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The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0018726705061317 2005 58: 1545Human Relations

Joep P. Cornelissen, Mario Kafouros and Andrew R. Lockdevelop and select organizational metaphors

Metaphorical images of organization: How organizational researchers

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time define and characterize the field (e.g. Barley & Kunda, 1992; Morgan,

1980); the development of interest in the process of theorizing, particularly

in those cognitive processes underlying it (Weick, 1989); and the develop-

ment of interest in the nature of language for (re)presenting organizational

life, particularly the incidence and function of metaphor (Daft & Wiginton,

1979; Oswick et al., 2002). Although these trends overlap in various regards,

the article tightens their association by explicating the role of metaphor in

the thinking and behavior of organizational theorists and researchers. More

specifically, the article clarifies how metaphor, and the imagination that

follows from it, is used within organizational theorizing and what this

implies for its continued use within organization theory and research.

Specifically, the purpose of our analysis is 1) to clarify how organiz-ational researchers circumscribe and understand the world of organizations

through the use of metaphor, 2) to document the heuristics of metaphor that

they use in doing so, and 3) to suggest, on the basis of this documentation,

how metaphor can be used to its fullest effect. The latter suggestion is

evidently more prescriptive in nature and moves beyond the descriptive data

presented to discuss missed opportunities and potentialities in the heuristic

inferences used by researchers in order to probe more deeply and generate

new insights into the world of organizations. This is not, however, the central

thrust of our analysis. Rather, our major emphasis is on providing a histori-cal and empirical overview of the past and contemporary metaphors in use

over the period 1993–2003, and to delineate the heuristics (i.e. the judg-

mental rules in producing and selecting metaphors) that have guided their

development, selection and use. We focus particularly on the dominant

metaphors within organizational theorizing and research and by looking at

their heuristics attempt to explain their prevalence and continued use.

In what follows, we will first contextualize the role of metaphor in

organizational theorizing, before moving on to a more specific and detaileddiscussion of prior work that has speculated on the heuristics of metaphor.

From this discussion the article then proceeds with a survey of the use of

metaphor in organizational theorizing and research over the past period

(1993–2003) in order to infer and document empirically the heuristics-in-use

in organizational theorizing and research. The results of the empirical survey

and the uncovered heuristics-in-use are discussed and are also used to formu-

late a number of governing rules for the selection, adoption and continued

use of metaphor in organizational theorizing and research. We conclude with

a discussion of theory and research implications, positioning the suggestedgoverning rules for the use of metaphor within the wider realm of organiz-

ation theory and suggesting research applications.

Human Relations 58(12)1 5 4 6



Metaphor in organization theory

The trends indicated at the beginning of this article suggest a marked increase

of interest in recent years in the paradigms, schemes and metaphors thatorganizational theorists and researchers work from in their theorizing and

research endeavors (Bacharach, 1989; Morgan, 1980; Weick, 1989).

Although this interest comes in various forms (see Gioia & Pitre, 1990) and

reflects wider meta-theoretical issues around theorizing and research, our

concern in this regard is with the specific use of metaphor within the process

of organizational theorizing. This concern is given in by previous work

(Morgan, 1980, 1983; Weick, 1989) which has suggested that metaphors

play a crucial role within theorizing, that theorists cannot really surpass themand that theorists and researchers therefore need to be more mindful of their

use and the images that they evoke in such a way that they become ‘more

deliberate in the formation of these images and more respectful of represen-

tations and efforts to improve them’ (Weick, 1989: 529). This view stands

in sharp contrast to an earlier view of metaphor as a derivative issue of only

secondary importance. That is, metaphor was thought to be either a deviant

form of expression or a nonessential literary figure of speech (e.g. Pinder &

Bourgeois, 1982). In either case, it was generally not regarded as cognitively

fundamental. This denial of any serious cognitive role for metaphor was prin-cipally the result of the longstanding popularity of strict ‘objectivist’ assump-

tions about language and meaning. The objectivist view suggests that the

world has its structure, and that our concepts and propositions, to be correct,

must correspond to that structure. Metaphors, then, may exist as cognitive

processes of our understanding, but their meaning must be reducible to some

set of literal concepts and propositions (Bourgeois & Pinder, 1983; Pinder

& Bourgeois, 1982).

In marked contrast with this ‘objectivist’ view, Morgan (1980, 1983)forcefully demonstrated that metaphors involve a cognitively fundamental

way of structuring our understanding of organizations as a new meaning is

created through the creative juxtaposition of concepts (e.g. ‘organization’

and ‘machine’) that previously were not interrelated. Ever since, a whole

range of theories and frameworks have been proposed (e.g. the ‘transfor-

mational’ model, Tsoukas, 1991, and the ‘domains-interaction’ model,

Cornelissen, 2004, 2005) that have both advanced and challenged Morgan’s

characterization of metaphor as proceeding ‘through assertions that subject

A is, or is like B, the processes of comparison, substitution and interactionbetween the images of A and B acting as generators of new meaning’

(Morgan, 1980: 610). Tsoukas (1991, 1993), for example, suggests that a

metaphor, as a figurative play of words, can be used in a creative manner to

Cornelissen et al. Metaphorical images of organization 1 5 4 7



reveal ‘literal’ structural similarities between concepts that were not salient

before, and may as such provide for ‘enriching’ and ‘insightful’ new under-

standings of organizations. Cornelissen (2004, 2005) argued that metaphor-

ical language sets up a creative and novel correlation of two concepts which

forces us to make semantic leaps to create an understanding of the infor-

mation that comes off it. The notion of semantic leaps, then, points to certain

‘non-compositional’ processes that are at work in metaphor, that evoke the

imaginative capacities of meaning construction, and that eventually lead to

the production of a new, emergent meaning (see also Fauconnier & Turner,

1998; Tourangeau & Rips, 1991). Accordingly, in Cornelissen’s view,

metaphors are cognitively fundamental in themselves – a metaphor creates

new, emergent meaning that is not compositional; instead, there is newmeaning constituted in and through the metaphor (e.g. ‘an organization

having certain identity traits in its strategies, values and practices that give

it its specificity, stability and coherence’ in case of the ‘organizational

identity’ metaphor) that is not a composition of meanings that can be found

in either the target or source concepts per se.

Beyond this discussion of how metaphors ‘work’, the organizational

literature on metaphors has also drawn attention to further analytical

distinctions; primarily between ‘live’ and ‘dead’ metaphors, and between

‘root’ metaphorical schemata versus specific ‘surface’ metaphoricallanguage and concepts (Alvesson, 1993; Morgan, 1980; Oswick et al.,

2002). Tsoukas (1991), for example, pointed to the difference between

‘novel’ or what are sometimes understood as ‘live’ metaphorical word

combinations (e.g. ‘organizational identity’) versus ‘conventionalized’ or

‘dead’ metaphors (e.g. ‘organizational structure’); language and concepts

that have become so familiar and so habituated in theoretical vocabulary

that scholars have often ceased to be aware of the metaphorical underpin-

nings (see also Hunt & Menon, 1995; Inns, 2002; Sandelands & Srivatsan,1993). Alvesson (1993) and Morgan (1980) have drawn a distinction

between ‘root’ or ‘second-order’ metaphorical schemata as schools of

thought that filter and structure a researcher’s perceptions of the subject of

study (e.g. ‘social phenomena as information processing systems’) (e.g. Daft

& Weick, 1984) which then pre-structure and give rise to more specific ‘first-

order’ metaphorical concepts (e.g. ‘organizational memory’) (e.g. Walsh &

Ungson, 1991) with the latter serving as more concrete frameworks for

scholarship and analysis. Inns (2002), finally, in her review of writings on

metaphor within organization theory, suggested that many authors not onlyexplore and use metaphors differently (for example as a qualitative research

tool, as a generative tool for creative thinking, as a pedagogical or

communicative tool) but also differ in terms of whether they critically




engage with them. At the level of organization theory, then, Inns’ review

suggests that organizational researchers primarily appear to use metaphors

in their theory building as ways of ‘making the unfamiliar familiar’ (akin to

Inns’s view of metaphor as an explicatory teaching or communicative tool)

or as a means of generating novel understandings that push the boundaries

of the body of knowledge on organizations (cf. Inns’s view of metaphor as

a generative tool for creative thinking) (see also Oswick et al., 2002; Schön,

1993, for a similar discussion). The latter generative capacity of metaphor

to create new ways of seeing, conceptualizing and understanding organiz-

ational phenomena is indeed widely acknowledged within the scholarly

organizational community (Alvesson, 1993; Chia, 1996; Cornelissen, 2004,

2005; Grant & Oswick, 1996; Inns, 2002; Morgan, 1996; Tsoukas, 1991,1993).

