BIDDING FAREWELL TO THE HERO’ AS EXAMPLE OF COPING WITH CHANGES IN ORGANIZATION

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to present a fragment of organizational reality as observed in the course of the research carried out during the ceremony of bidding farewell to a dismissed chief, who, for many years, had been at the helm of one the Voluntary Labour Corps (VLC) training centres. The authoress refers to the metaphor of a theatre in order to present this event as an example of changes taking place in the organization.
For the sake of the paper, the depicted ceremony has been divided into two parts.
The first one has been referred to as ‘acts’, and they are as follows: act 1 – preparations for the ceremonial farewell to the dismissed chief; act 2 – the official part of the ceremony; act 3 – collective celebration. The second part presents the strategies adopted to cope with the organizational changes. The labour community experiencing the changes within their organization constructed the social event to manifest their collective discontent at the ongoing alterations. The spectacle ‘Bidding Farewell to the Hero’ was constructed by adopting the coping strategies such as: dramatic cooperation, concealing embarrassment, placing one’s trust in a role, backing practices and awarding
the role of a hero to bureaucracy.