ORGANISATIONAL METAPHORS

Organisational Metaphors

Organisational Metaphors

Introduction

Metaphors influence the way we describe, analyze, and theorize organizations. The creation of a metaphor involves the literal meaning of a phrase or word being applied to a new context in a figurative sense. Metaphors enable the transfer of information about a relatively familiar subject (the source or base domain) to a new and relatively unknown subject (the target domain) (Burrell & Morgan, 2000). Thus, when people assert that the organization is, or is like, a machine, the processes of comparison, substitution, and interaction between the images of the organization and a machine act in combination to create a metaphor that generates a new meaning (Burrell & Morgan, 2000); the organization is seen as mechanical, comprising interrelated parts, and as operating in a rational determinist manner.

Organisational Metaphors: Summary of Key Theoretical Issues

Proponents of metaphor in organization studies argue that metaphors are—in line with their generative capacity—liberating in orientation. They can be viewed as powerful educational devices that are highly correlated with learning and are important to the advancement of knowledge and understanding about organizations.

In their 1996 review of metaphor and organization, David Grant and Cliff Oswick observed that the liberating orientation of metaphors in organization studies manifests itself in three ways (Burrell & Morgan, 2000). First, the application of a metaphor may generate fresh and innovative insights into a familiar situation. In this sense, metaphors can generate alternative social realities. Specifically, metaphors can be used to encourage different ways of thinking among organizational researchers and practitioners that enable them to identify, explain, and influence complex organizational phenomena. For example, Gareth Morgan in 1981 proposed the schismatic metaphor (Oswick, Keenoy and Grant, 2002). This showed that despite management efforts to maintain prevailing organizational structures and processes, there is a potential for the various contradictions, conflicts, and tensions within organizations to rise to the surface so that organizations implode, fragment, or disintegrate.

Second, and in contrast to the capacity of metaphors to encourage new ways of thinking about already known phenomena, they can facilitate the learning of new knowledge where something is encountered that is a completely new experience. An example is provided by Frank Barrett and David Cooperrider in 1990. They discuss the case of a science student unable to grasp the structure of the atom. Getting the student to use the metaphor “the atom is a solar system” portrays the electrons orbiting about a central nucleus and allows new understanding to emerge (Oswick, Keenoy and Grant, 2002).

Third, proponents of metaphors emphasize that their application to either new or existing phenomena is an important process of experimentation. Metaphor should therefore be deliberately used as an investigative tool, and such an approach is highly apparent in numerous analyses of organizations. For example, and as demonstrated by Oswick and Grant in 1996, metaphors have been widely applied within the field of organizational change and development as a diagnostic tool.

The influence and significance of metaphors in organization studies has been highlighted by Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan (Oswick, Keenoy and Grant, ...