Driving,Steering,Leading,and Defending

Abstract

The use of metaphors in understanding organizational change has become prominent in recent years, although most research focuses on the deductive application of metaphors, rather than on inductive explorations of metaphorical language-in-use. This article extends qualitative understandings of the experience of change agency through an inductive focus on the metaphorical language-in-use of change agents. Through case study data from the United Kingdom and New Zealand, the authors explore how a group of trade unionists involved in the development of a trade (labor) union–sponsored learning initiative draw on metaphorical language to talk about their experiences. Seven different metaphors are identified and the change agency roles implied by those metaphors are analyzed. In considering the similarities and differences between managerial and union change agency, the authors argue that although some metaphors such as journey and warfare might be widespread in the accounts of both types of change agents, attention to other metaphors that share entailments with these metaphors reveals agency roles unique to the union context. The advantages and disadvantages of this novel form of qualitative data analysis are evaluated.

Keywords

union learning representatives change agency metaphors

Introduction

Characterizing the nature of the change agency role has challenged those in the organizational development and change field for many years, with the recognition that the role is not only multifaceted but also that change itself can be seen as a multiauthored process (e.g., Buchanan & Storey, 1997; Caldwell, 2003; Ottaway, 1983). This has led to increased interest in the use of language by change agents as a way of managing interests and the constitutive nature of language in enabling the change process. Examples include a focus on narratives (e.g., Beech, 2000; Geiger & Antonacopoulou, 2009), stories (Brown & Humphreys, 2003; Rhodes, Pullen, & Clegg, 2009), and discourse (Grant & Marshak, 2011; Whittle, Suhomlinova, & Mueller, 2010).

In this article, we seek to contribute to these developments in two ways. First, we consider the experiences of a group not traditionally thought of as change agents: trade (or labor) unionists. We will argue that those participating in union learning initiatives around the world are indeed agents of change and that their experience of facilitating change has something interesting to contribute to our understanding of change agency. Second, in understanding how these individuals make sense of their roles, we will focus on the metaphorical language they use to do so, thereby extending qualitative understandings of the experience of change agency through a focus on metaphorical language-in-use.

The article is structured in the following way. First, we consider the literature about trade unions as change agents and the learning agenda they promote for fellow workers to provide the context for the research reported here. Second, we outline the literature about the uses of metaphorical analysis in understanding learning and change. Third, we outline our methodological approach and then discuss the metaphorical analysis. The article concludes by discussing the similarities and differences between the metaphors in use by these change agents and those used in the managerial change agency literature more generally. The implications of using this form of inductive metaphor analysis are also considered.

Trade Unions, Change Agency, and the Learning Agenda

A diverse set of literatures have looked at the relationship between trade unions and change. For example, there is a literature on trade unions as social movements (e.g., Moody, 1997); as catalysts for change in the workplace, for example, in the tradition of union involvement in participative design projects in Scandinavia (Bjerknes, Pelle, & Kyng, 1987; Kyng, 1989); and as organizations of change themselves (e.g., Heery, 2005). Here we focus on one particular aspect of trade union activity where trade unionists facilitate the learning of others and therefore can be construed as agents of change. Trade union’s involvement in learning is not a new phenomenon, and there has been a long history of union’s involvement in the learning agenda (see Forrester, 2000; Forrester & Payne, 2000). Similarly, the potentially liberationary nature of learning has long been recognized within the literature on radical change (e.g., Alinsky, 1946, 1971). Learning at work constitutes a large part of the learning undertaken by adults during their lives (Boud & Middleton, 2003), and writers have argued that engaging in the lifelong learning of workers provides considerable opportunities for trade unions and their members (Forrester & Payne, 2000; Munro & Rainbird, 2004; Sutherland & Rainbird, 2000). Specifically, it has been argued that involvement in this agenda can bring about meaningful personal change for individual union members whose skills and employment opportunities can be enhanced (see Cassell & Lee, 2007; Dean, 2007). Indeed some have argued that the learning agenda can be a key tool for the renewal and revitalization of trade unions in the current difficult economic climate (Munro & Rainbird, 2004; Wallis, Stuart, & Greenwood, 2005).

Within the United Kingdom, one could argue that there has been a seismic shift in the significance of the role of trade union in learning since the Labour government elected in 1997 sought to harness the capacity of the unions in encouraging the skills development of the workforce (McIlroy, 2008). Supported financially by a new Union Learning Fund and armed with statutory rights to time off to pursue learning, the union learning representative (ULR) scheme was created with the focus on individual ULRs from trade unions encouraging other members to access learning at work. The key functions of ULRs are to promote learning in the workplace, to identify those with learning and skills needs, to support individual learners, and to provide a first port of call with advice on all aspects of the learning process. This includes all types of learning, both vocational and otherwise. Examples include basic numeracy and literacy skills, information technology skills, conversational foreign languages, digital photography or more specific job-related learning.

The case that individual ULRs are operating as change agents is a powerful one. There is a burgeoning body of evidence that ULRs are having the following successes: positively influencing both employer-funded and non–employer-funded training in the workplace (Bacon & Hoque, 2010), encouraging new learners to develop the confidence to engage with learning opportunities (Wallis et al., 2005), acting as advocates for learning in the workplace (Cassell & Lee, 2007), and particularly significant for trade unions in a difficult economic climate, encouraging the involvement of new members and developing new union activists (Fitzgerald & O’Brien, 2005).

