| In this dissertation I argue that present society is typified by four characteristics. The first characteristic is the collapse of time and space. The second is the breakdown of local unitary performances. These two conditions have given rise to the third characteristic---an increase in uncertainty, ambiguity, and choice. Because of the increased ambiguity about how to be in the world the primary problem for contemporary actors is one of identity. This has produced an increase in organizationally centered identities---the fourth characteristic of present society.;The present milieu described by these four characteristics demands an approach to understanding organizations and organizing that is rooted in the day-to-day performance of organizing. To accomplish this sort of understanding I have undertaken an ethnography that examines a sports organization, the Portnuef Valley Rugby Football Club (PVRFC).;My struggle to make sense of the organizational performance in the PVRFC has led me to work of Erving Goffman, Kenneth Burke, George Cheney, Peter Manning, and other social action theorists and the dramatistic metaphor. In trying to understand the performance of the PVRFC, it became clear that the club members' performances could be described and understood in terms of the interactive performance of face claims. What was less clear was the reason organizational members choose to affiliate themselves with an organization in which membership incurs heavy social costs.;The question of how the actors choose between performative possibilities is answered by optimal distinctiveness theory. As described by Brewer, it provides the answer to what motivates ruggers to embrace a performance that costs them jobs and relationships and often destroys their bodies. I have developed three characteristics that I think define an optimally distinct performance: barriers to entry, significant opportunity costs, and a clear, conventionalized performance. These three characteristics are used to describe and make sense of the performance of membership in the PVRFC. Finally, I explore the implications of viewing organizations as optimally distinct face performances for organizational communication research. |