In the present study, we accommodate the aforementioned analytical

distinctions (between ‘live’ and ‘dead’ metaphors, between ‘root’ metaphor-

ical schemata and ‘surface’ metaphorical language, and between ‘explicatory’

and ‘generative’ uses of metaphor) and define metaphor as a linguistic utter-

ance in which the combination of words is literally deviant in the sense that

terms that have originally or conventionally been employed in relation to a

different concept or domain are applied and connected to a target term or

concept within organization theory (cf. Cameron, 1999; Gibbs, 1996; Steen,1999). We also assume that metaphors as linguistic utterances reflect and

intimate cognitively fundamental meanings about organizations and organiz-

ational life; and that these meanings can be traced and inferred through a

cognitive linguistic analysis. In other words, we consider metaphor as ‘a

salient and pervasive cognitive process that links conceptualization and

language’ (Fauconnier, 1997: 168). Within our study, we focus as mentioned

on the extent to which metaphorical language features within organization

theory and on the concepts and referent domains (e.g. economics, sports,machines, systems) that have cognitively been connected within organiz-

ational metaphors. Our underlying aim here is to reveal whether the develop-

ment of metaphorical language within organizational theory reflects certain

heuristics by which metaphors in organization theory are developed, selected

and accommodated within the practice of organizational theorizing and

research.

Focusing on the heuristics of metaphor

The little, if any, research so far into the heuristics of metaphor is particu-

larly problematic for, as Weick (1989) already suggested, an understanding




of the judgmental rules or heuristics in relation to metaphor would aid theor-

ists and researchers in their selection and use of them. Armed with such

heuristics organizational researchers would be able to select those metaphors

that not only guide them towards plausible paths to follow (and away from

implausible paths), but also generally break new ground (rather than scout

old ground for neglected gems) and lead to conceptual advances that were

inconceivable before.

Heuristics are compiled hindsight: they are nuggets of wisdom which,

if only we’d had them sooner, would have led us to our present state

much faster. This means that some of the blind alleys we pursued

would have been avoided, and some of the powerful discoveries wouldhave been made sooner.

(Lenat, 1982: 223)

The word ‘heuristic’ is often used in two senses: as a cognitive judg-

mental or inferential process, and as a cognitive effect whereby it refers to a

conceptual advance or improved decision-making (cf. Kahneman, 2002). In

our usage here, the word ‘heuristic’ refers to the cognitive judgmental process

that researchers engage in when they conjoin concepts in metaphor, judging

them as fitting and as potentially revelatory of the organizational subjectunder investigation. The purpose of our survey of the organizational litera-

ture (in the following section) is to elicit the heuristics that have so far been

used by researchers in developing and selecting metaphors, and in doing so

we attempt to answer, through our metaphorical lens, the fundamental

question of how and on what grounds organizational researchers choose to

represent and circumscribe the world of organizations.

In other words, uncovering these heuristics may give us an insight into

why certain past and contemporary metaphors as ‘organizational identity’,‘organization as theatre’ and ‘organization as machine’ have found their way

into organizational theory, and have sparked off further inquiry, whereas

other metaphors have not (e.g. ‘organization as chocolate bar’ or ‘organiz-

ation as soap bubble’) (Cornelissen, 2002; Tsoukas, 1991) or have lost

appeal after initial popularity (e.g. ‘organizational decision-making as

garbage can’). Previous work on metaphor in the organizational literature

has only paid scant attention to these questions.

In the stream of literature where metaphor is conceptualized as a

comparison – that is, where metaphor is seen as a comparison in which thefirst term A (i.e. the target) is asserted to bear a partial resemblance (i.e. the

ground) to the second term B (i.e. the source) (Alvesson, 1993; Oswick et

al., 2002; Tsoukas, 1991) – it is speculated that the heuristic used by




researchers is to search for two concepts that bear an exact and literal simi-

larity or sameness (that is implicit in the metaphor), and can then be

compared. In this comparison model, metaphor interpretation is assumed to

involve a comparison of concepts to determine, or rather extract , what

discrete properties or relations applying to one concept can also apply to the

other concept in the same or a similar sense, and accordingly the suggested

heuristic within such an account is to judge the aptness of a metaphor on the

basis of the similarity of the concepts conjoined within it. Alvesson (1993:

116) articulated this heuristic by saying that:

a good metaphor means the right mix of similarity and difference

between the transferred word [i.e. the source concept] and the focalone [i.e. the target concept]. Too much or too little similarity means

that the point may not be understood and no successful metaphor will

have been created.

An alternative stream of literature (Cornelissen, 2004, 2005; Morgan,

1980, 1983) suggests that metaphor does not work by comparing or likening

the target to the source as the comparison model assumes. Rather, metaphor

is seen to involve the generation or creation of new meaning through an inter-

active process of ‘seeing-as’ or ‘conceiving-as’, effectively moving beyond anantecedently existing similarity between the concepts conjoined within it

(Table 1). Metaphor, in this so-called domains-interaction view (Cornelissen,

2005), involves the conjunction of whole semantic domains in which a corre-

spondence between terms or concepts is constructed rather than extracted or

deciphered, and the resulting image and meaning that comes off it is creative

with the features of importance being emergent. The heuristics in this model

for selecting metaphors and for judging them as apt follow from this position

that the distinction between higher-order semantic domains and lower-levelinstance specific information of the target and source concepts is central to

metaphor production and comprehension. Cornelissen (2004, 2005),

Morgan (1980) and Tourangeau and Sternberg (1982) have proposed in this

respect that metaphors are more apt and fitting and create strong and mean-

ingful imagery when they relate concepts from more diverse or distant

semantic domains (between-domains similarity) and when the correspon-

dence between the target and the source concepts is conceived as more exact

(within-domains similarity).

The suggested heuristics from both the comparison and domains-inter-action camps have so far been only speculative, as more broad-based empiri-

cal research into metaphors-in-use in organization theory and their

antecedent heuristics has been non-existent. The present article, as





T a b l e 1

T h e

c o m p a r i s o n a n d d o m a i n s - i n t e r a c t i o n m o d e l s o f m e t a p h o r

T h e o r e t i c a l a s s u m p t i o n s

P r i n c i p l e s o f m e t a p h o r

S u g g

e s t e d h e u r i s t i c

C o m p a r i s o n m

o d e l

D o m a i n s - i n t e r

a c t i o n

m o d e l

M e t a p h o r w o r k s b y l i k e n i n g t h e s o u r c e

t o t h e t a r g e t c o n c e p t . T h e c o m p a r i s o n

p a r a d i g m s

u g g e s t s t h a t a n a n a l o g y o r

s i m i l e n o t o n l y e x i s t s

a s a n e c e s s a r y

c o n d i t i o n f o r m e t a p h

o r b u t a l s o p r o v i d e s

t h e g r o u n d f o r i t s c o

m p r e h e n s i o n ( a f t e r

a m e t a p h o r h a s b e e n

r e c o g n i z e d a s f a l s e

a n d p a r a p h r a s e d i n t o

a c o m p a r i s o n

s t a t e m e n t ) .

M e t a p h o r c r e a t e s a n

e m e r g e n t m e a n i n g

s t r u c t u r e t h a t c a n n o

t b e r e d u c e d o r

e x p l a i n e d b y r e f e r r i n

g t o i t s c o n s t i t u e n t

p a r t s ( i . e . t h e t a r g e t

a n d s o u r c e

c o n c e p t s ) . A

d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n

h i g h e r - o r d e r c o n c e p

t u a l d o m a i n s a n d

l o w e r - l e v e l , i n s t a n c e -

s p e c i fi c i n f o r m a t i o n

( a t t h e l e v e l o f t h e t a r g e t a n d s o u r c e

c o n c e p t s ) i s i m p o r t a

n t t o m e t a p h o r , a s

d o m a i n - l e v e l k n o w l e

d g e i s a u t o m a t i c a l l y

e n g a g e d o n e n c o u n t e r i n g a m e t a p h o r

a n d g u i d e s f u r t h e r p r o c e s s i n g .

