Metaphor and the Dynamics of Knowledge in Organization Theory: A Case Study of the Organizational Identity Metaphor*

abstract Despite the increased salience of metaphor in organization theory, there is still very little conceptual machinery for capturing and explaining how metaphor creates and/or reorders knowledge within organization theory. Moreover, prior work on metaphor has insufficiently accounted for the context of interpreting a metaphor. Many metaphors in organization theory, including the ‘organizational identity’ metaphor, have often been treated in singular and monolithic terms; seen to offer a similar or largely synonymous interpretation to theorists and researchers working along the entire spectrum of disciplines (e.g. organizational behaviour, organizational psychology) in organization theory. We argue in this paper that contextual variation however exists in the interpretation of metaphors in organization theory. This argument is developed by proposing and elaborating on a so‐called image‐schematic model of metaphor, which suggests that the image‐schemata (abstract imaginative structures) that are triggered by the metaphorical comparison of concepts may vary among individuals. Accordingly, once different schemata are triggered the completion and interpretation of a metaphor may equally vary among different individuals or, indeed, research communities. These points associated with the image‐schematic model of metaphor are illustrated with a case study of the ‘organizational identity’ metaphor. The case study shows that this particular metaphor has spiralled out into different research communities and has been comprehended in very different ways as different communities work from very different conceptions, or image‐schemata, of ‘organization’ and ‘identity’, and use different theoretical frameworks and constructs as a result. The implications of the image‐schematic view of metaphor for knowledge development and theoretical progress in organization theory are discussed.     

Credit Where Credit is Due: A Field Survey of the Interactive Effects of Credit Expectations and Leaders’ Credit Allocation on Employee Turnover

Today's human resource management community has a strong interest in the issue of how HR practice is implemented by managers and leaders in the workplace. In this article, we investigate how one specific practice, leaders’ public recognition of a job well done (i.e., credit allocation), impacts employee turnover. Based on expectancy violations, psychological contracts, and turnover research, we predicted that subordinates would be more likely to leave an organization if their leader took credit for their work, but only if the credit taking violated subordinates’ expectations. In a field survey of organizational employees, we found that the effects of credit taking on turnover were negated when subordinates’ expectations and leaders’ credit allocation behavior were aligned. However, when leaders’ credit behavior came as a surprise, participants responded negatively when expectations were not met and positively when expectations were exceeded. We discuss the implications of these results for both theory and practice. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Rites of passage: Organization as an excess of flows

Airports have been conceptualized as the archetypal ‘space of flows’ in an emerging network-based global economy that values process, speed, improvisation, and organizational flexibility. This article seeks to extend the work of process theory in organization studies where ‘organization’ is increasingly understood as the (precarious) appropriation of order out of disorder. The research drawn upon here was primarily concerned with the role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) play in the creation and reproduction of structures of order and signification that facilitate processual efficiency and ‘flow’. In this paper, we draw upon an ongoing study at Fullton International Airport to study how contemporary information systems partake in the development of new kinds of knowledge(s) and practices that in turn place particular demands on various participants to produce and maintain organization as a genre-defying ‘sociotechnical imbroglio’. We find that different and often-incompatible modes of ordering emerge, generating an excess of flow that can be traced through a whole series of subjects, objects and their various ‘virtual-real’ combinations. In the detail of the mundane and practical accomplishment of organization we discover an over-determined range of performances of people and objects that makes management a difficult and precarious task.     

Climate Change and Reorganizing Land Use: Flood Control Areas as a Network Effect

Although climate change appears to be a relatively new public issue, it has not emerged onto a tabula rasa; it affects ‘traditional’ policy sectors. How, then, does this ‘new issue’ interact with established organizational processes, and how is climate change ‘operationalized’ in local practice? Since major events linked to climate change include such things as desertification, climatic migrations, floods and landslides, one might assume that one of its main implications would be a substantial change in land use, or at least a transformation in land organization and management. This article explores the implementation of a ‘flood control area’ as an adaptation practice in the face of climate change. What theoretical and empirical tools should analysis adopt to account for the multiple actors, types of knowledge, artefacts, socio‐technical systems and governance configurations engaged in developing such practices? In other words, to what extent does climate change become a reorganizing category? This article adopts a theoretical approach inspired by actor‐network theory and considers adaptation practice not as a standardized top‐down solution, but as the result of specific local connections among actors, materials and discourses. The analysis suggests that climate change is indeed a reorganizing category, but one that depends on the specific local materializations of the adaptation measure.     

