En los Municipios Distritales

ENACTING BUSINESS SOCIAL

RESPONSIBILITY:

A

Throughout Queen's Birthday Weekend 1 998, the staff of Hubbard Foods Limited celebrated the company's 1 0th birthday on a picnic with managing director, Dick Hubbard. The picnic was unusual because it involved a journey of several thousand miles - from Auckland New Zealand to Apia, Western Samoa. Aside from the significance of the event as a company outing, for 65% of the 1 02 employees of Hubbard Foods Limited the picnic was a trip home, an opportunity to be reunited with family and friends.

In this chapter I use Kenneth Burke's (1 969a) 'dramatistic pentad' as a critical approach to analyse a company event, a rhetorical act that in New Zealand became symbolic of business social responsibiFty in action. So the aims of the chapter are three-fold. First, I will establish that the dramatistic pentad can be used to analyse organisational phenomena. Second, I will apply the pentad to the issue of business social responsibility in New Zealand. Third, I will further analyse the rhetorical act through the application of key ratios (Burke, 1 969a).

Even as I limit my text to the chosen event, I acknowledge the cautionary note sounded by Covino and 10lliffe (1 995) that defining any event "as an independent and self-contained entity is something of a convenience" (p. 6). Extraordinary as the picnic may have appeared it should be seen as part of the overall fabric of the organisation' s life. As such, the Samoan picnic may be considered a "punctuation

Material from this chapter has appeared in the publications listed below:

Walker, R. (1999). Picnic in Samoa. In N. Monin, J. Monin, & R. Walker (Eds.), Narratives 0/ business and society: Differing New Zealand voices. (pp. 1 43-1 53). New Zealand: Pearson. Walker, R. & Monin, N. (200 I ). The purpose of the picnic: Using Burke's dramatistic pentad to analyse a company event. Journal o/Organizational Change Management, 14(3), 266-279. This thesis contains an entirely new section of analysis (7.5) and extends the discussion

mark" that gives "shape and fonn to the ongoing flow of actions and words in an organization" (Eccles et aI., 1 992, p. 48).

What motivated Dick Hubbard to literally close down the cereal processing plant and undertake the venture? One could argue that Hubbard 'owed' the staff this treat, which would justify it under the narrow view of social responsibility. Yet

publications long after the event still refer to the picnic in Samoa as part of the profile of Hubbard as a socially responsible businessman (e.g. Holdsworth, 2000;

Marks, 2002). Perhaps it was the staged, theatrical nature of the event that raised questions regarding, on one hand, Hubbard's representation of business social responsibility and, on the other, the fine line between what is perceived as primarily an act of social responsibility, and that which is perceived as a public relations gimmick (Kerr, 1 998c).

In particular, the event was open to two major criticisms. First, one might argue that what underpinned Hubbard's action was psychological egoism, the opportunity for self-promotion, or at least "[promotion] of muesli" (Myers, 1 999). Second, this, like other so-called 'benevolent' acts, was open to charges of pate mal ism and coercion on the part of Hubbard as employer. Application of the pentad will help clarify these Issues.

7.2 DRAMATISTIC PENTAD

Kenneth Burke's (1 969a) 'dramatistic pentad' provides an analytical framework which enables exploration of motive through analysis of five inter-related factors: the act -what happened; the scene -the physical, geographic and cultural milieu of

the action; the agent - Hubbard's individual identity and the role he played out in

tenns of the action; the agency - the means by which Hubbard accomplished this action, and his role in initiating, approying and funding the staff picnic; and finally, the purpose -the intended effect of the action as well as a consideration of perceived

representations of reality and into a space that reveals ambiguities" (Fox, 2002, p. 37 1 ). Figure 7. 1 provides a visual portrayal of elements of the dramatistic pentad.

Figure 7. 1 The Dramatistic Pentad

Scene 1\ , \ , \ , \ , \ Agent • � - - - - -'- - - � -- - -,- Act ... , ,' \ .,' .. ... , , " ,/" ,'( I "', ," \ , '" \ I " _{' .... \} I ,, ' ... ... \

From "Beyond the 'tyranny of the real': Revisiting Burke's Pentad as research method for

professional communication", by C. Fox, 2002, Technical Communication Quarterly, 11(4), p. 370.

Most dramatistic analyses span written and spoken text, sometimes exploiting the other dimensions that theatrical communication offers us - combinations of aural, visual and kinetic signs. Throughout the thesis, the definition of 'text' is very broad. Although I primarily rely on data from verbalised reports from the press and

Clipboard, I also include data from personal communication with Hubbard. ' Text' here embraces the written, the spoken and the acted.

Burke ( 1 989) argues for the simplicity of the pentad framework:

Act, scene, agent, agency, purpose. Although, over the centuries, men have shown great enterprise and inventiveness in pondering matters of human motivation, one can simplify the subject by this pentad of key terms, which are understandable almost at a glance. They need never be abandoned, since all statements that assign motives can be shown to arise out of them and to terminate in them. By examining them quizzically, we can range far; yet the terms are always there for us to reclaim, in their everyday simplicity, their almost miraculous easiness, thus enabling us to constantly begin afresh. (p.

