Abstract
Last week I found myself in a familiar situation as I was collecting data in a startup accelerator. I was asked by a startup founder why I was studying something as obvious as “value.” The founder continued,
Everything we do [as a startup] is guided by creating value for customers that they are willing to pay for. We just have to figure out what parts of our company need tinkered with to provide the most value for customers. It’s all pretty straightforward.
I responded without really thinking about it, “It depends on how you think about organizations.” What a fitting and brief conversation that exemplifies both the significance and salience of Gareth Morgan’s work on metaphors for the greater organizational studies community. Exploring Morgan’s Metaphors: Theory, research, and Practice in Organizational Studies edited by Örtenblad, Trehan, and Putnam, encourages readers to continually think about how they might approach the study of organization from various vantage points through multiple chapters dedicated to (re)thinking Morgan’s Images of Organization. This review is then somewhat unique as the edited text is also reviewing, celebrating, and extending another text. With that, I’ll do my best to focus on the edited volume without further reviewing Morgan’s work.
This volume was assembled to reflect on the significance of Morgan’s seminal work, to consider how people are utilizing this work now, and to consider the future of this theoretical approach. Thus, the text is organized into three distinct parts inclusive of 12 chapters written by 23 authors. Looking across the chapters, it is challenging to weave together a coherent argument throughout the book. However, in the forward Morgan notes,
The book as a whole constantly plays with the paradox that if you are theorizing and acting in one way, you are failing to see and act in another, and how the benefits resulting from one’s way of seeing and acting may be creating negative impacts elsewhere. (p. xv)
Overall, the remainder of the book follows this train of thought, and each section of the book contributes to this goal. The three sections of the book are as follows: Part I: Making Sense of Images of Organization; Part II: Using Metaphors in Organizational Analysis; and Part III: Reflections, Commentaries, and Constructive Critique.
Part I of this text revisits Morgan’s Images and provides a summary of Morgan’s main argument alongside the importance of the text today. In chapter 1, the editors highlight the significance of Morgan’s eight metaphors and his theoretical approach alongside common critiques. Beyond previewing the remainder of the text, the editors explain that the book is not only focused on Morgan’s Images, but “contributes to discussions of metaphor through examining how researchers and practitioners use Morgan’s Images in concept development, research, and arenas of practice” (p. 8). Following the editors’ summary and preview, chapter 2 features a reflection by Morgan that delves deeper into the concept of metaphor and provides an additional metaphor that should be explored in relation to contemporary forms of organizing and organization—organizations as media. The final chapter of part I most clearly demonstrates the significance of Morgan’s Images for theorizing about organizations. Cornelissen delves into a cognitive interpretation of metaphor to demonstrate how metaphors not only allow us to compare organizations to better known sources or ideas, but also generate what we know—and, importantly, don’t know–about organizations. Somewhat provocatively, Cornelissen asks, “can we represent organizations without metaphorical thinking? The answer is hardly” (p. 50). This question sets the tone for the remainder of the book as authors continually remind the reader that metaphorical thinking is not only important, but taken for granted and hard to leave behind.
Part II of Exploring Morgan’s Metaphors directs attention toward empirical research, building on Morgan’s metaphors as a means of analysis or theoretical approach. Importantly, each chapter in this section of the book extends Morgan’s initial metaphors by providing new metaphors, extending methodologies for studying metaphor, or demonstrating how multiple metaphors can be used simultaneously. Since the writing of Images of Organization, the use of metaphor in organizational research has been ongoing, yet how metaphor has been utilized and to what ends remains diverse. In chapter four, Örtenblad takes up this challenge by categorizing different approaches to metaphor through various distinctions such as whether metaphors emerge from participants or are chosen by analysts. A typology of six different approaches to using metaphors in research—a color map for uncovering aspects of organizations, colored lenses to see organizations through, a set of pigeon-holes into which organizations may be categorized, mentored self-diagnosis, metaphors as eye-openers, metaphors as cognitive innovations—are provided that help organize the remaining empirical chapters as well as organizational research drawing on metaphor as a whole. For instance, in chapter five, Bhatnagar utilizes metaphor as cognitive innovations by suggesting that organizations as enablers of happiness as a valuable metaphor. Although the remaining chapters in this section utilize different metaphors to approach various topics, each chapter extends beyond the dominant methodologies used in research on metaphor and organization. Chapters six and seven utilize quantitative methods to demonstrate how multiple metaphors can be used together and describe important metaphors in leadership respectively. Of note, chapter 8 considers the “digital turn” in organizations by showing how metaphor might be utilized to study the digital presence of organizations. Through an interesting and hermeneutically driven study of a corporate website, the authors draw on Morgan’s work to provide a new metaphor for studying the digital presence of organizations that aids in understanding public and digital presence as political.
