think of organizational culture theory, one of the first things that comes to my mind is The Office. Every episode demonstrates the uniqueness of office culture. The episode that I saw that I believe best showed organizational culture was the episode entitled "The Merger". The episode featured two branches merging together. Almost everyone in the other branch quit when they came over to this show's branch because they couldn't adapt to their unique culture. This episode also does a pretty good job at showing their office culture, but the office's office culture is most intense when seen from an outsider's perspective.

Maggie Evans said...

I agree that "The Office" is a very effective tool for examining organizational culture theory. One character who I think speaks to the Social Performances which occur in OCT is Angela. Angela is a very uptight character, and very judgmental. Nine times out of ten, she will disagree with the actions of her co-workers. However, in keeping with OCT, Angela fulfills social performances even when she isn't happy with those around her. Even though at times the small talk and cordial greetings feel strained, she is clearly attempting to fulfill these performance requirements.