E x t r a c t i o n : M

e t a p h o r c o m p r e h e n s i o n

i n v o l v e s a c o

m p a r i s o n o f ( t a r g e t a n d

s o u r c e ) t e r m

s o r c o n c e p t s t o

d e t e r m i n e ( e x t r a c t ) w h a t d i s c r e t e

p r o p e r t i e s o

r r e l a t i o n s a p p l y i n g t o o n e

t e r m c

a n a l s

o a p p l y t o t h e o t h e r t e r m

i n t h e s a m e

o r a s i m i l a r s e n s e .

C o n s t r u c t i o

n : M e t a p h o r c o m p r e h e n s i o n

i n v o l v e s c o n

s i d e r i n g ( c o n s t r u c t i n g ) i n

w h a t s t r u c t u

r a l s e n s e t w o c o n c e p t s a r e

a l i k e ( a t t h e

d o m a i n l e v e l ) , w h i c h

p r o v i d e s a f r a m e f o r t h e f u r t h e r

b l e n d i n g o f i m p l i c a t i o n s a n d t h a t l e a d s

t o a n e m e r g

e n t m e a n i n g .

A p t

a n d i n s i g h t f u l m e t a p h o r s a r e t h o s

e

m e t

a p h o r s o f w h i c h t h e c o n c e p t s a r e

j u d g e d a s

d i s s

i m i l a r i n s o m e r e s p e c t s , w h i l e s i m i l a r i n

t h e o r e t i c a l l y i m p o r t a n t r e s p e c t s .

A p t

a n d i n s i g h t f u l m e t a p h o r s a r e t h o s

e

m e t

a p h o r s t h a t a r e j u d g e d t o r e l a t e c o n c e p t s

1 ) b

e t w e e n w h i c h a c o r r e s p o n d e n c e ( i n a n

s t r u

c t u r a l s e n s e ) c a n b e c o n s t r u c t e d , a n d 2 ) t h a t

a r e

d r a w n f r o m d

o m a i n s t h a t a r e i n t h e fi r s t

i n s t a n c e s e e n a s d i s t a n t .



mentioned, addresses this void through a survey of past and contemporary

metaphors in organization theory.

Method

Data collection

In order to answer the main research questions, we set out to collect data

that, first, inform us of the range of metaphors-in-use and, second, allow us

to provide a motivated explanation of the heuristics used in their develop-

ment and selection. We selected the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)

database and the subsection of ‘management’ journals within it as the sourcefor our data. The subsection of ‘management’ journals includes the major

theoretical and empirical journals within management and organization

studies in general, and as such incorporates work in organization theory.1

We specifically selected these journals on the ‘management’ list within the

SSCI database as the source for our data for a number of reasons. First, we

wished to have a database of published articles within management and

organization studies that is in a sufficiently formal form through coded field

tags (e.g. keywords, title, source) and allowed us to perform searches and

retrieve data. Second, we wanted to have a database that spans a consider-

able period of time (the SSCI database covers ‘management’ journals since

1956), so that we could retrieve data on the spread and use of different

metaphors over time. Third, we required a database containing publications

of journals that would be largely representative of the body of theoretical

and empirical work within organization theory. The ‘management’ list within

the SSCI database provides for such a representative sample, although, of

course, it is by no means exhaustive of all theoretical and empirical work

that is carried out within management and organization studies.The data that we collected were sourced from the academic publi-

cations within the journals listed under ‘management’ in the SSCI database

over the period 1993–2003. The period 1993–2003 was chosen for two

reasons. First, this period provided us with a sufficient time series for data

collection and analysis. Second, there are substantial gaps within the SSCI

records for many ‘management’ journals prior to 1993 and only from 1993

onwards are the records for the Topic (title, abstract and keywords)

complete.

Data were obtained through a number of steps. As a first step, wescreened the list of journals under ‘management’ within the SSCI database,

and selected those journals with 1) a weighted impact factor of more than

0.5 for the period 2001–3, and 2) a weighted number of citations above 500




for the period 2001–3. The motive for doing so was that by using these

criteria we would arrive at a set of journals (Table 2) that are reflective of

the general body of knowledge within organization theory and its advance-

ment over time. As a second step, we performed searches for the publications

of each of these journals, entering the adjective ‘organizational’ and the noun

‘organization’ as target terms into the Topic (title, abstract or keywords) field

tag. Here, we set out to identify metaphorical word combinations involving

a source term being compared to the target terms ‘organizational’ and

‘organization’. The two mentioned terms were chosen as target terms as they

constitute part of word combinations, including metaphorical ones, within

the organizational field. Each of the searches then produced the co-

occurrence of words related to these two terms. We printed the full abstracts


Table 2 Journal publications selected for the database

Journal title Three-year Three-year

average average

impact cites

factor (2001–3)

(2001–3)

1 Academy of Management Review 3.757 4460

2 Administrative Science Quarterly 3.110 4630

3 Academy of Management Journal 2.906 5115

4 Strategic Management Journal 2.699 4683

5 MIS Quarterly 2.493 1662

6 Sloan Management Review 2.367 1197

7 Organization Science 2.012 2166

8 Harvard Business Review 1.955 3826

9 Human Resource Management 1.631 776

10 Journal of Management 1.567 171311 Research Policy 1.440 1597

12 Management Science 1.440 6576

13 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 1.417 2993

14 Information & Management 1.414 743

15 Organization Studies 1.253 844

16 Journal of International Business Studies 1.240 1563

17 California Management Review 1.192 1057

18 Journal of Product Innovation Management 1.182 788

19 Human Relations 0.926 1887

20 Journal of Management Studies 0.865 102521 Decision Sciences 0.731 1105

22 International Journal of Operations and Production Management 0.550 739

23 Interfaces 0.539 681



for all of these word combinations, and excluded the book reviews from our

database and further analysis. As a third step, the words that we retrieved

were entered into a database as source terms together with the mentioned

adjective and noun (‘organizational’ and ‘organization’) as target terms and

we recorded the occurrence of each combination of words over the time

period (1993–2003) surveyed.

Data analysis

The data that we collected included 969 different word combinations involv-

ing the target term ‘organizational’ and 262 word combinations including

the term ‘organization(s)’ that were mentioned at least twice over the period(1993–2003) surveyed. For our data analysis, we used a definition of concep-

tual metaphor as a linguistic utterance in which the combination of words

is literally deviant in the sense that terms that have originally or conven-

tionally been employed in relation to a different concept or domain are

applied and connected to a target term or concept within organization theory

(cf. Cameron, 1999; Gibbs, 1996; Steen, 1999). This definition is intention-

ally broad so that it includes both ‘novel’ or what are sometimes understood

as ‘live’ metaphorical word combinations (e.g. ‘organizational identity’), as

well as ‘conventionalized’ or ‘dead’ metaphors (e.g. ‘organizational struc-ture’); word combinations that have become so familiar and so habituated

in theoretical vocabulary that scholars have often ceased to be aware of their

metaphorical precepts. The definition is also sufficiently formal in specifying

metaphor as a conceptual combination involving the composition of features

of the target and source concepts or terms compared, with the source concept

coming from a domain that is distant to the subject of organizations and

organizational behavior within organization theory. Hence, it enabled us to

identify and map metaphorical word combinations and to distinguish themfrom other word combinations that involve any of the specified target terms

but are not metaphorical such as ‘organization analyst’ (i.e. fails the compo-

sition criterion) or ‘organization work’ (i.e. fails the distance criterion).

