About Metaphors

Why Metaphors

Metaphors are a "basic structural form of experience, through which human beings engage,organize, and understand their world. (Morgan, 1983)

Metaphors and analogies liberate imagination, help draw attention to alternative conceptions of reality by selectively highlighting certain features of it, and thus guide action accordingly. (Tsoukas, 1993)

As ways of talking and believing proliferate, new features of organizations are noticed. (Weick, 1979)

Thinking is intimately connected to organizing; new perspectives, images or conceptual the very least capture new organizational features while, at the most, they help create the very features to which they refer (Tsoukas, 1993)

Metaphors and other mental models provide a means for individuals and, ultimately, organizations to create and share understanding. These mental models establish images, names and an understanding of how things fit together. They articulate what is important and unimportant ...the models must be articulated and accepted in the organization for them to be effective ... In the context of such models believing is seeing. (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995)

References

Hill (1995) -- Hill, R. C. and M. Levenhagen, 1995, "Metaphors and Mental Models: Sensemaking and Sensegiving in Innovative and Entrepreneurial Activities." Journal of Management 21(6): 1057-1074.

Arthur I. Miller (1996) -- Insights of Genius -- images and creativity in science and art, Springer Verlag New York, ISBN 0 -387 - 94671 - 3

Morgan (1983) -- Morgan, G., 1983, "More on Metaphor: Why We Cannot Control Tropes In AdministrativeScience?." Administrative Science Quarterly 28: 601-607.

Morgan (1986) -- Morgan, G., 1986, Images of the Organization, Newbury Park, California, Sage Press.

Morgan (1988) -- Morgan, G., 1988, Riding the waves of change. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Morgan (1993) -- Morgan, G., 1993, Imaginization. New York, Sage.

Olds (1992), Linda E. Olds, Metaphors of Interrelatedness - towards a systems theory of Psychology, State University of New York Press, ISBN 0-7914-1011-0 , 1992

Tsoukas (1991) -- Tsoukas, H., 1991, "The Missing Link: A Transformational View of Metaphors in Organizational Science." Academy of Management Review 16(3): 566-585.