Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 073
Make the whole scene support the claim
Credibility depends on roles, settings, teams, boundaries, and behavior—not wording alone
Premise
An executive can promise dialogue while a pre-screened question process, leaders’ body language, and managers’ restricted talking points perform control. Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective shows how people define situations through roles, settings, props, appearance, manner, teams, audiences, and region boundaries.
The executive implication is not that organizational life is fake. Genuine competence and commitment still require recognizable performance. The task is to align the scene with the claim and ensure that impression management improves legibility and coordination rather than fabricating capacity or concealing material harm.
What the model is: Dramaturgical Analysis in Knowledge →
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- The essential model
- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryAnalytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
- DomainConversation & Relationships
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Analytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
Organizes dimensions, distinctions, types or questions so that a situation can be examined systematically. A framework supplies structure, a typology distinguishes forms, and a heuristic offers a usable way to orient judgment.
- KnowledgeDramaturgical Analysis