Using this definition, two of the authors acted as coders and indepen-

dently screened the entire database to identify and code the word combina-

tions that qualified as conceptual metaphors in this sense and to exclude

non-metaphorical word combinations. A total of 861 metaphorical word

combinations remained, including 786 ‘organizational’ metaphors and 75

‘organization’ metaphors. These metaphorical word combinations were thenfurther analyzed by each of the two authors independently. Both authors read

the abstracts involved and coded the identified source term for the conceptual

metaphor, as well as the larger source domain (e.g. economics, biological




evolution) that the source term was sourced from, and then ordered and

named the coded material into categories. We grouped these source terms

according to the domains (i.e. the organization of knowledge, such as our

knowledge of ‘clockworks’) that these are sourced from, and then further

grouped these into meaningful larger root metaphorical categories (i.e. the

underlying root metaphor, such as ‘machine’). Where more than one root

category might apply, we used the central features of the conceptual

metaphor to select among alternatives. If two categories seemed equally

applicable, we assigned the construct in question to the most specific of them.

This issue arose, for example, in respect of the ‘organizational monitoring

strategies’ compound, which incorporates features from both the ‘image’

(monitoring) and ‘warfare’ (strategies) root metaphors. Once all of theabstracts were read, interpreted and roughly ordered, each of us took time

to integrate, refine and arrange categories so that these began to come

together as a more conceptual whole. Here, each of us compared and

contrasted interpretations of conceptual metaphors into coherent and signifi-

cant categories. The individually identified categories were then laid next to

one another, compared, discussed and integrated. These categories of

metaphors-in-use that we identified by our own reading were informed and

further refined by existing lists of root and conceptual metaphors (Morgan,

1980, 1986, 1996; Putnam et al., 1996) in order to increase the reliabilityand validity of our final categorization. The final product involves a

categorization of metaphorical theoretical constructs central to the field of

organization theory, classified according to the root metaphorical schemes

upon which they are each formulated and understood. We then elaborated

upon the different ‘root metaphorical schemes’ and the set of ‘organizational’

and ‘organization’ conceptual metaphors that according to the first stage of

our analysis are prominent within organization theory; that is, metaphors

that are frequently mentioned and used, and on that basis occupy a centralplace within organization theory. Within this elaboration, we aimed to

retrace and reconstruct the heuristics that organizational researchers have

used in developing and selecting certain metaphors in their theorizing and

research.

The specific analyses and methods that we employed to answer our

research questions are a direct outcome of our cognitive linguistic perspec-

tive on conceptual metaphor as a cognitive process that links cognitive

conceptualization with the specific use of language. In line with much other

work in cognitive linguistics (see Coulson, 2001; Gibbs, 1996; Lakoff, 1993),our methodological approach is therefore aimed at inferring conceptual

knowledge based on the analysis of systematic patterns of linguistic struc-

ture. Such analyses of systematic patterns in language suggest a variety of




conceptual structures including metaphorical mappings and noun–noun

compounds (see Gibbs, 1998). This emphasis on the content of what people

know and the linguistic behavior that corresponds with it is quite different

from the major focus in cognitive science on the general architectural form

of human thought and language (Murphy, 1996, 1997). One result of this

difference in emphasis is that a cognitive linguistic analysis is by definition

post hoc; the focus lies on conceptual metaphors as existing linguistic utter-

ances that reflect certain conceptualizations and patterns of thinking. Cogni-

tive psychologists instead focus on individuals’ conceptual knowledge and

aim to predict how that influences the existence of different linguistic

behavior, not that an individual’s linguistic behavior can be explained post

hoc by inferring conceptual knowledge, including metaphorical mappings.

Past and contemporary metaphors in use

The data that we collected included 969 different word combinations involv-

ing the target term ‘organizational’ and 262 different word combinations

with the term ‘organization(s)’; 786 of the 969 ‘organizational’ word combi-

nations qualified as metaphorical. Only 75 of the 262 ‘organization’ word

combinations were identified as metaphorical. One explanation for thisdifference between the number of metaphorical ‘organizational’ and

‘organization’ word combinations is that a metaphor is more directly cued

or evoked with ‘organizational’ combinations; in these combinations an

organization is seen to have certain features or characteristics which presup-

poses a metaphorical lens of what an organization is conceived to be. Nouns

like ‘organization’, on the other hand, function primarily referentially

(Cameron, 1999; Hopper & Thompson, 1984). To illustrate this point, 96

different word combinations involving an adjective with the nouns ‘organiz-ation’ and ‘organizations’ were identified, with only 18 of these combina-

tions qualifying as metaphorical. The large majority of these adjective–noun

combinations are of a simple predicate-subject form with the adjective predi-

cating the nouns that they modify. For example, ‘Japanese organization’

simply predicates the location of the organization involved. Such predicat-

ing adjectives specify one of the predicated object’s attributes. The large

majority of these predicating adjectives appear to have a referential purpose

in that they specify the location (e.g. ‘Japanese organization’), size (e.g. ‘large

organization’, ‘small organization’) or the nature (e.g. ‘economic organiz-ation’, ‘industrial organization’, ‘multinational organization’) of the organiz-

ation involved. In other words, word combinations of this kind have a

referential rather than metaphorical or indeed generative function.




Tables 3 and 4 outline the different categories of ‘root metaphors’ that

we identified for both the ‘organizational’ and ‘organization’ metaphorical

word combinations. Here, as mentioned, we categorized each conceptual

metaphor (a metaphorical word combination involving either ‘organiz-

ational’ or ‘organization’) according to the larger root metaphorical scheme

upon which they are each formulated and understood. Twenty-five signifi-

cant categories for the ‘organizational’ conceptual metaphors and 10


Table 3 Root metaphorical categories of ‘organizational’ conceptual metaphors

Root Conceptual metaphors (examples) Frequency

metaphorical (counts)category 1993–2003

Animate being Creativity, character, behavior, identity, reputation, learning 1457

Machine Control, restructuring, resources, performance, design, 851

capacity

Flow-change Change, renewal, development, transformation 419

Evolution Growth, functions, fit, decline, demography, life 249

Architecture Level, form, model, architecture 242

System Environment, contingencies, barriers, inertia, responses 207

Culture Culture, subculture, cultural climate 203Geographical space Domain, world, setting, landscape 195

Economics Innovation, returns, efficiency, assets, dividends 97

Image Vision, image, perspective, focus, myopia, outlook 85

Institutionalized Codes, rules, guidelines, styles, accountability 78

norms

Language Communication, names, discourse, rhetoric, message 78

Interpersonal Alliance, partners, cooperation 73

relationships

Society Citizens, community, prosperity, citizenship, social cohesion 71

Warfare Strategy, plans, ranks, mission, competitive tactics 69Politics Governance, imperialism, power, political regimes 63

Law Liability, (in)justice, (il)legality 59

Mathematics Factors, covariate, correlate 51

Space Niches, dimension, span, container, buffer 51

Environment/ecology Sustainability, greening 46

Symbolism Brand, symbols, myths, dramas 23

Linkage Network, link 18

Time Future, trend, momentum, schedule, time 15

Chaos Complexity, emergence, bifurcation 11

Sports Arenas, athletes, team, tournament 8

Note: Root metaphorical categories with five or fewer counts are treated as inconsequential and are not

displayed in the table.



categories for ‘organization’ conceptual metaphors were identified. As Tables

3 and 4 reveal, the dominant root metaphorical categories for ‘organiz-

ational’ and ‘organization’ conceptual metaphors are ‘animate being’,

‘machine’, ‘flow-change’, ‘evolution’, ‘architecture’, ‘culture’, ‘system’,

‘warfare’ and ‘geographical space’. The root category of machine metaphors

likens organizations to mechanical systems and suggests an integrated picture

of corporations as comprised of a series of mechanically structured inter-

connected parts and resources. This category of metaphors lends its promi-

nence to its roots in early organization theory, including the contributions of

Max Weber and Frederick Taylor, the themes and subjects (e.g. ‘organiz-ational structure’ , ‘capacity’ , ‘control ’ , ‘design’) that emerged on the back of

it, and the concrete mechanical concepts with which the subject of an

‘organization’ is compared. Animate being metaphors liken aspects of

‘organizations’ to living organisms, specifically humans. These are sometimes

direct descriptions of organizations as acting beings, as when organizations

are seen as carrying out certain behaviors or as trying to impress groups

within their environments, but in other cases specific human properties such

as ‘learning ’, ‘creativity’ , ‘character’ , and ‘involvement ’ are employed to

conceptualize and explain organizations and the behavior and eventsinvolved.

