ABSTRACT
This chapter is about how drama theory is best used to enable strategic action. Drama theory offers a distinctive approach to strategic thinking by viewing the human side of management in any arena as being about the effective handling of interactions within a proliferating tree-like structure of confrontations. For example in the domain of peace-keeping operations Howard (1999) has portrayed the campaign task as being to bring about compliant behaviour on the part of other parties in each of a linked sequence of confrontations. The distinctive contribution of drama theory is to augment good sense and experience by providing a structured framework for thinking about how to act and respond within these confrontations. It does so by enabling the construction of bespoke models of the specifi c situations encountered that can act as dialectical devices for managers.
