the corporate world according to goffman

Andrew Gelman wants to understand what the big deal is about Erving Goffman.  After an initial run in with a couple of Goffman-admiring commenters, Andrew read one of Goffman’s articles and came back with more questions. Here’s an excerpt from his recent post:

It’s always amusing to see white-collar types treated anthropologically, so that’s fine. But then Goffman continues:

Sometimes, however, a member of an organization may fulfill some of the requirements for a particular status, especially the requirements concerning technical proficiency and seniority, but not other requirements, especially the less codified ones having to do with the proper handling of social relationships at work.

This seemed naive at best and obnoxious at worst. As if, whenever someone is not promoted, it’s either because he can’t do the job or he can’t play the game. Unless you want to define this completely circularly (with “playing the game” retrospectively equaling whatever it takes to do to keep the job), this just seems wrong. In corporate and academic settings alike, lots of people get shoved aside either for reasons entirely beyond their control (e.g., a new division head comes in and brings in his own people) or out of simple economics.

Goffman was a successful organization man and couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the losers in the promotion game. It wasn’t enough for him to say that some people don’t ascend the ladder; he had to attribute that to not fulfilling the “less codified [requirements] having to do with the proper handling of social relationships at work.”

Well, no. In the current economic climate this is obvious, but even back in the 1960s there were organizations with too few slots at the top for all the aspirants at the bottom, and it seems a bit naive to suppose that not reaching the top rungs is necessarily a sign of improper handling of social relationships.

My emailed response to Andrew is in the post. Here’s an earlier post about Goffman’s controversial personality.