However, the engagement of trade unions in a learning agenda is not without its critics, and an important issue here is how union learning is viewed more generally within union strategy. Although engagement in learning has been presented as a win-win situation for both employers and unions, Rainbird and Stuart (2011) suggest that there are two different critical but opposing viewpoints to union involvement in the learning agenda among trade unionists and academics. These are the incorporationist thesis that “suggests that there are opportunity costs in devoting scarce resources to this government led agenda.” Of significance here is “the extent to which union engagement with learning involves the subordination of unions to other interests and agendas, be they employers or the state” (Rainbird & Stuart, 2011, p. 203). The alternative viewpoint or the critical engagement thesis sees “the potential for the learning agenda to contribute to positive outcomes for unions” (p. 203). A key part of this alternative view is that ULRs are different from other union representatives and are a new breed of activist providing access for union members to a new service, while also encouraging recruitment to the union thereby enabling the progression of an organizing strategy (e.g., Munro & Rainbird, 2004).

Regardless of these debates within the academic literature and among trade unionists, enthusiasm for the ULR initiative continues to grow in the United Kingdom, and at the time of writing more than 27,000 ULRs have been trained. Each of these ULRs is, in theory, encouraging access to learning opportunities for workers in their place of employment. Based on this success similar union initiatives are starting to emerge in other parts of the world such as New Zealand, Denmark, and Finland (Lee & Cassell, 2008). One consequence has been the successful piloting of a learning representative initiative based on the U.K. scheme with government support in New Zealand by 2008 (Farr, 2008).

Positioning these individual ULRs as change agents is somewhat different from how the managerial literature on change agency characterizes change agents. As Buchanan (2003) suggests, the taxonomies on which much of the literature on change agency are based rely on “a relatively narrow range of senior managers” (p. 666). Traditional accounts of the change agent as part of the organizational development and change process focus on the notion that a single individual would seek to enable change in the organization. This view is typical of the literature on process consultation (Schein, 1987) where the consultant acts as an objective facilitator providing the client with insight into how to facilitate change within the company. This view, however, became somewhat unsustainable with the recognition that effective change agents require a variety of complex roles (e.g., Buchanan & Boddy, 1992; Buchanan & Storey, 1997), including the need for an understanding of the political nature of the change process (Pettigrew & Whipp, 1993). This has been particularly recognized within the literature on action research (Cassell & Johnson, 2006; Eden & Huxham, 1996) where a variety of change agent roles are highlighted, depending on the underlying approach taken.

Therefore, examining the roles of ULRs as agents of change presents a novel focus of attention. One significant difference is that those seeking to progress change are in a subordinate position within the organization in a broader context where the interests of employers and shareholders are likely to prevail. Although there may be cases where trade unions and managerial interests around learning are mutual (Cassell & Lee, 2009), typically ULRs are acting in an environment where the building blocks recommended by the literature on managing change—such as top management commitment and role modeling—are not in place. Rather ULRs are seeking to perform their change agency role to facilitate a change explicitly for the benefit of individual workers, regardless of any tie-in with an organization’s corporate strategy or goals. Indeed, in some cases, for example, in relation to time off for training, there may be a direct conflict with an organization’s operational goals. Furthermore, they have not been allocated to their role by people in powerful positions within the organization, rather they have had to volunteer for or negotiate that role. So this context is clearly different from the scenarios faced by change agents typically discussed in the change agency literature. Similarly, it has been argued that the nature of this initiative means that the ULR “stands outside of the traditional change roles associated with management, trade unions and human resources/personnel” (Dean, 2007, p. 3). Therefore, it is the right time to explore their experiences of change agency.

Metaphors and Metaphorical Analysis in Learning and Change

Metaphors and metaphorical analysis have been used in a number of different ways in the organization and management literature. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggest that “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (p. 5). Therefore, metaphors “give new meaning to our pasts, to our daily activity and what we know and believe” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 139). Hence metaphors are generative in enabling us to create new meanings and understandings. The use of metaphors has been particularly applied within the field of organizational change and development (e.g., Allen, 2001; Sackman, 1989; Schön, 1979; Waistell, 2006) and can draw attention to the role that individuals’ play in the change process. Oswick and Grant (1996a) suggest that the application of a diverse range of metaphors to organization development (OD) has enabled a proliferation of metaphors about different OD consulting styles and change agency roles, such as management consultant, doctor, driver, or detective. Therefore, different metaphors can be used with diverse clients or groups when working toward organizational change (e.g., Broussaine & Vince, 1996).

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggest that “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (p. 5). Metaphors are therefore important because “not only are they grounded in our physical and cultural experience, they also influence our experience and actions (p. 68). Consequently, we would expect that metaphors play an important role in the sensemaking process, in that they are particularly important in meaning making and changes in meaning making (see Zilber, 2002). Therefore, an investigation into metaphors in use should provide us with access to how change agents make sense of their role and the action strategies they choose. For example, if we see the change agent’s role as that of doctor, then this will lead us to consider certain actions, inferences, and goals differently than if we consider the role as one of driver. In the former, we assume that the organization is sick and in need of healing. The change agent’s actions will therefore focus on prescribing an appropriate intervention (or medicine) with the goal of making the organization well again. If the role is seen as that of driver, then the inference is that the change process needs to be guided or steered by the change agent. The goal will be to move to a certain place or outcome. Other types of change agency may also require other metaphors, for example, the role of the change agent in participatory action research is different from that of the action researcher working in the Lewin tradition (Cassell & Johnson, 2006). Whereas the first may be more a facilitator, the latter may be more appropriately seen as an experimenter. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggest, metaphors “sanction actions, justify inferences and help us set goals” (p. 142). Given that managing change within a union context may be different from other contexts, it may be that different metaphors are used, or the same metaphor may be used in different ways. This is particularly interesting given the role that metaphor has in sanctioning action.

