Metaphor and Organization

Conceptual Overview

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. 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 [Page 897]metaphor. 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.

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. In 1979, these researchers argued that social science in general, and organization studies in particular, is best analyzed in terms of four key paradigms—the functionalist, interpretive, radicalhumanist, and radical-structuralist. Their work demonstrated that each of these paradigms is underpinned by sets of metatheoretical assumptions. In 1997, Morgan went on to publish Images of Organization. The book encourages management practitioners and researchers to identify and apply eight key metaphors. These are to be used to instigate new ways of thinking about organizations and the way they are managed. The book has become perhaps the best-known example of the value of metaphor to organization studies, and its contents thus merit some attention.

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