Besides the observation that the ‘animate being’ and ‘machine’

categories assume the dominant position in both Tables 3 and 4, the


Table 4 Root metaphorical categories of ‘organization’ conceptual metaphors

Root Conceptual metaphors (examples) Frequency

metaphorical (counts)category 1993–2003

Machine Design, structure, control, size 117

Animate being Learning, self, success, ability, knowledge, behavior 117

Culture Culture 32

Warfare Strategy 22

System Environment, fit 19

Linkage Network, networked 17

Family Parent 7

Symbolism Storytelling 7

Space Context 7

Architecture Level 7

Note: Root metaphorical categories with five or fewer counts are treated as inconsequential and are not

displayed in the table.



categorization in Tables 3 and 4 also points to additional dominant root

metaphorical categories. One of these additional root metaphorical

categories, the category of flow-change, likens organizations to processes and

forces that are constantly in flux and transformation. Conceptual metaphors

in this category such as ‘organizational change’ are typically seen as an

‘ongoing process, a stream of interactions, and a flow of situated initiatives,

as opposed to a set of episodic events’ (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002: 569) or other

fixed reference points of ‘stability’ and ‘routines’ within organizations. The

root category of evolution metaphors is modeled upon Darwinian thought

and likens organizations and their activities to evolutionary patterns and

processes. There is an extensive literature discussing the different ‘species’ of

organizations and their development around concepts as ‘demography’, ‘fit ’and ‘decline’ and also evolutionary principles such as ‘variety–selection–

retention’ have made their way into much organizational theorizing. The root

category of architecture metaphors likens organizations to general physical or

morphological structures, often in terms of ‘models’, ‘levels’, or ‘forms’. A

common feat of these metaphors is that they are spatial and structural in form,

and their use leads to a view of organizations as erected structures, frame-

works or edifices. Within the category of culture metaphors, organizations are

seen as cultural phenomena and as manifestations of cultural morals, values,

rituals and symbols. The root category of systems metaphors likens organiz-ations to simple systems interacting and adapting to an ‘environment ’. An

organization is seen to consist of various interdependent subsystems and its

behavior is said to be emitted and then selected by environmental ‘contin-

gencies’ in much the same way that variations among individuals have been

selected by the environment during the course of evolution. This notion of

simple systems and environmental selection is thus itself metaphorical

although may not always strike us as highly metaphorical as it is based on

the now familiar Darwinian metaphor of natural selection. The systemsmetaphor entered organizational thought at around 1955 (Barley & Kunda,

1992), and has since led to such dominant and well-known conceptual

metaphors as ‘contingency’, ‘open systems’, ‘environment ’, and ‘loose

coupling ’. In recent years, systems thinking has been connected to the root

categories of animate beings and evolution more generally and also adapta-

tions and extensions of systems thinking including ‘chaos’ and ‘complex

adaptive systems’ have entered the theoretical vocabulary of organizational

researchers (see, for example, Thiétart & Forgues, 1995). Warfare metaphors

liken organizations and related behaviors to war-like activities and eventsincluding ‘strategies’, ‘competitive tactics’, and ‘competitive wars’.

Geographical space metaphors , finally, have as their source domain the distri-

bution of objects or places in space (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), particularly




geographical locations and places. This root metaphorical category includes

such metaphors as ‘domain’, ‘world ’, ‘setting ’ and ‘landscape’, whereby

organizations are represented in terms of geographical spaces and locations.

The image of organization as an ‘organizational domain’, for example, repre-

sents the scope and nature of organizational activities as confined to an

enclosed space (see, for example, Stapel & Koomen, 1998).

Together, these dominant root metaphorical categories subsume much

of the theorizing and research in relation to organizations within the field of

organization theory. As such, there is value in trying to explain the domi-

nance of these root categories in terms of the heuristics underlying their

development, selection and continued used by organizational researchers.

Previous explanations of the development of organization theory have tendedto approach the topic from primarily a sociological perspective; emphasiz-

ing the uptake of a certain theoretical concept or larger school of thought as

the result of sociological and political factors (e.g. whether a particular

concept resonates with the preoccupations and interests of the stakeholders

in organizational research at a particular point in time; pressures to focus on

certain theories and concepts) (see, for example, Barley & Kunda, 1992;

McKinley et al., 1999; Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2003). Here, we suggest an

alternative and potentially complementary explanation for the root

metaphorical categories that we identified; one that is rooted in our cogni-tive linguistic method of metaphorical analysis and in a view of theorizing

as ‘disciplined imagination’ (Weick, 1989, 1995). Specifically, we argue that

organizational researchers theorize by designing, conducting and interpret-

ing imaginary experiments where they rely upon metaphors to provide them

with vocabularies and images to theoretically represent and express organiz-

ational phenomena (cf. Weick, 1989). In this process, organizational

researchers use certain heuristics in selecting and retaining a metaphorical

combination of concepts, either for reasons of making the unfamiliar familiaror of generating new insights that were inconceivable before. The range of

metaphors-in-use points to particular dominant ways of thinking by

researchers about the world of organizations, and to certain heuristics that

they use in doing so. For example, a particularly striking observation in

relation to Tables 3 and 4 is that very little attention has been given to time

metaphors, a point also raised by Hassard (2002), while these metaphors

have found their way into virtually all other social scientific disciplines

including economics (McCloskey, 1995) and psychology (Leary, 1990). In

other words, the question that this evokes is why certain metaphors havebeen imagined and chosen whereas others have not, or at least to a lesser

degree? And what have been the thought processes, or rather heuristics, that

have guided this imagination and choice?




Heuristics-in-use

Informed by the overview of metaphors-in-use presented in Tables 3 and 4,

we subsequently reconstructed the heuristics used by organizationalresearchers in developing and selecting these metaphors. In this reconstruc-

tion exercise, we have dwelled upon cognitive scientific and cognitive linguis-

tic research into the principles of metaphor production and comprehension

(e.g. Fauconnier & Turner, 1998; Gentner & Markman, 1997; Gibbs, 1996;

Katz, 1992; Tourangeau & Sternberg, 1982). One of the main ideas that has

emerged out of this body of research is a constructive conception of

metaphor comprehension and judgment. According to this view, the meaning

of a metaphor is constructed through the creative juxtaposition of words orconcepts – and not merely revealed (as the comparison model suggests) –

and, as such, judgment of its aptness is also based on this construction. This

conception is entailed by findings that judgments of the aptness, ‘fit’ and

revelatory value of a metaphor are based on a relational conjoining or

blending of the target and source concepts into a newly constructed metaphor-

ical image (e.g. Fauconnier & Turner, 1998; Gentner & Markman, 1997;

Gibbs, 1996; Tourangeau & Rips, 1991). Furthermore, such judgments of the

value and use of a metaphor rest in the context of organizational theorizing

and research, as in the world at large, on a limited number of simplifyingheuristics rather than extensive algorithmic processing (Gilovich & Griffin,

2002). These judgmental heuristics can be seen as automatic, often intuitive,

and sensible estimation procedures of the aptness and potential of the

metaphorical image construed and feature as a response to uncertainty; when

the full measure of a metaphor’s value for organizational theorizing and

research is not yet known. Another important point is that such judgments

relate to estimations of the ‘aptness’, ‘goodness of fit’ or (potential) ‘revela-

tory value’ of a metaphor, and not to criteria specifying validity or truthconditions. As our remarks in earlier sections of this article already indicated,

a metaphor is judged through and in the construed image that it evokes, not

on the basis of a certain correspondence to reality as is the case with more

formal models that may however be derived from them (see Beyer, 1992;

Tsoukas, 1991). In a recent article, Von Ghyczy (2003) remarks to this effect:

Like the model, the metaphor bridges two domains of reality. For it to

be effective, those domains must clearly share some key and compelling

traits. But this correspondence differs from the direct mapping of amodel. Rather than laying claim to verifiable validity, as the model

must do, the metaphor must renounce such certainty, lest it become a




failed model. Metaphors can be good or bad, brilliantly or poorly

conceived, imaginative or dreary – but they cannot be ‘true’.

