Metaphors in Management – Blend of Theory and Practice

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Part I:  Theoretical aspects of metaphors in management

Introduction

“All theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors that persuade us to see, understand, and imagine situations in partial ways. Metaphors create insight. But they also distort. They have strengths. But they also have limitations. In creating ways of seeing, they create ways of not seeing. Hence there can be no single theory or metaphor that gives an all-purpose point of view. There can be no ‘correct theory’ for structuring everything we do.”¹

It has always been the goal of managing bodies to understand their employees’ intentions, and try to predict their behavior in an organizational context². However, today’s management faces a great challenge. Our mental patterns are no longer sufficient for navigating the scenarios of modern organizational complexity³. The modern-day manager is challenged with dealing with these constantly increasing complexities in the pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness. They must understand how constant changes influence their tasks so they can contribute to establishing a fast-reacting organization. “Ideal organizations”, as described by Weick and Quinn⁴ as well as Buchanan et al.⁵, are capable of ongoing adaptation, being both proactive and reactive at the same time according to circumstances and situation. Organizational metaphors can serve as methods or tools that provide insight into how organizations function, and how best to deal with ← 7 | 8 → making them successful in a state of permanent change. Bolman and Deal⁶, stress that companies are ambiguous, contradictory and uncertain, and that metaphors can help administrators to decrease or remove the misunderstandings caused by managing such a complex phenomenon. Morgan⁷ states that metaphors assist companies in analyzing organizations from a “mosaic of different lenses or images”.

Bennis and Nanus⁸ investigated transformational leaders, i.e. those who had the ability to transform people’s expectations and organizational systems, and found that among the tools the transformational leader uses to create the vision – and so create the meaning of the organization – is metaphor⁹. By studying metaphors, the modern-day manager will be better prepared to understand organizations and how best to deal with the circumstances they are challenged by, as they strive for results.

1.  The nature of metaphors

Metaphors saturate our language¹⁰ and many metaphors already exist in the world of business and organizations. Metaphor is not just a mere ornament; it is a common, frequent and pervasive phenomenon. Different scholars produced different research findings on metaphor frequency. ← 8 | 9 →

Table 1. Findings on the frequency of use of metaphor, by different authors.

Source: J. Wittink, RELIABLE METAPHOR ANALYSIS IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH, Towards a dual, dynamic approach, VU University Amsterdam, http://dspace.ubvu.vu.nl/.

They are often used to understand evasive concepts that we would like to communicate with others. Morgan wrote that metaphor is “…a primal, generative process that is fundamental to the creation of human understanding and meaning in all aspects of life”¹⁵. According to Black, metaphors help us sort reality from illusion¹⁶.

We instinctively graft abstract and complex concepts such as ‘time’, ‘life’ and ‘organization’ onto more concrete concepts that are easier to visualize. Even theories get visualized, often as structures (we may talk about ‘supporting’ evidence or the ‘foundations’ of a theory). “Metaphors are omnipresent in science. Astrophysicists describe the distribution of mass in the universe as being foam-like, ← 9 | 10 → and chemists still ascribe orbitals to atoms as if electrons were planets spinning around a nuclear sun”¹⁷.

Phrases such as ‘life is a game’ or ‘business is war’ clearly represent expressions by means of which the speaker aims to draw the recipient’s attention to the fact that in life or business, you can either win or lose.

Metaphors have remained an important subject of interest through the centuries. Theory, analysis, research and study have been dedicated to them, from Aristotle until now. Conflicting with common thought, our conceptualization and thinking are pervaded by metaphors, rather than their simply serving as rhetorical and poetic devices. To be more precise, in the field of linguistics and communication it is believed that our cognitive processes and thoughts are highly metaphorical – that human thought is constructed and constituted of metaphors¹⁸. It is certain that language is barely metaphor-free, meaning that people reason in metaphors and develop familiarity with new domains as a result of metaphorical thinking¹⁹. This is because analogical thinking leads to fresh understanding of either familiar or new concepts²⁰.

