Creativity and Perceptions in Management: Metaphors
All in all we use a lot of metaphors to describe aspects of our lives and this includes organizational life. Morgan (1986, 1997) found eight such metaphors to describe corporations: Machine, Organism, Brain, Culture, Political systems, Psychic prison, Flux and transformation, Instrument of domination.
The machine metaphor is characterised by an unfeeling rationality, efficiency, run like clockwork, bureaucracy, Ford’s assembly line, …
The biological/organism metaphor is about being alive, your own needs, interdependent parts, collaboration, evolving, but neglects the role of culture and coherence of organism that might not be found in an organisation. Machines don’t start wars. (More in a table on page 73)
Social metaphors came about when it became clear that corporate culture is important for performance. Knowledge is tied to the field where it is created. Morgan suggested images of organisational culture as Glue, an iceberg, an onion or an umbrella.
Cognitive metaphors emphasize intellectual capital and intangible assets, talking about knowledge management, creative networks and the learning organisation. Here it is important to note though that it is mostly the individual that learns. The brain metaphor is well placed here, with channels of communication and distributed knowledge. We draw attention to the hidden aspects of the organisation and the tacit knowledge locked away.
Systemic metaphors are about networks, focussing on the channels of communication. Complexity comes into play here, drawing on the chaos principle, with some of these channels emergeing and going away. Making them possible is important.
In complexity you see emergence, self-organization, informality and also unpredictability. You have loosely coupled networks of self-organizing actors. You do not tell people what to do, but presume them to be intelligent, continuously learning and modifying their behaviour dependent on the feedback they get. The direction must be clear though.
What is the implication of all of this? Metaphors often reflect the values of those that selected them. There is a strong relationship between what we think and what we do and metaphors help in connecting the two.
Management Metaphors
These are also common, and often based around team sports these days. Others are warlike or spiritual metaphors. We started out as seeing management as a captain, while leaning more towards the idea of a coach these days. An author, jazz musician or potter are other metaphors found.
Paradigms
When a school of thought hardens, it becomes a paradigm, an assumption that isn’t questioned. The functionalist paradigm sees our world as orderly and understandable, with the organisations having specific goals. The interpretative paradigm sees it as a social relationship. Westerners favor rational analysis and focus on the task. Now we are starting to put more emphasis on the relationship and enterpreneurial forms of managment put more focus on the powers of perception rather than analysis. Firms are decentralizing, going into cells, boundaries moving or going away and more holistic analysis is taking place. A paradigm shift seems to be happening that is not easy.