(Von Ghyczy, 2003: 90)

This means that the judgment of a metaphor’s aptness, and thus also

the heuristics underlying it, hinges upon the components of the metaphor in

question, and the metaphorical image thus construed, rather than external

appraisal through correspondence to a material or lived reality as envisaged

by organizational researchers. In other words, the heuristics used center

around, and are indeed confined to, perceptions of the relation or match of

the target and source concepts of a metaphor and the larger semantic

domains that they are drawn from. In all, we identified the following sixheuristics on the basis of our survey. Together, they provide a motivated

explanation for how predominantly metaphors are developed and selected

within organization theory.

1) The integration heuristic; that representations in the metaphorical

image can be manipulated as a single unit;

2) The relational heuristic; that relations in the metaphorical image

should match the relations of their counterparts in other semantic

domains;3) The connection heuristic; that the representation in the metaphorical

image should maintain a relationship to the input target and source

concepts;

4) The availability heuristic; that, given a metaphorical image, the inter-

preter should be able to infer the structure in relation to other subjects

and applications;

5) The distance heuristic; that the target and source concepts need to

come from semantically distant semantic domains;6) The concreteness heuristic; that the source concept compared to the

target is sufficiently concrete (rather than abstract) to be understood

and manipulated.

Despite their poetic names, most of these heuristics are derived from

standard pressures obtained in all mapping situations, including metaphori-

cal mappings (see Hofstadter, 1995, for a review). The integration heuristic,

first of all, refers to the pressure to bring partial structure from different

concepts and domains together in such a way that it produces a fully inte-grated image with an easily manipulable representation (Fauconnier &

Turner, 1998, 2002). In research on metaphorical mappings, the integration




principle is embodied in the observation that metaphors are more apt and

fitting when they relate target and source concepts that are more exact of

one another (e.g. Katz, 1992; Tourangeau & Sternberg, 1981, 1982).

Morgan (1980), in his earlier writings, equally emphasized that the most

powerful use of metaphor arises where concepts are correlated that carry

significant differences between them (i.e. the distance principle discussed

below) but are nonetheless representative of one another, and can therefore

be connected and integrated in a meaningful way. Most of the conceptual

metaphors within the dominant root metaphorical categories of ‘animate

being’, ‘machine’, ‘culture’, ‘system’, and ‘evolution’ in Tables 3 and 4 are

examples of the application of the ‘integration principle’. For each of these

conceptual metaphors, a frame for a source concept (e.g. ‘learning’ within‘animate being’, see Table 3) has been mapped onto the target concept of

‘organization’. Such mappings are normally guided by perceived relation-

ships of identity, similarity or analogy between the target and source (i.e. the

integration heuristic), where these perceived commonalities provide the

semantic rationale for the metaphorical correlation of the concepts involved

(Gentner et al., 2001; Oakley, 1998).

The relational heuristic exerts normative pressure to construct and

maintain metaphorical mappings in such a way as to preserve relational

structure (Coulson & Oakley, 2000; Fauconnier & Turner, 1998, 2002). Inresearch on metaphorical mappings, this pressure has been referred to as the

invariance hypothesis; the observation that the underlying mappings in

metaphoric expressions are almost always based on shared image-schematic

structure (see Lakoff, 1990; Turner, 1987). Gentner and Clement (1988) have

found in this respect that relational metaphors (i.e. those whose interpret-

ation is based on relational properties) are also judged more apt than attribu-

tive metaphors (i.e. those metaphors whose interpretation is based on

non-relational properties, namely common object attributes, and are there-fore mere-appearance matches) (see also Gentner et al., 2001; Tsoukas, 1993,

for this point). The following two examples illustrate this distinction between

relational and attributive metaphors: ‘managerial cognition is captured in

cognitive maps’ and ‘managerial cognition includes blind spots’. Clearly, a

relational metaphor is expressed with the first example since its interpret-

ation has to do with a relational property (e.g. ‘managers operating on

environments under the guidance of a map that structures cognition and

provides managers with the ground for hypotheses of action that may then

be confirmed or disconfirmed when acted upon’, which, according toGentner and Clement’s notation, is a relation between entities in the relevant

domain: managers, their thoughts, and the environments that they act upon)

(e.g. Reger & Palmer, 1996). In contrast, an attributive metaphor is




expressed in the second example since its interpretation involves non-

relational properties, namely, a ‘missing element’ and/or ‘unnoticed event’.

Many of the identified conceptual metaphors in Tables 3 and 4 satisfy the

relational heuristic including those in the ‘animate being’ (e.g. ‘organizational

identity’), ‘flow-change’ (e.g. ‘organizational change’) and ‘evolution’ (e.g.

‘organizational decline’) categories. However, attributive metaphors are also

being developed and selected including the machine metaphor of ‘organiz-

ational structure’ and the ‘animate being’ metaphor of ‘organizational

memory’. The metaphor of ‘organizational memory’, for example, provides

a now well-established lens for examining the distributional aspects of

organizational cognition. The metaphor projects above all the attribute of

‘knowledge repositories’ or ‘storage bins’ onto organizational cognition, andin doing so it has provided a framework of ‘storage bins’ for researching how

knowledge is conserved and retrieved by the socialization and control

systems that constitute organizational cognition (i.e. routines, rules, appren-

ticeships) (Walsh & Ungson, 1991).

The connection heuristic suggests that the representation in the

metaphorical image should maintain its links to the input target and source

concepts. Satisfaction of the connection heuristic is what allows one to access

elements in the metaphorical image with names and descriptions from the

input concepts, as well as what allows the projection of structure from theimage to other applications and subjects, including the input target and

source concepts. This heuristic is at work in many conceptual metaphors in

the root metaphorical categories of ‘animate being’, ‘machine’, ‘system’, and

‘evolution’; the conceptual metaphors in these categories tap into and are

connected to a rich body of knowledge on animate being and human

behavior, machine structures and operations, and so forth. The dominant

conceptual metaphor of ‘organizational learning’, as one example, likens

organizations to animate beings with thinking and learning capacities of theirown. More specifically, it likens the thinking capacities of organizations to

the behavioral responses of organisms and makes further connections with

the body of work on behavioral evolution. The metaphor can be traced back

to Skinner’s (1935, 1938) operant conditioning, where the behavior of an

individual is said to be emitted, then selected by environmental contingen-

cies in much the same way that variations among individuals have been

selected by the environment during the course of evolution. Learning theory,

and its embodiment in ‘organizational learning’ is an obvious example of this

metaphorical line of thinking tracing back to Skinner; learning is conceptu-alized as the acquisition of discriminating responses to an environment , with

the environment posing as the stimulus. ‘Organization learning’, then, is

completed and elaborated to an image of organizations as organisms that




can think and learn by acquiring discriminating responses to an environment ,

with the environment posing as the stimulus. The thinking or learning capaci-

ties of organizations are framed as behaviors that are adaptive to the environ-

ment and inferred, corrected and made routine on the basis of past

experience (Crossan et al., 1999).

The availability heuristic refers to the ease with which general domains

or classes of ideas can be brought to mind (e.g. Gilovich & Savitsky, 2002;

Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) and are then metaphorically combined with

the concept and domain of ‘organization’. In other words, the heuristic

‘refers to a tendency to form a judgment on the basis of what is readily

brought to mind’ (Medin & Ross, 1997: 522) which, over the period

1993–2002 includes such general ideas and semantic domains as ‘evolution’(e.g. Betton & Dess, 1985), ‘animate being’ or ‘actor’ (e.g. DiMaggio &

Powell, 1983), ‘culture’ (e.g. Hofstede, 2002) and ‘machine’ (e.g. Morgan,

1996) that are salient for this period and are the source for specific concep-

tual metaphors. Barley and Kunda’s (1992) historical study of the surges of

managerial and organizational rhetorics provides further support for the

availability heuristic in that it suggests certain historical patterns in the

uptake of language, including metaphorical language, for the study of

organizations. One particularly interesting observation made by Barley and

Kunda (1992) is that the ‘systems’ root metaphor entered organizationalthought and became rather dominant at around 1955 (and effectively

triggered such dominant conceptual metaphors as ‘contingency’) as ‘systems’

thinking as a whole was salient at that time and pervaded intellectual and

social scientific thinking. The availability heuristic can also be thought of as

a pressure to use conventional mapping schemas that facilitate comprehen-

sion. Thus construed, the heuristic applies pressure to use common and well-

known root and conceptual metaphors, such as the link between seeing and

knowing (e.g. ‘managerial scanning’), organizational development andevolution (e.g. ‘population ecology’), or between organizational perfor-

mances and theater (e.g. ‘organizational theater’).