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) distinguish between conventional metaphors that “structure the ordinary conceptual system of our culture” (p. 139) and those that are new. New metaphors are imaginative and creative and “are capable of giving us a new understanding of our experience.” Cornelissen and Kafouros (2008) suggest that the cognitive impact of these two sets of metaphors is very different (p. 36). Whereas the former facilitate an interpretation of what we already know the latter can bring a novel understanding of the phenomenon.

Although metaphorical language may be found within the literature on industrial relations, there has been little application of metaphorical analysis. Two notable exceptions come from Dunn (1990) and Huzzard, Gregory, and Scott (2004). Dunn (1990) outlines two root metaphors of “old” and “new” trade unionism. Old unionism is characterized by the metaphor of “frontier of control.” He argues that “words like ‘entrenched’, ‘digging in’, ‘offensive’ and ‘frontal assault’ are so rooted in industrial relations discourse that they have become literal interpretations of what happens in industrial conflict” (p. 9). He suggests that an alternative and indeed a more appealing root metaphor for new unionism is that of a “journey” or “becoming” that presents industrial relations in a more positive and optimistic light (p. 5). Keenoy (1991) takes issue with Dunn’s characterization suggesting that there are other metaphors of old industrial relations such as trench warfare, family, and the football team (p. 318). Keenoy argues that regardless of root metaphor in use, the “fundamental structural characteristic of industrial relations” that the “employment relations remains a market transaction” (p. 318) cannot be ignored. Indeed he cautions against the “extensive and sometimes unreflexive use of metaphor” (p. 319) in industrial relations analysis. It is interesting that both the journey and the warfare metaphors that underpin this argument are also used extensively in the managerial literature (see Audebrand, 2010; Inns & Jones, 1996; Weick, 1979).

A further application of a metaphor in industrial relations comes from Huzzard, Gregory, and Scott (2004) who in their edited collection use the metaphor of “boxing and dancing” as a way of exploring how unions in a number of different countries have managed the challenges encountered with social partnership. Gregory and Nilsson (2004) as part of that collection suggest that “the metaphor ‘boxing and dancing’ can be used to convey the range and type of engagement that typifies an industrial relations system” (p. 3). Clearly, boxing implies a more adversarial approach, whereas dancing implies a focus on the seeking of mutual gains. This leads to the creative extension of this metaphor to understand the experiences of unions in different countries, for example, “The Last Waltz: Are Italian Trade Unions Leaving the Dance Floor?” (Baglioni, 2004); and “Dancing in the Dark: UK Unions and Strategic Choice” (Gregory, 2004).

These two examples highlight the importance of metaphors in influencing our understanding of a given phenomenon. Marshak (1993) addresses the key issue of how the metaphors one uses about a change process create a particular image of the change agent and his or her role. He outlines four different approaches to change: fix and maintain, developmental, transitional, and transformational. Each of these approaches gives rise to a different metaphor of the change process and the change agent role: machine, journey, building, and freedom. As suggested earlier, these different metaphors highlight different strategies for action and therefore focus on certain goals rather than others.

An interesting methodological issue here is how these metaphors are generated. Cornelissen, Oswick, Christensen, and Phillips (2008) suggest that a basic distinction is whether metaphors are imposed or projected onto organizational reality (as Marshak, 1993, Dunn, 1990, and Huzzard et al., 2004, do), or whether they can be identified or elicited by organizational researchers. These two different approaches have also been summarized, respectively, as deductive or inductive approaches (Palmer & Dunford, 1996). Palmer and Dunford (1996) suggest that “with few exceptions most applications of metaphor-based analysis to organizations involve a deductive approach” (p. 10). The alternative “elicitation” approach, however, “involves identifying metaphors in the context of people’s language use and examining their uses, meanings and impacts” (Cornelissen et al., 2008, p. 10). We can also divide inductive approaches into two distinctive types: those where metaphors are purposefully elicited by the researcher and those where already produced language, for example, in the form of interview transcripts or company reports, is examined for its use of metaphors. Examples of the latter include Dunford and Palmer’s (1996) examination of the use of metaphors in management discourse about downsizing within popular management journals over a 3-year period; Waistell’s (2006) analysis of a selection of metaphors used by university vice-chancellors in speeches about change; and Amernic, Craig, and Tourish’s (2007) analysis of the root metaphors in Jack Welch’s letters to stockholders of General Electric. Such systematic analysis of the metaphors-in-use by managerial change agents is, however, rare. Oswick and Grant (1996b) suggest that there is a paucity of research like this about metaphors-in-use (p. 219). They contend, “in order to further our understanding and knowledge we particularly need empirical work that isolates and makes transparent the metaphors, and groups of metaphor, prevalent in the discourse on organizations, and those found in organizational settings.” Cornelissen et al. (2008) additionally recommend that there is a need for further research of metaphors-in-use across different organizational contexts (p. 13). They highlight how “one needs to consider the locally-specific reasons for the choice and appropriation of one metaphor over another”. Here we respond to this paucity of research by conducting an investigation of the metaphors-in-use by those actively involved in the United Kingdom and New Zealand learning representative initiatives. Therefore, we examine this distinctive group of change agents who unlike managerial change agents are in a subordinate position in organizations yet are striving to have a positive impact on individual workers via learning opportunities.