In search of management development in Europe: from self-fulfilling prophecies to organizational competence

This paper gives an overview and a critical analysis of the concept of High Flyer programmes in management development. Based on a discussion of the need for management development in modern knowledge- and service-based organizations, strengths and weaknesses of traditional management development programmes are discussed. In particular, the so-called ‘fast-track’programmes for high-potential employees are presented. This analysis shows that, although management development is supposed to be a vital contributor to organizational competence, learning, and change, High Flyer Programmes are (still) mainly an instrument for individual and personal career development. An alternative interpretation of management development is presented which emphasizes the match between personal growth and organizational learning and which links career, organization development and competitive advantage of the organization. In conclusion, implications for practice and research are discussed.

Quantitative results from the most recent Cranfield Network on European HRM Survey are presented and analysed.     

Business is Show Business: Management Presentations as Performance

While there is continual scholarly interest in the ‘organization as theatre’ metaphor, extant dramaturgical perspectives limit the ability to account for aesthetic experiences in theatrical situations. This study provides a different methodological lens for looking at ‘theatre’ in organizations and illustrates that an inclusion of performance theory can be particularly valuable for understanding aesthetic techniques which are increasingly employed in organizations. Responding to calls for aesthetic studies, this article analyses large‐scale management presentations such as annual general meetings, press conferences, and analyst meetings ‘as performance’ instead of re‐labelling them as if they were drama. Drawing on the latest theatre theory and introducing a tool for performance analysis, the study accounts for the aesthetic experience and describes the complex interplay of scenography, lighting, clothing, managers' performance style, rhetoric, and audience interaction, showing that these organizational events are co‐created and contested theatrical performances with a potential for resistance and possible change as well as for persuasion.     

SOME EVERYDAY RITUALS IN MANAGEMENT CONTROL*

This article examines the way in which observed rituals in management activity appear to contribute to the accomplishment of management control. It argues that any examination of organizational activity involving a dimension so ethereal as ritual is bound to be problematic. It is nevertheless an important feature of organizational life and, therefore, a fruitful framework for understanding complex organizations. The article suggests that in the particular organization studied, issues of management control are expressed in various ways which reflect a chain of command, being alternatively brought into sharp focus and then blurred. It is suggested that this can be seen to represent activities which involve considerable components of what ethnomethodologists might call ‘artful practice’.     

STRATEGY UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND IT IN FINANCIAL SERVICES*

This article subjects the organizational theory literature on corporate strategy to critical scrutiny, arguing that both the ‘rational’and ‘processual’approaches to strategy generate analyses that are ahistorical and theoretically undeveloped. In their place, but focusing specifically on the financial services, we offer an alternative genealogically informed analysis. This indicates how the historical development of strategy discourses and practices are discontinuous and uneven across countries, sectors, companies and specialist spheres. In addition it suggests that corporate strategy has considerable impact on inter-organizational relations and both ‘internal’(i.e. management and employees) and ‘external’(i.e. consumers) members of the organization. the article seeks to illustrate its arguments both at the sectoral level by examining the development of strategic discourse in banks and insurance companies and at the organizational level by providing some case study material on IT strategy in a life insurance company.     

PROFESSIONALIZATION AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT PRACTICEPROFESSIONALIZATION AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT PRACTICE: CASE EVIDENCE FROM MEDIUM-SIZED FIRMS IN TWO INDUSTRIAL SECTORS*

High levels of occupational specialization, problems of cross-functional integration and distinct bureaucratic tendencies have traditionally been seen as problems endemic to British management practice. Over the last decade, these problems are expected to have disappeared - or at least diminished - as major developments in management and organizational theory, as well as changing economic circumstances, have redirected management thinking towards ‘new’ ideas of flatter, simpler organizational structures, increased flexibility and decentralization, improvements in the quality of inter-functional relations and the like. Yet, despite these developments, there is comparatively little research that has investigated actual patterns of change within management and, in particular, what is happening in what could be regarded as the mainstream of British industry - namely, ‘ordinary’, medium-sized firms operating in ‘traditional’ industrial sectors. Moreover, rarely does such research focus upon the implications of management change for the strategies of professionalization adopted by competing specialist occupational groups within management. This paper sets out to help fill these gaps, by reporting the findings from case studies of four such firms, taking into account the particular contexts and historical circumstances that have helped shape any such change and drawing out the key influences on changed management practice.     

THE PETER PRINCIPLE: PERSONAL OR ORGANIZATIONAL INCOMPETENCE?