The distance heuristic is rooted in findings from empirical research

which clearly suggest that for a metaphor to be apt and effective, the

conjoined target and source concepts need to come from distant domains in

our semantic memory. Tourangeau and Sternberg (1981, 1982) conceptual-

ized this pressure as the search for ‘between-domains distance’, which must

be fairly large for the metaphor to be effective because close distances provide

little interaction or surprise (see also Blasko & Connine, 1993; Katz, 1989,1992; McGlone & Manfredi, 2001; Trick & Katz, 1986). The premise in

this regard is that when the distance between the semantic domains is high;

it shocks researchers into conceiving of a subject in a completely new way.




Discussion: Heuristics, metaphors and theory construction

Weick (1989) noted that organizational researchers, like scientists in other

social scientific fields, not only direct themselves the imagination process butalso subsequently select the theoretical representation(s) for the target subject

under consideration. In one sense, this artificial selection process, to para-

phrase Weick (1989), is reflected in the huge variety of ways in which the

subject of organization itself has been thought of and represented. Organiz-

ational researchers have over the years likened organizations to, for example,

anarchies, seesaws, space stations, garbage cans, orchestras, savage tribes,

octopoids, market places, data processing systems, athletic teams, organic

systems, theaters, human beings, and machines, to name but a few (e.g.Cornelissen, 2004, 2005; Morgan, 1980, 1996; Oswick et al., 2002; Putnam

et al., 1996; Tsoukas, 1991, 1993; Weick, 1979). The artificial, and there-

fore in part subjective, nature of the imagination process has been interpreted

by some commentators (e.g. Morgan, 1980, 1996) as suggesting that a

continuous process of ‘imaginization’ – fully free and creative metaphorical

thinking – is satisfactory enough to be a substitute for ‘organization’ (see also

Tsoukas, 1993). We have shown, however, that this is a flawed inference,

particularly when one considers the select range of animate being, systems,

evolutionary, warfare, culture and machine metaphors that prevail inorganization theory (see also Baum & Rowley, 2002). Thus, it appears that

there must be certain heuristics at work which, ceteris paribus (e.g. political

pressures), suggest which organizational metaphors are developed and

selected; that is, are deemed most effective.

In other words, metaphorical imagination processes are not uncon-

strained, and the six identified heuristics embody the rules and constraints

by which metaphors are developed and selected. We suggest therefore that

these heuristics are important determinants of the aptness of a metaphor (inthe judgment of organizational scholars), and, as a corollary, of whether a

metaphorical image resonates with organizational researchers and is subse-

quently used within theorizing and research. We also discussed metaphors-

in-use which embodied one or more of these principles, although, it needs to

be mentioned, satisfaction of these heuristics is selective, and satisfying one

heuristic may be inconsistent with satisfying another. To illustrate this point,

the metaphorical image of ‘organizational mind’ – the idea that behaviors of

organizational members are connected in such a way that they are in them-

selves ‘mental’ in the sense of being capable or reflective of intelligent andcreative thought (e.g. Sandelands & Stablein, 1987; Weick & Roberts, 1993)

– fulfills the distance heuristic as it likens connected behaviors within




organization to neurological patterns in the brain (that produce an emergent

effect and is then seen as ‘intentional’, ‘heedful’ or ‘mindful’). However, it is

at odds with the concreteness heuristic as it is unclear what kind of neuron-

like relationships from the notion of ‘mind’ are projected onto organizational

behaviors. This is primarily due to the ongoing disagreement and debate on

the workings of the mind in the neuropsychological source domain; in

particular between those championing a computational connectionist or

associative model of the mind (see, for example, Rumelhart & McClelland,

1986) as opposed to a neuropsychological view that considers the mind as

a combinatorial architecture (see, for example, Dupuy, 2000). This

confusion, in turn, has led to difficulties for organizational researchers in

understanding and manipulating the metaphor for theorizing and researchpurposes. ‘Organizational mind’ is therefore often only referred to in a

cursory way in academic writings (see, for instance, Orlikowski, 2002), and

hardly figures directly in empirical research, if at all.

We argue that metaphorical images are often selective in the heuristics

that they embody, and that the most apt and effective metaphors are the ones

that satisfy multiple heuristics rather than a single one. We also suggest,

following Weick (1989), that the creative use of metaphors is facilitated

and/or constrained by practical factors and considerations before they are

worked out into theoretical representations. Metaphorical thinking, inorganization studies as elsewhere, can hardly be treated as some sort of

disembodied or radically free play of the mind, limited (if at all) only by the

past experiences, cognitive habits, and biases of individual researchers (e.g.

Chia, 1996; Cornelissen, in press; Weick, 1989). That such treatments are

sometimes proposed has been sufficient reason for Knorr-Cetina’s (1981)

well-known and repeated insistence that metaphorical theories of theory

construction and scientific innovation are incomplete. It is certainly true, as

she argues, that scientists must ‘work out’ or ‘realize’ metaphorical conceptsin the tangible, nitty-gritty process of ‘knowledge production’ that takes

place in the field before any truly consequential innovations can be brought

about (see also Beyer, 1992). Consequently, ‘the process of research produc-

tion and reproduction is more complex than the equation of metaphor and

innovation suggests’ (Knorr-Cetina, 1981: 66), which suggests that rather

than viewing metaphorical imagination as the imposition of static images it

actually involves a more evolving process or activity in which metaphorical

images (as organizing structures) partially order and form a research

community’s perspective and are modified by their embodiment in concreteexperiences of research and further experimentation.




Governing rules

Given this important distinction between metaphorical images on the one

hand and more fully formed theoretical representations (and their embodi-ment within the practice of organizational theorizing and research) on the

other, we believe that the identified heuristics are important within ‘disci-

plined imagination’ in providing heuristics at the level of the metaphorical

image for considering whether an image is apt and effective (i.e. a fully inte-

grated, meaningful and sufficiently rich image). Each of these heuristics has

been used in isolation or in combination and to varying degrees. On this

account, each of them has been found useful in simplifying and guiding the

task of constructing metaphors and models for research, but, importantly,

they may also lead to characteristic errors or biases (cf. Kahneman &Tversky, 1996). For example, use of the availability heuristic may lead to

bias whenever memory retrieval is a biased cue to actual frequency because

of the broader world’s tendency to call attention to examples of a particular

restricted type. Similarly, a mere focus on the exactness heuristic as is the

case with the ‘organization’ as ‘theater’ metaphor, instead of combining this

heuristic with the distance heuristic, provides for ‘apt’ yet cognitively limited

metaphors. That is, when concepts are related from not too distant domains

a metaphor often fails to break any new ground or generate new insightsthat were inconceivable before (cf. Cornelissen, 2004; Oswick et al., 2002).

Thus, organizational researchers need to be more conscious and aware of the

heuristics that they use in developing and selecting metaphors, to a greater

extent than before (Weick, 1989), and of the possible biases and errors

involved. This is an important point, as even ‘experienced researchers are

also prone to the same biases – when they think intuitively’ (Tversky &

Kahneman, 1974: 1130).

While each of the mentioned heuristics has characteristic biases and

errors attached to it (as indicating departures from a normative rationaltheory or probability accounts) (Gilovich & Savitsky, 2002), particularly

important from the vantage point of organizational theorizing and research

is that these heuristics and the metaphors that they produce lead to concep-

tual advances and breakthroughs. This means that the choice and use of new

metaphors (beyond existing ones), and thus the heuristics underlying them,

needs to transcend the mere illustrative-cum-rhetoric level (at which

metaphors have a communicative or rhetorical effect, lead to mere clarifi-

cation, or scout out old ground) and rather provides for creative and cogni-tively profound new insights and conceptual advances that were

inconceivable before. Against this criterion, two of the abovementioned

heuristics are particularly important: the relational and distance heuristics.