The final section of this book celebrates, critiques, and sets the agenda for the future of Morgan’s legacy in organization studies. This section of the book most fully sparked my interest as each chapter dealt with the significance of extending ideas of metaphor for both scholarly and practitioner based purposes. One theme across this section relates to further extending Morgan’s work toward issues of power and politics. In chapter 9, the authors draw on the concepts of image and imagination to demonstrate the ways that people organize through images to reinforce, challenge, and deceive organizations. The focus on imagination provides an interesting extension and thoughtful critique of how the use of metaphor can serve to hide new and meaningful ways of organizing. On a similar note, the authors in chapter 12 provide a critique of Morgan’s metaphors based upon the ways that Morgan’s initial eight metaphors have become taken for granted as dominant ways of approaching organizational theorizing without considering how they function in a transnational context. Through their thought-provoking discussion, the authors conclude “the key lesson that we forge from this is that Morgan’s metaphors cannot be interpreted or valued free from context” (p. 239). Interestingly, this move asks researchers, teachers, and practitioners to approach Morgan’s metaphors with the same reflexivity and willingness to perceive otherwise that Morgan initially argued we approach organizations with. Alternatively, and beyond a specific focus on power, Grant and Oswick offer the metaphor “organizations as affect” in chapter 10 to suggest an interesting approach to the analysis of new forms of organizing.
The primary strength across this volume is closely associated with the chapter I have yet to mention—Tsoukas’s work in chapter 11 provides a well-crafted and thoughtful reflection on the significance of Images of Organization in educating practitioners to think critically about organizations and organizing. Tsoukas reflects on the idea of metaphor and focuses on Morgan’s insistence that we may “read organizational life.” However, different interpretations or readings of organizational life are not completely subjective, and as Tsoukas describes, “although we certainly bring our reflective open-mindedness and creativity to bear on our reading of organizations, our interpretations bring into existence what is already inherent in the situation: its multiplicity” (p. 222). Directing attention toward multiplicity is, for Tsoukas, the most important thing Morgan’s work has done for the education of practitioners. The ability to utilize metaphors to disrupt and think differently about organizing and organizations has become taken for granted within academic research, but remains a critical skill for practitioners to develop if we wish to see more meaningful, ethical, and socially fulfilling organizations emerge. In the words of Tsoukas once again, “if this strikes you as unexceptional today, it is because the ‘metaphor’ metaphor has now become normalized in the 30 years following the astonishing success of Images” (p. 224).
In conclusion, it would be hard to overstate the significance of Morgan’s work on metaphors and images for the larger organizational studies community and practitioners alike. This edited volume pays tribute to Morgan’s work while allowing room to imagine ways of extending Morgan’s influence into the future. However, that does not leave this volume without limitations. Although each of the chapters in this book reflect and relate to Morgan’s Images of Organization, it would have been useful to have at least one chapter dedicated to dialogue between and across the varying perspectives. Additionally, although many authors speak of the significance of Morgan’s work beyond academic research, chapters that demonstrate the practical implications of Morgan’s work are the exception rather than the rule. With these limitations aside, this volume reinvigorates assumptions now taken for granted in organizational theorizing and would be of interest to graduate students and seasoned academics alike. The wide variety of approaches to extending Morgan’s work provides entrances to new ways of thinking within well-worn frameworks. I began this review by discussing my response to a question in the field, and this book demonstrates that it really does matter how we think about organizations.