This article proposes that incompetence in management may not be explained so much by the ‘Peter Principle’, i.e. by terminal weaknesses of personnel in faulty promotion systems, as it is by the organizational climate in which managers perform, i.e. by outmoded supervisory styles and limiting structural relationships. This alternative explanation is supported by Townsend's popular book, Up the Organization,¹ where Theory X styles of leadership, in some combination with bureaucratic elements of structure, are seen as impairments in modern organizations. This contention argues that organizational change agents must operate in tandem upon perceptions and attitudes as well as structural properties to maintain effectiveness - embarking on either skill and sensitivity training alone or mandating authority and task changes is insufficient. In addition, leadership flexibility and structural variety must provide alternative options across different task units if both short-run efficiency and long-term relevance are to be generated for the organization. Finally, organization survival is viewed as a function of managerial performance as determined by structure, including the promotion system, and by level of humanism of the climate, especially motivational stimuli. Within all of this, managerial effectiveness is considered to be influenced by incumbent conceptualizations of goals and capacities of the organization and of his own ‘self’ within that system. Concepts of self, in turn, are determined by historical notions associated with work and authority, as well as by various socialization processes in the organization, e.g. training, super-vision and general psychological conditioning. Accordingly, the matrix design of organizations and the contingency theory of leadership are offered as vehicles for tentatively re-conceptualizing the nature and form of collective behavior. Matrix and contingency theories focus upon modern, complex organizational structures and varied superior-subordinate relationships rather than upon man's instrumental performance, as with the Peter Principle, in explaining managerial inadequacies.     

THE CONCEPT OF DECISION: A DECONSTRUCTIVE ANALYSIS*

Decision-making as a central concept in management and organization theory has had a colourful and controversial career spanning some 50 years. During this time its image and meaning has shifted substantially to the point where its explanatory value as an established conceptual category in management and organizational analysis has been questioned. In this article, I attempt a critical study of the concept of decision and try to show that the various attempts to replace it by other terms such as ‘action’, and ‘change’, overlook the ontological status of the decision-making process. I argue here that decision is better understood as a series of interlocking pre-definitive acts of punctuating the flow of human experiences in order to facilitate sense-making and to alleviate our Cartesian anxiety. Decisions are not so much about ‘choice’or ‘intentions’as about the primordial ‘will to order’whereby interlocking configurations of micro-incisions punctuating our phenomenal experiences contrive to construct and reinforce a stable but precarious version of reality. When viewed thus, decision-making takes on a very different meaning - one that accentuates the concrete everydayness of micro-decisional acts which re-enact the ongoing contestation between order and disorder, routinization and breakdown, organization and disorganization, chaos and cosmos. Such micro-decisional ontological acts are what produces and sustains a version of reality to which we then subsequently respond. It is this ‘becoming’theory of decision-making which is offered as an alternative to the ‘event’driven model of decisional theorizing.     

Ethnography,Reality, and Truth: The Vital Need for Studies of ‘How Things Work’ in Organizations and Management

There is considerable potential for ethnography to play a larger and more mainstream role in organization and management studies. Ethnography is not a research method. It is a way of writing about and analysing social life which has roots in both the sciences and the humanities. Whilst it prioritizes close and intensive observation in the gathering of information and insights, it may additionally and potentially use any of the full range of other research methods. A powerful rationale for ‘good’ ethnographic work is offered by Pragmatist Realist principles of truth, reality, and relevance‐to‐practice. Research based on these principles investigates the realities of ‘how things work’ in organizations. In doing this, it rigorously grounds and contextualizes the activities which the researcher observes and the accounts which they receive from organizational members. To do this well, researchers must avoid being diverted from the analysis of organizational patterns and managerial processes by researchers trying to ‘get into the heads’ of organizational members in order to capture their subjective experiences. Various moves can be identified which would encourage and enable more people to work ethnographically and to produce research which is inherently critical and is unfettered by attachment to any narrow specialist method, concept or ‘perspective’.     

GROUP IDEOLOGIES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

Recent developments in organization theory have seen an increase in the amount of attention being paid to competing interests and definitions of situations existing within organizations. Greater emphasis is being put on ‘micropolitics’ and on various non-rational aspects of behaviour. In line with these developments, the concept of ‘group ideology’ is used to analyze the ways in which various interests were articulated and mobilized around in a case of major organizational change in an engineering company. The relevance of social class factors to the process of organizational change is given particular attention.     

Strategy in the Public Sector: Management in the Wilderness

ABSTRACT The central question addressed in this paper is ‘Why have organizational strategies emerged in the public sector?’ Two broad answers are suggested. First, ‘strategies’ profile the organization through identifying aims, outputs and outcomes. Public services must, now, provide such transparency in order to secure on‐going funding from government bodies. Once ‘strategies’ are being produced, they also offer an organizational vision that potential additional funding agencies can buy into (with both commitment and money). And public services are short of resources. Second, ‘strategies’ signal greater devolved responsibility in the public sector for both acquiring resources and achieving results. They enable the inclusion of managerial priorities and values in setting the direction of public services. And politicians desire more control over the professionals that dominate public services whilst, simultaneously, wanting to make them more responsible for outcomes. This article explores the growth of strategic planning in a particular area of the public sector – the national parks. Strategies as ‘dormant documents’ and strategies as ‘funding pitches’ are discussed. It is suggested that, in the public sector, strategies should be the object of strategy.     