Both these heuristics, on their own account and in combination, have the

potential to produce conceptual advances, thus going beyond mere similarity

matches between the target and source concepts of a metaphor. Two govern-

ing rules in relation to these two heuristics are therefore proposed; to aid

organizational researchers in their search for novel categorizations and

deeper insights through metaphor.

Governing rule #1: relational metaphors are preferred over attributive

metaphors. This first governing rule, related to the relational heuristic,

is based upon the evidence (see Gentner & Clement, 1988; Gentner et

al., 2001) that there is a marked difference between the effect of an

attributive metaphor (which may provide conceptual clarification andframeworks through perceived common object-attributes between the

target and source concepts) and a relational metaphor. The relational

metaphor, through its projection and mapping of interconnected

relations between previously unrelated concepts, has the potential to

produce novel cognitive categorizations and new frames for research-

ing the world of organizations.

Governing rule #2: it is preferred in metaphor to conjoin concepts from

semantic domains that are in the first instance seen as distant from oneanother. This second governing rule, related to the distance heuristic,

implies that relating concepts from distant semantic domains has

potentially a greater cognitive effect than juxtaposing concepts from

semantic domains that are perceived as close. The guiding premise here

is as mentioned that distance provides for strong and cognitively

profound metaphorical imagery and that without perceived (sufficient)

distance a metaphor fails to shock organizational researchers into

conceiving of a subject in a completely new way. That is, in such cases,a metaphor may have conjoined two concepts that are conceived of as

in some sense alike (in either an attributive or relational sense), but

because the semantic domains are seen as not too distant it has little

further cognitive effect. In effect, such a metaphor may then just lead

into a re-labeling of the targeted subject with concepts and terms from

the source domain, but at a rather superficial, nominal level and

without offering any new and truly profound insights.

Together, these governing rules encourage organizational researchersto search for creative and new ways of conceptualizing organizations. This

is particularly important when considering that organizational researchers

may at times have been conservative in selecting mere similarity matches in




and through metaphor (Oswick et al., 2002). Oswick et al. (2002) have

recently argued in this respect that many organizational researchers remain

in the ‘cognitive comfort zone’ when they develop and select metaphors,

primarily focusing on the similarities or overlapping ground between closely

related concepts, and not on the dissimilarities or ‘tension’ that may exist

when comparing more distant concepts and semantic domains. In these

instances, metaphors are best seen as a means of elaborating and explicating

already existing knowledge, as in their focus on similarities and resemblances

between closely related concepts they merely make ‘the familiar more

familiar’ (Oswick et al., 2002: 295). The two governing rules cater instead

for a more progressive and advanced use of metaphor with metaphor being

used to reveal deeper and more profound insights into the world of organiz-ations. When used in such a way, we believe that metaphors can prove enor-

mously productive of further theoretical advances and empirical observations

within organization studies; by sparking off inquiry and directing researchers

to explore links that would otherwise remain obscure.

Limitations

Our study of metaphors-in-use within organization theory depends on a

specific cognitive linguistic conception of metaphor production, comprehen-sion and use. This theoretical conception, as we have suggested, is particu-

larly effective in providing an account of how metaphorical reasoning

underlies, in a cognitive sense, much organizational theorizing and research.

That is, our empirical study was grounded in a theoretical framework that

attempts to explain how conceptual structure is invoked in metaphor use.

No single theory, however, provides a comprehensive account of how people

understand all kinds of metaphorical language, given all the temporal

moments of understanding that are discussed by metaphor scholars (compre-hension, recognition, interpretation, appreciation, use). Theories based in

cognitive linguistics best explain metaphor comprehension, interpretation

and use, whereas other theories such as speech act theory and rhetorical

theory may be better at explaining metaphor recognition and appreciation.

As is the case with all research methods, there are also limitations to

the strategy of trying to infer something about conceptual structure from a

systematic analysis of linguistic structure and behavior. The primary limi-

tation is one shared by most linguistic research, namely, the problem of

making conclusions about phenomena based on the analysts’ own moti-vated explanations. Psychologists have often argued that there is some

circularity in how cognitive linguists argue for the psychological reality of




conceptual metaphors (Murphy, 1996, 1997). Thus, trying to infer aspects

of conceptual knowledge from an analysis of systematic patterns of linguis-

tic structure results in theories that seem post hoc. For instance, the claim

that ‘every large corporation needs to have a corporate strategy’ is due to

the presence of an independent, preexisting conceptual metaphor (i.e. the

warfare strategy metaphor) provides only a motivated explanation for

linguistic behavior. What psychologists seek is empirical, objective evidence

that people’s conceptual knowledge somehow predicts the existence of

different linguistic behavior, not that people’s linguistic behavior can be

explained post hoc by positing conceptual metaphors (Gibbs, 1996, 1998).

Within our research, we indeed assumed that metaphors as linguistic utter-

ances reflect and intimate cognitively fundamental meanings about organiz-ations and organizational life; and that these meanings can be traced and

inferred through a cognitive linguistic analysis. This assumption was guided

by our research objectives of mapping and documenting the past and

contemporary metaphors-in-use within organization theory, and of provid-

ing a motivated explanation for the heuristics underlying their development,

selection and use. Our research design was therefore justifiably post hoc.

We inferred the ‘disciplined imagination’ and heuristics used by organiz-

ational researchers from the identified patterns of linguistic data. Further

experimental psychological research is worthwhile to corroborate ourresearch findings and in particular for testing and refining this motivated

explanation of the heuristics governing the development and selection of

metaphors by organizational researchers.

A further limitation is that we only focused on word combinations

involving the adjective ‘organizational’ and the noun ‘organization’ as target

terms within a select set of management journals. This was essential to focus

the research study. Nonetheless, there is scope for further research that

focuses on other adjectives like ‘corporate’ or nouns such as ‘business’ astarget terms and explores the extent to which such adjective–noun and

noun–noun combinations (e.g. ‘corporate strategy’, ‘business domain’) are

metaphorical. A final limitation is that we inferred the conceptual

metaphors-in-use by mapping the direct reference of a combination of

words (e.g. ‘organizational structure’) within the abstracts of publications

within the SSCI database, rather than tracing the genealogy of certain word

combinations and their appropriation in different schools of thought and

within different communities of researchers (cf. Cornelissen, in press;

Danziger, 1990) although, of course, this is also a subject warranting furtherresearch.




Note

1 Organization theory is defined here as the academic enterprise concerned with the

study of organizational phenomena; and as such includes studies at both the micro(e.g. research into organizational behavior) and macro levels of analysis (e.g.

research into organizational populations and organizational fields) (cf. Tsoukas &Knudsen, 2003) and specialist research areas such as strategic management, human

resources, operations management and international business.

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Joep P. Cornelissen is Senior Lecturer in Corporate Communications

at Leeds University Business School. He previously worked at the Amster-

dam School of Communications Research, University of Amsterdam. Hisresearch interests include the management of corporate communications

and the use of metaphor in management and organization theory and

practice. He is author of Corporate communications: Theory and practice

(Sage). He teaches mainly on MBA and MA programs in the areas of

corporate communications.He is currently principal investigator on a UK

Economic and Social Research Council project on the use of metaphors

in organization theory. His research articles on metaphor have appeared

in Academy of Management Review , Organization Studies, British Journal of

Management, Psychology and Marketing and the Journal of Management

Studies.

[E-mail: [email protected]]

Mario Kafouros is currently an ESRC Research Fellow at Leeds

University Business School. He is an electronic engineer by first degree,

and also holds a degree in economics and a PhD in management.He has

extensive industrial and academic experience in the field of innovation.

His publications include articles in journals of management but also in journals of economics.His research interests include the effects of knowl-

edge spillovers, the impact of innovation on productivity performance,

and the role of metaphors in organization theory.


Andrew R. Lock is Professor of Marketing and Business Administration

and Dean of the Business School at the University of Leeds. He holds a

Masters and PhD from London Business School. He was previously Pro-

Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Faculty at Manchester Metropolitan

University and has also held lecturing posts at the University of British

Columbia and Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston University). He is a

past Chair of the Association of Business Schools. His work has been

published in the Journal of Marketing Management, the European Journal of

Marketing , the Journal of Advertising Research, the Journal of the OR Society ,

the Journal of Public Affairs and Management Learning .


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