Our analysis, therefore, focuses on four research questions:

Research Question 1: What metaphors are drawn on by trade unionists in their talk about their experiences of union learning initiatives?

Research Question 2: What change agency roles are implied by these metaphors?

Research Question 3: How do these metaphors differ from those identified in use by managerial change agents?

Research Question 4: How does an analysis of these metaphors-in-use extend our current understandings of change agency? The next section outlines the research project and the methodology used.

The Research Project

The learning representative schemes in the United Kingdom and New Zealand may be seen as part of wide-ranging change initiatives supported by their respective governments that affect workplace learning. However, a key difference is that the New Zealand population is much smaller than that of the UK. Its number of 4.23 million is only around 7% of the size of that of the UK’s 61 million; therefore, the New Zealand learning representative (LR) initiative has a less extensive scope than that of the United Kingdom’s. Indeed, just 100 LRs were trained as part of the New Zealand pilot project and only a couple of hundred have been trained to date. This training was funded by the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission and delivered by the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.

The data presented here are part of an ongoing program of research about the operation of the learning representative initiative in both countries (see Lee & Cassell, 2008, 2009). The data come from a series of interviews that were part of a larger data set of four case studies: two from the United Kingdom and two from New Zealand. The intention of the cases was to provide a systemic in-depth analysis of how the schemes were working and the extent to which they were sustainable in the two countries. These two countries were chosen because they were the first ones to receive government support. The case studies were chosen because they are examples of ones where the initiative is advanced. In this sense, they are not typical, but are a product of what Patton (2002) describes as “intensity sampling” in that their level of advancement means that they provide information rich cases and experiences similar to those that others may have by the time they arrive at such a stage of advancement. The interviewees included a range of key stakeholders who were participating in the initiative such as HR managers, learning providers, trade union officials at regional and national levels, learners, and learning representatives, but the data reported here come from the interviews with the trade unionists only. Twenty-one U.K. interviewees are included in this sample. All were ULRs, though some had taken on significant roles with responsibility for progressing the learning agenda within their union. The New Zealand sample consisted of 12 interviewees who were trade unionists with union learning as part of their role. These included learning representatives and union organizers.

All the interviews in both countries were conducted jointly by the two authors, and the questions asked focused on a range of issues regarding the individual’s experience of their participation in the scheme so far including achievements of the scheme, barriers, plans for the future, targets, and their views about the long-term sustainability of the initiative. Each of the interviews was transcribed verbatim by a professional transcribing service. Each transcript was then read carefully for evidence of the use of metaphorical language. An outline of the analytic process can be found in Table 1.

Table 1.

Description of the Stages of Metaphorical Analysis

Analysis stage	Description of the analysis
1	Identify instances of metaphorical language from the transcripts
2	Identify initial metaphorical categories and categorize instances into these categories
3	Collapse and elaborate metaphorical categories and their content
4	Categorization of instances by second author to enable checking
5	Produce agreed initial list of metaphorical categories (root metaphors) and their content
6	Reread transcripts in regard to the root metaphors
7	Reread the transcripts to look for shared entailments between the root metaphors
8	Produce analytic account of the two overarching metaphors and outline how they are related to the other metaphors

Cornelissen et al. (2008) suggest that one of the key issues in conducting this kind of analysis is to be explicit about the metaphor identification process. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) highlight that “the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined” (p. 6). Hence here our task was to examine how the interviewees used metaphors to structure the concept of the learning representative initiative and their role within it. To be classified as an instance of metaphorical language, a phrase had to fit in with one of the following three sentences: “The learning representative is like . . .,” “The learning representative scheme is like . . .,” or “Being involved with the learning representative scheme is like . . .” Given that the focus of the analysis was interview talk in situ, the interviewees were not expressly asked to complete these sentences. Rather, in this first stage of the analysis, the researchers identified the language as metaphorical if we thought the interviewee was seeking to describe or analyze their experience of the learning representative initiative in terms of something else. It is possible that concepts are structured by more than one metaphor; therefore, the second stage of the analysis was to look for different metaphorical categories within the different incidences of metaphorical language identified. A number of metaphorical categories were initially identified and examples of each were compiled.

The third stage of the analysis involved the first author using a constant comparison method, laying the metaphorical categories and instances next to each other and collapsing some categories while elaborating others. During the fourth stage of the analysis, the intention was to provide a check on the initial categorization of metaphors. The second author also categorized each of the instances of metaphorical language into a series of categories. These included the list generated by the first author, plus any additional categories of metaphors perceived necessary. The percentage agreement between the two authors on the categorization was 79.29%. It was recognized that there would be cases here where categorization into a given metaphor would not necessarily be clear-cut, and our own interpretive processes would affect this. As Vaara, Tienari, and Säntti (2003) suggest, “Metaphors are ‘messy’ constructs because of the constant possibility for reinterpretation” (p. 447). As a result of this stage, there were some refinements made to the metaphorical categories. The fifth stage of the analysis involved producing an account of each of the metaphorical categories and how the instances were used in each case. During the sixth stage, we reread the interview transcripts to ensure that the account produced related sufficiently well to the metaphors used in situ. At this time, we identified that the most prevalent metaphorical categories in use were the journey, machine, freedom, building, warfare, organism, and fishing. We would characterize these metaphors as conventional in Lakoff and Johnson’s (1990) terms in that they help structure our understanding of the ULR concept. They can also be seen as root metaphors in that they “capture a fundamental, underlying world view, but are often unobtrusive with regard to their frequency of usage in organizational discourse” (Smith & Eisenberg, 1987, p. 369). They may guide the thinking of interviewees, but interviewees will be mostly unconscious of their presence and how they guide their talk unless they are explicitly highlighted.