Metaphors are basically implied comparisons that bring together two concepts. “Metaphor occurs when a unit of discourse is used to refer unconventionally to an object, process or concept, or colligates in an unconventional way. And when this unconventional act of reference or colligation is understood on the basis of similarity, matching or analogy involving the conventional referent or colligates of the unit and the actual unconventional referent or colligates”²¹. Dickins, for instance, defines metaphors as “A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used in a non-basic sense, this non-basic sense suggesting a likeness or analogy […] with another more basic sense of the ← 10 | 11 → same word or phrase”²². According to Deignan “A metaphor is a word or expression that is used to talk about an entity or quality other than that referred to by its core, or most basic meaning. This non-core use expresses a perceived relationship with the core meaning of the word, and in many cases between two semantic fields”²³.

We must also stress that metaphors evolve. For instance, until very recently the information superhighway was a metaphor for the internet. But the word ‘cyberspace’ has now taken over²⁴. The question is whether they are the same. Alternatively, will a new word replace the term ‘cyberspace’ as wearable computers cross over from the realm of the exotic to that of mass-produced commodity?

Among various types of metaphors emerging from professional literature, several that are used more frequently in management can be identified. These are presented in table 1.

Table 2. Metaphor types.

Source: Sułkowski Ł., Types of metaphors of organization, “Journal of Intercultural Management”, Vol. 3, No. 2, October 2011, pp. 221–227.

2.  Cognitive typology of metaphors

Five epistemological positions that define the significance of metaphoric thinking can be presented²⁷. ← 13 | 14 →

Table 3. Five epistemological positions that define the significance of metaphoric thinking

Source: Sułkowski Ł., Types of metaphors of organization, “Journal of Intercultural Management”, Vol. 3, No. 2, October 2011, pp. 221–227.

3.  Cognitive linguistics and conceptual metaphor

One group of linguists that trained as part of the generative grammar practice in the 1970s began to see shortcomings with that approach. Ronald Langacker and George Lakoff are two of the most prominent linguists to have turned away from generative grammar. Langacker and Lakoff reacted by setting out to create a new theory of language, which over time would come to be known as Cognitive Linguistics. At the moment, Cognitive Linguistics is considered a broader movement, that includes various methodologies and approaches.

Studies in linguistics have shown that when complex, intricate ideas are talked about, philosophized about and researched, then metaphors abound.³¹

There are two potentially opposing approaches to metaphor: one in which the metaphors plays an ornamental or decorative function, and one in which it is perceived as occupying a central place in thought and language. The second of ← 15 | 16 → these views is referred to as the ‘contemporary theory of metaphor’³². The ‘decorative’ approach describes metaphor as a poetic or rhetorical device peripheral to language and thought, while contemporary theory holds it as occupying a central role in thought, and thus in the development of language. Lakoff claims that our understanding and knowledge of many topics is filtered through metaphor.

The assumption that human cognition – i.e. the production, communication and processing of meaning – depends on the mappings between the mental spaces is one of the basic tenets of cognitive linguistics. Human cognition is autonomous from language. The cross-domain linguistic expression mappings are simply deeper cognitive structures manifested on the surface that have important analogue or spatial components³³.

Conventional theories have usually painted metaphors as “rhetorical spices”, reduced to the equivalent of literal paraphrases. Understood like this, they become optional linguistic devices. However, cognitive linguistics treat metaphor as just a matter of thought and not as a language which would then make conceptual metaphors pervasive and inescapable³⁴.

Language is “essentially and inherently symbolic in nature”³⁵. This means that conceptualization concerns all linguistic expression. Meaning is thought to be something that will reside in someone’s mind, and language is the means to relate that meaning in the form of sound or written words. Research into conceptual metaphors conducted by cognitive linguists has revealed many innovative and astonishing facts about how we make use of metaphors within the human mind. “Cognitive linguists concluded that the same mechanisms used to create metaphors existed thousands of years ago. People have been creating relationships between a word or words and non-literal meaning to convey a culture’s conceptualized meaning”³⁶. Findings show that metaphors are not just devices that are used by poets or rhetoricians to make their arguments and verses spicier, but are actually fundamental structures that our mind will use to make sense of complicated concepts in our lives. ← 16 | 17 →