http://hum.sagepub.com/Human Relations http://hum.sagepub.com/content/58/12/1545 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0018726705061317 2005 58: 1545 Human RelationsJoep P. Cornelissen, Mario Kafouros and Andrew R. Lock develop and select organizational metaphors Metaphorical images of organization: How organizational researchers Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: The Tavistock Institute can be found at: Human RelationsAdditional services and information for http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://hum.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/58/12/1545.refs.html Citations: What is This? - Dec 16, 2005 Version of Record >>
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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
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
Cornelissen et al. Metaphorical images of organization 1 5 5 1
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
Cornelissen et al. Metaphorical images of organization 1 5 5 5
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.
Cornelissen et al. Metaphorical images of organization 1 5 5 7
‘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
Cornelissen et al. Metaphorical images of organization 1 5 5 9
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
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?
Cornelissen et al. Metaphorical images of organization 1 5 6 1
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
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
Cornelissen et al. Metaphorical images of organization 1 5 6 5
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.
Cornelissen et al. Metaphorical images of organization 1 5 6 9
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
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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