The next stage of the analysis (seventh) involved examining how the root metaphors were used either individually or together. Here we identified that the machine, freedom, building, fishing, and organism metaphors all shared common entailments with either the journey or the warfare metaphor. As Lakoff and Johnson (1990) outline, “A shared metaphorical entailment can establish a cross-metaphorical correspondence” (p. 96). Therefore, we looked at how these five metaphors mapped onto—or corresponded with—the journey and warfare metaphors in how they were used to understand the initiative. Here we adhered to Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) advice that:

the most important thing to bear in mind is the role of purpose. A metaphorical structuring of a concept . . . allows us to get a handle on one aspect of the concept. Thus a metaphor works when it satisfies a purpose, namely understanding an aspect of the concept. When two metaphors successfully satisfy two purposes, then overlaps in purposes will correspond to overlaps in metaphors. Such overlaps . . . can be characterised in terms of shared metaphorical entailments. (p. 97)

As depicted in Table 2 and explored in the next section, the fishing, machine, and freedom metaphors share entailments with the journey metaphor, whereas the building and organism metaphors share entailments with the warfare metaphors, that is, these metaphors are used for similar purposes within the interview data. We therefore labeled the journey and warfare metaphors as “overarching” metaphors to draw attention to this. The final or eighth stage of the analysis was to produce an analytic account of the overarching metaphors of journey and warfare and outline how they are used in relation to other metaphors. The outcomes of this analysis are now presented.

Table 2.

The Overarching Metaphors and Their Entailments

Overarching root metaphors	Metaphors that share entailments
Journey	Fishing
	Machine
	Freedom
Warfare	Building
	Organism

Findings

Within this section, we address the first two research questions and consider the metaphors in use by the interviewees and what change agency roles are implied by these metaphors. Seven metaphors identified will be the main focus of this discussion: journey, fishing, machine, freedom, warfare, building, and organism. The first important point to note is that these are all commonly used conventional metaphors in Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) terms; indeed, there was only occasional evidence of new metaphors in the transcripts. We return to this distinction later.

Journey Metaphors

The most widespread root metaphor in use by participants was that of a journey highlighting the significance of change and learning inherent within this initiative. This was the case for both the U.K. and New Zealand interviewees. The use of the journey metaphor allowed interviewees to highlight various aspects and functions of their change agency role in relation to the learning representative initiative and to illustrate their place within it. Metaphorical language was used here to construct the active and enabling nature of that role. For example, “signposting” was seen as a key task for the learning representative as was “steering them” or “driving” learners and the initiative more generally. The journey metaphor had a particular resonance with the initiation stage of the initiative, for example, in “trying to get something off the ground” or “getting guys to jump on board.” Using the metaphor in this way drew attention to the key activity at this stage of encouraging learners to become involved. Facilitation of others was particularly important here too, for example, one New Zealand interviewee explained that individual learners “after a taste of learning are really ready to take off.”

Another metaphor that had similar entailments to the journey and was just used in a few instances to talk about the initiation stage was fishing. The engagement of learners to begin their journey required “getting people hooked on learning” so learning representatives needed to “put a bit of bait down and get them nibbling.” An example of how the fishing metaphor could be used in conjunction with the journey metaphor comes from one of the New Zealand interviewees who when talking about his union’s involvement in the initiative suggested the following:

I think it has the potential to hook people into learning, really get them excited about it and [for us] to be far more excited about driving a learning agenda.

Similarly, the machine metaphor was also used with this purpose, therefore sharing similar entailments with the journey metaphor. This is a well-used metaphor for organizational analysis (Cornelissen et al., 2008; Morgan, 1996) and similar to the fishing metaphor was used to focus on engaging people to support the initiative. For example, people could be “switched on or off learning” and the presence of the learning representatives was a “lever for us to get more people into learning.” The New Zealand interviewees also used the term “traction,” which derives from machinery used for orthopedic support to highlight the need to generate engagement with the initiative, for example, comments that there was “relatively easy traction” in some sectors and “quite good traction from the plastics industry.”

The journey metaphor also enabled the monitoring and progress-chasing aspect of the change agency role to come to the fore. A key underlying theme was that of movement and the extent to which movement was occurring. So, for example, “we’ve a long way to go” or “we’ve made progress along the track” highlighted how the initiative was progressing. Using the language of movement also enabled interviewees to express their frustration if progress was slow or complex, for example, “going round in circles” or where “people are not on a straight route to learning.” It also facilitated the identification of key points within that progress, for example, “we’ve crossed the first bridge” and “moved to such a point along the path.” Furthermore, it was used to assist interviewees to highlight the hazards, risks, and challenges they were encountering as a result of being involved in the initiative. One of the regional union officers in the United Kingdom described the initiative as a “rollercoaster journey for trade unions” implying that their experiences had not been smooth. Other interviewees highlighted that there had been “brick walls faced on the journey.” For example, one of the New Zealand trade unionists described how she had dealt with resistance to the learning representative initiative in one site in the following way:

In one little pocket we have got four learning reps. I got people to vote them as delegates so that they could do learning rep stuff under the umbrella of being a union delegate, which I haven’t had to do in the other places, otherwise I was just getting nowhere. I was against a brick wall and I had to study to find a way round and now we’re round it.

