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FRAMES
Jeff Skilling and Rebecca Mark performing in Metatheatre at Enron Event |
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Enron, Burke's frames of acceptance (how stakeholders accept the comedic and tragic aspects of Enron executive greed and politicians influence-selling, as inevitable, nothing can be done about it) are opposed by frames of rejection (those who put Enron and Andersen into media and congressional inquisitions, allegedly to root out executive proclivity for more grotesque fraud and more burlesque sexual scandal). In Enron, the Metatheatre played its spectacles in order to persuade according to what Aristotle calls the Frames of Mind of the spectators.
Enron's Cowboy capitalism with its Traveler's Club Gentlemen strip tease lunches, the secretaries cast in the character role of French Lieutenant's women, the executive who married strippers and former Lieutenant's women, and the Playboy issue on the Women of Enron, all speak to a very sexist, paternalist, ideological framing. Yet ideological Frame has not been studied in leadership. Frame study in leadership would be an assessment of the worldview of the leader (agent) as well as followers (co-agent), customers (co-agents) and other spectators in corporate and societal Metatheatrics. Frames are scripted in Metascipted performatives for both genders.
Enron transformed the energy industry in (what the foreign press reported as) a grotesque manner that was spectacular by grasping together a new plot for the economy frame, with new characters as its players, surfacing New Economy frames using persuasive dialog, and starring characters in the spectacle.
The New Economy Frame
The earliest ‘New Economy’ reference to Enron focused on its strategy of outsourcing employees (February 4 1996). Enron immediately claimed “New Economy” king-ship status, projecting the image of the youthful free-market revolutionary conquest. Slogans like "new economy" have a snake-oil ring to them, and they legitimate aggressive and predatory corporate praxis. For example, outsourcing and reengineering began at Enron in 1993 when non-essential functions were turned over to outside contractors that paid former Enron employees less. “Enron Corp. systematically reviewed all of its functions and weeded out those that didn't have anything to do with the gas business - the mailroom, fitness center, cafeteria, photocopy center and others… Enron employees were given time to transition into the contractors' businesses or to quit” (Woodyard, 1996). In 1997 and 1998 Enron executives were seen as the heroic reengineers of business processes, strategists that could toss out the old business model, and reinvent entire industries in the new reinvent-or-die requirements of the New Economy.
Then president Bill Clinton, in 1997, described CEO Kenneth Lay of Enron as having the strength and diversity necessary on to keep the 'New Economy' on track in the 21st century (Clinton, 1997). Enron’s executives were also seen as “financial whiz kids” who exploited “arbitrage opportunities in energy markets” and successfully managed the “financial risks associated with buying and selling various forms of energy” (Hamel, 1997). Enron was depicted as one of the giant wannabes in the New Economy (June 12, 1998).
Helping hands rewrote legislation and national policy was linked to campaign contributions, chummy positions on corporate boards, lucrative consulting contracts, that position Enron in the frame called New Economy. For example, James Barker, Bush’s Secretary of State, became a consultant for Enron. During the first Bush administration Enron received waivers from regulations by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission headed by Wendy Gramm who was later appointed to Enron’s Board of Directors. Texas senator Phil Gramm’s wife was on the Enron Board of Directors and Texas separator Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s husband was a partner in Enron’s law firm.[ii]
Clinton Was also Frame Champion - The Clinton administration made the waivers part of federal law. Enron and its chairman, Lay, forged their deepest financial bonds with the two Bush presidents: George H.W. Bush and, more recently, his son George W. Bush. Lay was a transition adviser to Bush after the disputed presidential election in 2000. Enron and a number of its executives, including Lay, had contributed more money to Bush over his political career than anyone else, an amount exceeding $550,000. Enron played both sides, giving 45% of its soft money to Gore’s Democratic presidential campaign and 55% to the Bush campaign. 30% of Enron PAC money went to Democratic campaigns, and the balance to Republican. Enron added $620,000 from company funds and Enron gave $520,000 to the Gore campaign. No fewer than 71 senators and 188 congressmen have been on the Enron gravy train (Rich, 2002). “Enron provides a textbook case of how corporate power subverts the political process in whatever country it operates (the US, the UK or India) through donations to political parties combined with intensive lobbying” (Bunting, 2002: 15).
Bush called the then state governor, Tom Ridge, to pitch for Enron, whose bid duly succeeded. "I called George W to kind of tell him what was going on", said Lay at the time, "and I said it would be very helpful to Enron if he could just call the governor and tell him Enron is a serious company". Ridge was made Secretary of Homeland Security of Bush's new White House office after September 11th (Vulliamy, 2002: 13).
By 1999 Enron’s name was synonymous with New Economy. By mid-June 2000, Enron was described in eight write-ups on June 12th as one of the dominant New Economy players. Within one year, Enron was the recognized star and miracle-worker of the New Economy. Enron executives were magical heroes.