Burke later mused that he could have extended the pentad beyond act, scene, agent agency and purpose to include ' attitude' . Nevertheless, he continued to use the pentad rather than a hexad, and in A Grammar of Motives Burke aligns attitude with both act and agent. Attitude, he proposes, is often:

the preparation for an act, which would make it a kind of symbolic act, or incipient act. But in its character as a state of mind that may or may not lead to an act, it is quite clearly to be classed under the head of agent. (Burke,

1 969a, p. 20, original emphasis)

7.3 BACKGROUND TO THE DRAMA

7.3.1 Backdrop

"Did you hear the story about the crazy Company that took its entire staff to Samoa for Queen's Birthday Weekend?" So began an item in Clipboard 36. Hubbard was updating his customers on what had happened on the recent company picnic - a picnic that came to represent a pivotal point in the general public 's awareness of ' Hubbards' as a socially responsible company and of Dick Hubbard as an

exceptional company manager. It also heralded the creation of a company saga positioning 'founding father' Hubbard at the centre, the living symbol of what it meant for a company to have soul. There was considerable press coverage prior to the Hubbard Food Limited company outing both in provincial centres (e.g. Brock, 1 998; Clarkson, 1 998; Kelly, 1 998; "Picnic plan delights staff', 1 998; Taylor, 1 998; "Workers happy to be sent home", 1 998) and nationally (e.g. "Factory gives staff overseas trip", 1 998; Norris, 1 998; Wakefield, 1 998). Afterwards media coverage of Hubbard or Hubbard Foods Limited regularly referred to the Samoan picnic

(Bedford, 1 998; "Breaking the rules", 1 999; Haworth, 1 998-99; Hill, 2000b; Marks, 2002; Mulrooney, 2000c; Smith, 1 998a).

According to Hubbard his organisation sponsored the special outing in order to celebrate Hubbard Foods Limited' s 1 0th birthday and to show how much he valued staff (C 36; "Cereal king with a common touch", 1 998; Clarkson, 1 998; OTM Memoirs, 1 999, p. 63). The event could be seen as a natural extension of a tradition that had been established in former years, when the employees and their families enj oyed day-trips out of Auckland 'on the company' (Dick Hubbard, personal

communication, September 9, 1 998). However, it was the site of this particular picnic, and the fact that it involved all of the company's staff, that captivated the imaginations of both those directly involved and the New Zealand public.

The event attracted considerable media interest nationwide and was hailed as a triumph for the staff of Hubbard Foods Limited. Hubbard, for some individuals, assumed hero status even prior to the event. In the New Zealand Herald's Letters to the Editor, one reader demanded: "Give that man a medal ! In today's world of corporate egoists, Mr. Dick Hubbard is to be applauded . . . Good on Mr. Hubbard and his staff. I hope they have a wonderful three-day picnic in Samoa" (Edwards,

1 998).

7.3.2 Performance and Business Social Responsibility

As with any theatrical event, the picnic in Samoa was the product of many interdependent relationships. In a dramatic context, White ( 1 995) suggests:

Relationships such as those between an actor and their role or between a character and their behaviour, between one character and another are all significant because they produce meaning. (p. 207)

Even before it happened, the meaning of the picnic for the audience was influenced by Hubbard's established reputation as a responsible employer. Local newspapers, church publications and TV documentaries had consistently presented him in a good light. Typical headlines read "Cereal thriller" (Ceramalus, 1 998, p. 34) or "He's a cereal benefactor" (Kelly, 1 998).

Hubbard embraced the contradictory media image of the "caring capitalist"

(Bedford, 1 998). By the time of the company picnic he had received attention for his plans to establish an organisation to promote socially responsible business practices (Bedford, 1 997; Barnes 1 998; Brock, 1 998; Ceramalus, 1 998; Heeringa, 1 998). The New Zealand chapter of Businesses for Social Responsibility (BSR) was to be launched in September, less than three months after the picnic. In drawing media attention to Hubbard as a benevolent employer the picnic in Samoa provided a vehicle for promoting the new initiative. Several media reports mention New

Zealand Businesses for Social Responsibility in association with the picnic (e.g. Norris, 1 998; Schaer, 1 998; "The power of the Wattie style approach", 1 998).

7.3.3 Motive

The announcement of Hubbard's picnic in Samoa sparked elements of a controversy that had already been evident in the media (Carr, 1 998; Hubbard, 1 998a; Kerr,

1 998c) and Hubbard was frequently presented as offering an alternative way of doing business to that espoused by the Business Roundtable (e.g. Brock, 1 998; Carr,

1 998; "Work's a picnic - in Samoa", 1 998). It is just such conflict, between the actors, the text, the act and its interpreters, that Burke's pentad is suited to exploring. Burke ( 1 989) declares that " . . . what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise " (p. 1 42, original emphasis).

At the crux of the Hubbard conflict was the same question that underlies much of the controversy surrounding the issues of business social responsibility in general - that of motive. Few would presume to knowing the motives underlying any act as motives can be overtly acknowledged or merely implied. Similarly they may be obscured or exposed. However, Hart ( 1 997) points out that for Kenneth Burke "motive is never an issue in rhetoric, that all situations prompt the question: What is

this person trying to do to me?" (p. 2 1 3). Burke ( 1 969a) suggests that when "we encounter, verbally or thematically, a motivational simplicity, we must assume as a matter of course that it contains a diversity" (p. 1 0 1 ). Dramatistic analysis, utilising the pentad, can bring us closer to an understanding of the range of motives,

concealed or claimed, that lead to the picnic in Samoa. In the following analysis I will first interrogate issues related to the act, the aspect of the pentad that, in broad terms, dominates this performance.