The machine metaphor was again used in conjunction with the journey metaphor here. In relation to the journey, smooth progress was denoted by “oiling of the wheels” and frustration expressed with “the cogs of government departments” in the United Kingdom and “this great machine we call tertiary education” in New Zealand. One of the New Zealand trade unionists described where they wanted to be:

We would hope to see a big boost in funding for the resourcing and training of learning reps; we would be getting people into the program; we would be starting to drill into some of the key strategic sites.

The freedom metaphor also shared entailments with the journey metaphor. This was used to highlight the impact that being on the journey had on individual learners. In the freedom metaphor, the learning representative was seen in the role of liberator; indeed the transcripts contained numerous stories where individual workers had been empowered as a result of learning. Here the learning representative was seen as the “key to unlocking people’s potential” to encourage them to take the first step on a learning journey. One of the U.K. ULRs told the following story:

When I first started on board with the agenda, an individual rung me up and his first words were “I’m dyslexic”. He had just found out at 56 years old and he’s been working in the company for . . . hundreds of years. Never realised, never thought anything about it, just carried on regardless and had just found out after the company had done an assessment. He was absolutely frightened to death that something was going to happen to him through redundancy processes or whatever . . . But the significant thing I had to say to him was “Well the company do need to know. You need registering and then you can make them start to help you. And by the way you’re protected by law” . . . I said “Well you’ve crossed the first bridge because you don’t know me but you’ve found out my name and number and you’ve crossed the first bridge, you are facing up to it . . . He’s now mastering his dyslexia and he’s waiting to attend a training course to become a union learning representative.

A key part of this change agent role was to nurture others through their learning journeys. This is important in that a lot of the work done by learning representatives is to support those in need of basic literacy and numeracy skills. This work is sensitive in that individual workers may feel embarrassed but are also concerned about the implications of management finding out about their skill inadequacies. Hence this metaphor draws attention to the important actions associated with supporting vulnerable learners both practically and emotionally through “handholding” on their journey, providing them with information or more generally facilitating their engagement in the learning process.

In summary, the interviewees used the journey metaphor to highlight a range of different aspects of the initiative and their roles within it including the initiation of the initiative, engaging learners, assessing progress, identification of hazards and risks, and strategy and direction. Through drawing on this metaphor, they constructed themselves as active in leading, progressing, and supporting others through the change process. It enabled their roles to be clearly labeled, delineated, and associated with explicit action strategies.

Warfare Metaphors

Given the industrial relations context within which these change agents are operating, it is unsurprising that warfare metaphors were also used to characterize the initiative. For example, one of the New Zealand participants described the industrial relations terrain in relation to skills as “we’ve had war, we’ve had open war for as long as I can remember.” Warfare metaphors can position the change agent in a variety of different roles, including defender, leader, and strategist. For example, one of the U.K. regional union officials talked about how the ULRs in one workplace were “managed like a little army.” Similarly, a ULR described part of her role as “rallying the troops.” Warfare metaphors are also a good way of highlighting the importance of strategies, for example, “focus towards the endgame” and “getting to the front line.” One of the U.K. ULRs when discussing tactics for furthering the initiative suggested:

The biggest problem we’re having now is team leaders and junior managers . . . they’re unwilling to negotiate. They’re used to just getting their own way and we’ve had one or two of the ULRs . . . distressed because of their attitudes so we’ve had to send the big guns in.

A major concern of the interviewees throughout their accounts was the importance of seeking support to secure the initiative and enhance the opportunities for its long-term sustainability. The preoccupation with support and security covered two different concerns. The first was gaining support for the initiative from others or “an armory of things to support learning.” This could include support from other trade unionists and those in the union hierarchy as well as other workers and managers. This is particularly important given the debates about the role of learning initiatives in trade unions in relation to the incorporationist thesis outlined earlier, where the significance and purpose of union involvement in learning has been questioned. Other metaphors had similar entailments to the warfare metaphor here and were used in relation to this concern for accessing support. The metaphors of organisms and building were drawn on and were often used together. In drawing on the living organism metaphor, some of the learning representatives in the United Kingdom talked about how the initiative “needed new blood” of more people volunteering to be ULRs in order to advance. The building metaphor was particularly prevalent in the transcripts of the New Zealand interviewees: “There’s a lot of change that needed to happen in terms of building capacity but it is starting to happen.” Other comments from the New Zealand interviewees included the need to be “building a possibility of conversation,” “building on health and safety agreements,” and “building capacity and capability,” all which were seen as protecting the initiative in the face of potential battles ahead. It is worth commenting here that ULRs in the United Kingdom have statutory rights so their role and the time they take to do that role is recognized within the law. Within New Zealand, however, there is no such similar legislation. Hence, more work was needed to build the initiative without the secure foundation of legislation underpinning it. So whereas the priorities and action indicated by these metaphors in use were that U.K. interviewees needed to protect and develop the rights they had already won, the New Zealand interviewees had more of a need to create a firm foundation from which to progress.

The second concern was to defend and protect the initiative and organism and building metaphors were used to highlight a number of potential external threats. These threats could emerge from different sources, for example, one of the New Zealand trade unionists drawing on organism metaphors said that in engaging with the initiative the union needed to “go in with our eyes open” so that threats could be avoided. Potential threats in both countries came from changes in government policy. Previous New Zealand legislation was described by one trade unionist as having “ripped the guts out of the union.” Seeing engagement with the learning representative initiative as an organism drew attention to the vulnerability of the initiative and the potential difficulties learning representatives faced in their role of nurturing yet also defending something they valued highly. This was used in conjunction with the building metaphor to convey insecurity and the need to sustain the initiative in the face of resistance. For example, one of the U.K. trade unionists used the building metaphor to discuss problems she had encountered with management:

Up until that point we were getting just passed about from manager to manager . . . Nobody will make an agreement, nobody will make a firm commitment and you can never nail them all down.