The Collapse of the New Economy Frame
Enron contributed significantly to the energy crises in California, that a swarm of Enron lobbyists pushed through legislative reforms for the next wave of the New Economy (broadband width). We could have seen behind the theatrical veil of Enron, if U.S. analysts and media had reported the same pattern of crony capitalism that Enron had enacted around the world before this crisis. Instead we became passive spectators.
My critical dramaturgy analysis concludes that Enron transformed the energy industry in a grotesque frame (Burke, 1937) in an interpenetrating set of frames (from Gas Bank to Energy Trading in Free Market Economy, to the Presidents' New Economy Frame, and now in the post-Collapse Frame of Predatory Capitalism unmasked).
There were ideological frames of resistance!
In post-Enron, there is a religitmation of deregulation and Free Market Economy. This is about legitimation and re-legitimation. It is about then it is OK for the silent to voice their resistance, and when the institutional framework will listen. Then after the media turns its attention to some new scandal, it is about how to restore consumer and employee confidence in Business, student confidence in the Business College, and voter confidence in the State. Frames once turned into mega scandal, bust be re-legitimated by a village of institutions.
For example, Barnes, Barnett, & Schmitt (2002), conclude, “The Enron debacle doesn't mean capitalism is broken. Nor does it fully discredit a devil-take-the-hindmost management style… Enron is about a band of pretty smart people who thought they had found a way to defy the laws of business physics and who created a culture that couldn't recognize that those laws were, in fact, immutable.” They conclude their only crime is hubris! To me this is a gross reduction, and flies in the face of critical dramaturgical analysis of Enron.
I would disagree. I prefer a more critical postmodern dramaturgical theory and analysis.
For example, the ideological framing of Enron was opposed by counter-frames throughout its entire history (1985-2002), but not widely reported until after the collapse. For example, the ideological framing of Enron as the superstar of Free Market capitalism was opposed by a resistance Enron ideology, the imperialist global conqueror where countries were global pawns, where deregulated power costs were higher and Enron facilities less efficient than competitor's products, and where Enron was a frequently noted violator of Human Rights around the globe; and these (frames) ideologies were opposed by by more than just cries of Enron equals greed and hubris.
The more grotesque frame of critical dramaturgical theory suggests that Enron is the resultant of predatory and hyper-competitive practices of global capitalism and the MBA program; a more romantic frame gloss-over argues that the Enron and Arthur Andersen spotlight turned the state’s attention on ways to repair 401K plans, close loop holes in annual report notes, change the incentives of executives in reformations of stock sharing laws, and changes to political contributions which are expected to put a cap on corporate and PAC giving. I doubt this is an actual repair to the checks and balances of late modern capitalism. It is more Metatheatre by the State and the Business College, to restore consumer, investor, and paying MBA student confidence in the Business College and the State; only time will tell.
Congress Hearings and Frames
For Democrats it was payback time, and within such a frame, "There will be no witch-hunt," says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), eager as ever to cloak his partisan instincts with the rhetoric of high-mindedness. Some rhetoric is not persuasive.
In post-Enron collapse, there is a good deal of ideological framing in the media and in the Business Academy. What begins as executive greed and alleged fraud was once linked to political influence buying spectacles, and is now being conveniently reframed as just the collapse of professional accounting standards, and then reframed again as proof that while there are a few errant executives (and politicians) free market capitalism’s invisible hand is not some kind of charade; the New Economy frame is being reborn (recurring one more time, as Nietzsche would say). Do not throw out the baby with the bathwater, we here the re-framers of Enron and Andersen and WorldCom say. Reform the political and capitalist system, they say, but keep deregulation and privatization and do not allow big government to use Enron as an excuse to shut down the efficiencies of the New Economy. When you ask for proof of efficiencies of Enron deregulation in India or California, there is another slogan about Free Market Capitalism; Love it or Leave it! I say take a critical postmodern dramatrugical approach to Enron and Andersen; one informed by Debord's (1967) reframing of Marx’s theory of production into a theory of consumption, in particular the consumption of ‘spectacles’ in the Society of the Spectacle, a Metatheatre about selling frames to the mass of spectators.
In sum, Frames, is for Aristotle the “frames of mind” of spectators, and for Burke, the worldviews, that constitute the dialectic trajectory of social and dramatic action. Aristotle and Burke have different theories of dialectic. For Aristotle, the dialectic worked toward progress. For Burke, the dialectic is Frames of Acceptance opposed by Frames of Rejection. Enron collapse reveals grotesque flaws in the way American capitalism circumvents its won checks and balances.
Metatheatre can be viewed as naturally occurring in and between complex organizations; that is, stakeholders to engage in Metatheatre, purchase theatre from consultants and PR agencies, and are partially aware of shifting frames.
Next, I seek also to analyze the more hidden below the spectacle surface aspects of the text. Frames of Enron, embed in wider historical frames, the historical struggle between multiple ideologies. Spectacles become limit-situations or frames uncritical thinking and untested feasibility.
