Dark secrets: Face-work, organisational culture and disaster prevention

Abstract

Shakespeare had it right and sociologist Erving Goffman went further: men and women play many parts at the same time, each representing his or her ‘self’ in different ways in different settings as well as at different times. These differentiated representations of self are called faces and the work we do to create and maintain them is called face-work (Goffman, 1959). Organisations, too, reveal different faces, perhaps aggressive in some dealings and compliant in others. They may treat their employees, customers, suppliers and regulators similarly, or with great differentiation. Yet this facile summary is a vast oversimplification - the variations in any organisation’s face are far more subtle and just as variable as our own - especially when it comes to matters of risk.