The nailing down here is about securing commitment to the initiative so that it is protected within a particular organization.

The use of warfare metaphor draws attention toward the industrial relations climate and the different strategies for action that may be required. If we see the learning representative initiative through this metaphor, then the emphasis will be on those actions traditionally associated with trade union representative roles such as negotiation and looking for formal agreements with management about learning opportunities. For example, seeking a learning agreement may be important:

We’ve got a model learning agreement which we agreed [with the local management] so we agreed the wording so that’s got a little bit of weight behind it, but again it’s been the easy targets so far.

A more general approach outlined by one of the trade unionists in the U.K. manufacturing case would be the following:

I think long-term if we are going to develop . . . then the training manager in a department and the engineer or manager would really need to be sitting talking to a ULR and probably the workplace rep in that area and encouraging what they want and seeing how the trade union can help deliver that . . . But I think we’re a long way from that in this company. It’s not traditional and I think the change will take time . . . and some of these managers will you know, be fighting all the way through to stop us being involved.

Therefore, a particular set of action strategies are highlighted if the warfare metaphor is used.

To recap, in answer to the first research question, a number of metaphors-in-use can be identified, which are summarized in Table 3. Table 3 also summarizes the findings in relation to Research Question 2 about what change agency roles are implied by these metaphors. We now discuss the implications of these findings and address the other two research questions of how these metaphors differ from those identified in use by managerial change agents and how this analysis extends our current understandings of change agency.

Table 3.

Metaphors of the Change Agent Role

Metaphor	Change agent role	Action focus/priorities
Journey	Guide, driver	Steering, driving, and progress chasing the initiative in a given workplace, regionally or nationally
Fishing	Recruitment	Encouraging workers to become involved and bringing in new learners
Machine	Facilitator, engineer	Ongoing maintenance of the initiative as the journey progresses. Paying attention to the smooth and regular running of learning opportunities, etc.
Freedom	Liberator, nurturer	Generating appropriate and stretching learning opportunities for individuals
		Looking after individual learners as they go through the learning process
Warfare	Strategist, leader, negotiator	Planning for the future bearing in mind the industrial relations history and climate. Negotiation of learning agreements and learning resources with management
Building	Protector, builder	Ongoing development of the initiative. Seeking ways of making it stronger, for example, by encouraging new groups of workers to become involved or building support from other trade unionists
Organism	Defender	Protect from ongoing harm

Discussion and Conclusions

From an inductive analysis of the interview data and in answer to Research Questions 1 and 2, we have identified seven different metaphors associated with a variety of change agency roles. We have argued that the identification of metaphors is important because different priorities and strategies for action are implied depending on the metaphorical language-in-use. These priorities and action strategies are outlined in Table 3. Looking at that table, we can see that all four of the metaphors identified by Marshak (1993) are used by the interviewees, with the machine, journey, and freedom metaphors implying similar views of the change agent. The building metaphor, however, is used differently by some of the interviewees in this study with an emphasis on protecting and supporting the initiative. Additionally, there are further metaphors that are identified in our analysis but not by Marshak—for example, the warfare metaphor where attention is drawn to the importance of leading, mobilizing, securing, and defending the initiative. Furthermore, two other metaphors are identified that seem more specific to this kind of learning initiative within a potentially conflictual industrial relations environment: fishing in relation to the recruitment of learners and organism in relation to the avoidance of, and protection from, threat. The range of metaphors identified here suggests that a number of foci of action may be simultaneously important and that one metaphor on its own is not enough to characterize a change agent’s role. So there is an ongoing need to have people recruiting, facilitating, driving, engineering, and protecting. As Weick (1979) suggests regarding the diverse set of metaphors that people may have about organizations, each can “articulate some property of organizations that might otherwise have gone unnoticed” (p. 47). So the use of multiple metaphors ensures that the variety of change agency roles remain visible.

An implication of this variety is that learning representatives can position themselves as different from both other union change agents and managerial change agents (Dean, 2007). Other writers have argued that metaphors are an important part of the identity construction process (e.g., Vaara et al., 2003). For some of these learning representatives, involvement in the initiative provides them with an alternative identity as an active trade unionist that may be somewhat different from traditional views of the trade union activist as agitator or protagonist (see Cassell & Lee, 2009), in that there are alternatives to the role implied by the warfare metaphor. In finding ways to highlight explicitly why this role is different from the more conflictual roles associated with old unionism, metaphorical language enables learning representatives to position themselves in a variety of different ways, for example, as facilitator or guide rather than as negotiator or defender.

The third research question focused on how the metaphors identified here may be different or otherwise from those associated with managerial change agency. Any conclusion we could make here needs to be treated with caution given that the metaphorical language-in-use by managerial change agents more generally has not been systematically analyzed in this way. However, it would seem that some of the metaphors drawn on are actually very similar. Both the journey and warfare root metaphors, for example, are extensively used within the literature on managerial change and in organizational analysis more generally (Inns & Jones, 1996; Weick, 1979) and these have also been described at the two root metaphors that underpin industrial relations (Dunn, 1990). Perhaps then these similarities are not unexpected, indeed it would possibly be more surprising if we had not found these two overarching metaphors in the interviewee’s accounts. The context within which these metaphors are used is, however, very different, and we would argue that it is here where the other metaphors that share entailments with these two become significant. It is these that draw attention to the specific demands of the context. As stated previously, these change agents may be operating in workplace contexts where there may be a long tradition of conflict where any union initiative is resisted simply because there is managerial suspicion about union activities more generally. Previous research about the U.K. ULR initiative has highlighted how it is difficult to develop and sustain within workplaces without managerial support (e.g., Cassell & Lee, 2009; Wallis et al., 2005). Similarly, there may also be colleagues in the union who are still reluctant to commit union resources to learning initiatives in line with the incorporationist thesis, where learning initiatives are viewed critically as a way of pursuing management agendas and moving resources away from what are the more typical union activities.

