Organizational Metaphor Definition and Examples

Organizational Metaphor Definition and Examples An organizational metaphor is a figurative comparison (that is, a metaphor, simile, or analogy) used to define the key aspects of an organization and/or explain its methods of operation. Organizational metaphors provide information about the value system of a company and about employers attitudes toward their customers and employees. Examples and Observations [M]etaphor is a basic structural form of experience by which human beings engage, organize, and understand their world. The organizational metaphor is a well-known way in which organizational experiences are characterized. We have come to understand organizations as machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, instruments of domination, etc. (Llewelyn 2003). The metaphor is a basic way in which human beings ground their experiences and continue to evolve them by adding new, related concepts that carry aspects of the original metaphor.(Kosheek Sewchurran and Irwin Brown, Toward an Approach to Generate Forward-Looking Theories Using Systemic Concepts. Researching the Future in Information Systems, ed. by Mike Chiasson, Ola Henfridsson, Helena Karsten, and Janice I. DeGross. Springer, 2011)What we may discover in analyzing organizational metaphors are complex relationships between thought and action, between shape and reflection.(Dvora Yanow, How Does a Pol icy Mean? Georgetown University Press, 1996) Frederick Taylor on Workers as Machines Perhaps the earliest metaphor used to define an organization was provided by Frederick Taylor, a mechanical engineer interested in better understanding the driving forces behind employee motivation and productivity. Taylor (1911) argued that an employee is very much like an automobile: if the driver adds gas and keeps up with the routine maintenance of the vehicle, the automobile should run forever. His  organizational metaphor for the most efficient and effective workforce was the well-oiled machine. In other words, as long as employees are paid fairly for their outputs (synonymous with putting gas into a vehicle), they will continue to work forever. Although both his view and metaphor (organization as machine) have been challenged, Frederick Taylor provided one of the first metaphors by which organizations operated. If an organizational employee knows that this is the metaphor that drives the organization, and that money and incentives are the true motivating factors, then this e mployee understands quite a bit about his organizational culture. Other popular metaphors that have surfaced over the years include organization as family, organization as system, organization as circus, organization as team, organization as culture, organization as prison, organization as organism, and the list goes on. (Corey Jay Liberman, Creating a Productive Workplace Culture and Climate: Understanding the Role of Communication and Socialization for Organizational Newcomers. Workplace Communication for the 21st Century: Tools and Strategies That Impact the Bottom Line, ed. by Jason S. Wrench. ABC-CLIO, 2013) Wal-Mart Metaphors The people-greeters give you the feeling that you are part of the Wal-Mart family and they are glad you stopped by. They are trained to treat you like a neighbor because they want you to think of Wal-Mart as your neighborhood store. Sam [Walton] called this approach to customer service aggressive hospitality. (Michael Bergdahl, What I Learned From Sam Walton: How to Compete and Thrive in a Wal-Mart World. John Wiley Sons, 2004)Lawyers representing these women [in the court case Wal-Mart v. Dukes] . . . claimed that Wal-Marts family model of management relegated women to a complementary yet subordinate role; by deploying a family metaphor within the company, Wal-Marts corporate culture naturalized the hierarchy between their (mostly) male managers and a (mostly) female workforce (Moreton, 2009).  (Nicholas Copeland and Christine Labuski, The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream. Routledge, 2013)Framing Wal-Mart as a kind of David in a battle with Goliath is no accident al moveWal-Mart, of course, has worn the nickname of the retail giant in the national media for over a decade, and has even been tagged with the alliterative epithet the bully from Bentonville. Attempts to turn the tables of this metaphor challenge the person-based language that otherwise frames Wal-Mart as a behemoth bent on expansion at all costs. (Rebekah Peeples Massengill, Wal-Mart Wars: Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century. New York University Press, 2013) Think of Wal-Mart as a giant steamroller moving across the global economy, pushing down the costs of everything in its pathincluding wages and benefitsas it squeezes the entire production system.   (Robert B. Reich, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life. Knopf, 2007)After experiencing the flaws of having someone in Bentonville make decisions about human resources in Europe, Wal-Mart decided to move critical support functions closer to Latin America.The metaphor it used for describing this decision is that the organization is an organism. As the head of People for Latin American explains, in Latin America Wal-Mart was growing a new organism. If it was to function independently, the new organization needed its own vital organs. Wal-Mart defined three critical organsPeople, Finance, and Operationsand positioned them in a new Latin American regional unit. (Kaihan Krippendorff, The Way of Innovation: Master the Five Elements of Change to Reinvent Your Products, Services, and Organization. Platinum Press, 2003) The Big Tent Metaphor In what many observers will see as the de facto expression of mainstream U.S. Jewrys outlook on J Street, members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations voted 22-17 (with three abstentions) to reject the membership application of the self-labeled pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby. . .   J Street said in a statement, This is a sad day for us, but also for the American Jewish community and for a venerable institution that has chosen to bar the door to the communal tent to an organization that represents a substantial segment of Jewish opinion on Israel. Jewish leaders have used a big tent metaphor to describe which views on Israel and U.S. foreign policy are encompassed within the communitys consensus. Since its formation in 2008, J Street has been a frequent subject of debates on how far that tent stretches, and the groups bid to join the Conference of Presidents proved no different. Alina Dain Sharon and Sean Savage, J Street Rejected by Umbrella Group. (Heritage Florida Jewish News, May 9, 2014) Football as a Flawed Organizational Metaphor for Fire Fighting A metaphor seeps deeply into organizational narratives because the metaphor is a way of seeing. Once established it becomes a filter through which participants both old and new see their reality. Soon enough the metaphor becomes the reality. If you use the football metaphor you would think that the fire department ran a series of set plays; finite, divisible, independent actions.You could also assume that at the end of these short segments of violent action, everyone stopped, set up the next plan and then acted again. A metaphor fails when it does not accurately reflect core organizational processes. The football metaphor fails because fires are extinguished in one, essentially, contiguous action, not a series of set plays. There are no designated times for decision making in firefighting and certainly no timeouts, though my aging bones might wish that there were.(Charles Bailey, Metaphors Mask Realities of Firefighting. FireRescue1, Feb. 16, 2010)