Therefore, the learning representative change agent potentially encounters resistance from all sides. So here we see the fishing and machine metaphors highlighting the ongoing concern to get people involved in the initiative, the freedom metaphor to focus on the distinctive and potentially liberating opportunities that involvement in the initiative can provide, and the preoccupation to guard and defend against potential threats highlighted by the use of building and organism metaphors. It is these metaphors that help us understand the specifics. So our analysis would suggest that although the two overarching root metaphors of journey and warfare are used extensively in managerial accounts of change agency, what is different about these trade unionist’s accounts can be seen in how the other root metaphors are used together through the shared entailments with the journey and warfare metaphors to convey context-specific change dynamics. Therefore, in terms of what an analysis of metaphorical language-in-use tells us about change agency more generally, it enables us to access the rich contextual detail of the change process in a specific context and how it is experienced by those involved. The qualitative method in use is important here. Rather than projecting metaphors onto the experiences of change agents, this inductive analysis enables this focus on their own preoccupations as change agents in their own unique situation.

Turning again to the warfare and journey metaphors and why these particular two emerged from the analysis, in relation to the metaphors used in the industrial relations literature we would argue that although used in the literature more generally, the focus on the journey and war metaphors helps articulate what is novel about this initiative in that it is about individual learning and development within a warfare context. This distinctive element of union activity is caught at the nexus between new and old unionism (Dunn, 1990; Keenoy, 1991). Neither the journey metaphor nor the warfare metaphor is sufficient enough to understand the context and the role of the learning representative on its own. Rather than privileging one over the other, insights are provided by both, and indeed also by the other metaphors we have identified that the interviewees draw on.

This analysis also has methodological implications, and it is important to highlight these here. Marshak’s, Dunn’s, and Huzzard et al.’s metaphors are examples of where researchers have sought to apply particular metaphors to help understand a phenomenon of interest such as change agency roles or industrial relations. Here we have focused on metaphorical language-in-use. This is a very different approach that involves the systematic analysis of a given data set. However, there are some limitations in identifying metaphors from already produced data, especially when the data were not generated with a metaphorical analysis in mind. The metaphorical data presented in this study are perhaps not as rich as those presented when metaphorical data are purposefully elicited, or cases where metaphors are deductively applied by the researcher. For example, where authors have focused on generating metaphors from participants on organizational change and development initiatives (e.g., Broussaine & Vince, 1996; Heracleous & Jacobs, 2008) relatively rich pictures are presented where an individual metaphor is analyzed in detail with a particular group. A similar point can be made about Huzzard et al.’s (2004) application of the boxing and dancing metaphor. Here individual metaphors can be explored, exhausted, and creative use of their potential made. This is quite different from this case where importantly we did not have the opportunity to ask our interviewees why they used the metaphors they did or how these metaphors affected how they made sense of the learning representative initiative. This potentially accounts for the lack of new metaphors in this data set. New metaphors are seen to create new ways of understanding concepts, whereas conventional metaphors facilitate the interpretation of what we already know (Cornelissen & Kafouros, 2008). Given that the purpose of the interviews was for trade unionists to detail their experiences we would expect that conventional metaphors would be more appropriate. Our own experience of conducting this analysis reminded us of how Boje (1991) comments that stories that occur naturally in organizations are terse and not as developed as some authors suggest, so metaphorical language identified in this way can be brusque and stilted, and may be confined to the odd phrase. We are not suggesting that this invalidates the analysis, rather this is an interesting methodological implication of seeking to analyze metaphorical language in this way.

In conclusion, our analysis has enabled us to consider how trade unionists participating within the same learning and change initiative in two different cultural contexts use metaphorical language to illustrate their experiences of the initiative and the change agency role. Therefore, this work makes a contribution by examining this distinctive group of change agents who unlike managerial change agents are in a subordinate position in organizations yet are striving to have a positive impact on individual workers via learning opportunities. Furthermore, the focus on actual metaphorical language-in-use—rather than the deductive application of metaphors to these experiences—has been a fruitful direction to take, and future research could adopt this process of analysis that is relatively novel within the field of metaphorical analysis more generally. Furthermore, such an approach may enable other metaphors associated with other change agency roles such as different action research approaches to be identified. In conducting this analysis, we have drawn attention to the multiplicity of metaphors in use and argued that an understanding of context specific change dynamics can emerge from focusing on how different metaphors are used together. As such we seek to expand qualitative understandings of the lived experience of change agency.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Inger Stensaker and the reviewers for constructive comments and editorial advice on previous versions of this article. We would also like to thank the session attendees and the anonymous reviewers at the Academy of Management Conference for their feedback.

A version of this article was previously presented at the 2010 U.S. Academy of Management Conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:

We gratefully acknowledge support for this program of work by the British Academy, specifically the British Academy Small Grant award number SG-39394 and British Academy Large Grant award number LRG-42465.

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