The Conduct of Management and the Management of Conduct: Contemporary Managerial Discourse and the Constitution of the ‘Competent’ Manager*

The character and conduct of the manager has formed a central focus of attempts to govern economic life throughout the present century. and current programmes of organizational change involve radical attempts to reconstitute the nature and conduct of management. This is attempted through the identification and implementation of management competencies. Discourses of organizational reform such as human resource management, total quality management and business process re-engineering all place a critical emphasis on anti-bureaucratic, organic and flexible forms of organization, which are also seen to require the development of particular capacities and predispositions among managers. Essential to their vision of ‘managerial work’ is a composite of ‘entrepreneurial’ attributes. Management competencies appear to offer a congenial method for the reconstitution of the manager along ‘entrepreneurial’ lines, not simply because they are inherently founded on managers'self-management and self-presentation of identified behaviours, but also because they represent individualized forms of business functions (and are often associated with the establishment of market relations within the organization).     

Keeping the Wheels Turning: The Dynamics of Managing Networks of Practice

Intra‐organizational networks of practice (NOPs) confront managers with a dilemma: they must manage NOPs to reap benefits from integrating geographically dispersed knowledge, but the inherently emergent nature of NOPs implies that management control may frustrate practice‐related knowledge to be shared. Based on a case study of 22 NOPs in a geographically dispersed development organization (‘TDO’), we develop a model that disentangles the dynamics underlying this dilemma, helping to better understand it. Specifically, four dynamic relationships are interrelated and involve four kinds of embeddedness (organizational, in practice, relational, and structural) that relate dynamically to knowledge sharing in NOPs. Interventions in both the content shared in the network and the connections among network members can influence each of these relations. This study contributes to theoretical and practical understanding of how to manage NOPs without killing them.     

Celebrating Organization Theory: The After‐Party

Organization and management theory as a field faces criticisms from several scholars that it has an unhealthy obsession with ‘theory’, while at the same time seeing very little cumulative theoretical progress. Some have even accused the field of being mired in the 1970s. Lounsbury and Beckman counter with an expansive review of several thriving domains of contemporary organizational research that demonstrate the theoretical vibrancy of the field. This article responds by seeking to define ‘theoretical progress’ in ways that extend beyond just the volume of articles produced. It finds that 1970s‐era classics have seen a surge of citations since the turn of the twenty‐first century, consistent with a view of limited progress. It concludes by outlining three areas of problem‐driven research eminently worthy of attention from organizational researchers.     

Why Do I Feel Valued and Why Do I Contribute? A Relational Approach to Employee's Organization‐Based Self‐Esteem and Job Performance

Drawing on the relational perspective and self‐consistency theory, we theorize how relationships involving work‐centric, off‐work‐centric, and/or personal components can affect an employee's organization‐based self‐esteem and job performance in Chinese organizational contexts. Matched data were collected from a multi‐source sample that included 219 employee–supervisor dyads from a Chinese bank. Results based on hierarchical regression analyses reveal that a high‐quality relationship with a supervisor through work and off‐work domains (leader–member exchange and guanxi) is positively related to organization‐based self‐esteem. Organization‐based self‐esteem plays a mediating role in the relationship between guanxi and job performance. Additionally, career mentoring from a supervisor (a work‐centric relationship involving personal components) moderates the relationship between organization‐based self‐esteem and job performance.     

Mediating Identity: A Study of Media Influence on Organizational Identity Construction in a Celebrity Firm

This paper reports a longitudinal field study on the effects of positive media coverage on the reconstruction of organizational identity. The study highlights how intense positive coverage – to the point of turning an organization into a ‘celebrity’– influences both the way members understand their organization (sensemaking effect) and the gratification they derive from its positive representation (self‐enhancement effect). Our findings suggest that positive media representations foster members' alignment around an emergent new understanding of what their organization is. Over time, however, celebrity may ‘captivate’ members' organizational identity beliefs and understandings, and impede further identity work as media persist in the replication of representations that differ from members' experienced reality, but are too appealing to them to be publicly contradicted.     

‘A deeply troubled organization’: Organizational satire in the BBC’s W1A comedy series

This paper analyses the ways in which a media organization implicated in a series of reputational scandals represents its own management in a comedy series. The organization in question is the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and the comedy series is W1A, a mockumentary commissioned and screened by the BBC in 2014–17. Firstly, I discuss the ways in which W1A as a ‘text’ uses satirical devices to ridicule its own management as well as management fads and fashions. Secondly, I analyse W1A as the ‘intertext’, and consider the satirical representations of management in W1A against the backdrop of the BBC’s reputational scandals. I put forward an interpretation that the intertextual references in the comedy series break down the distance between ‘us’ and ‘the troubled organization’. I also argue that intertextual reading of the series (e.g. the analysis of allusions, cameo appearances, and parallels with the real BBC) throws an entirely different light on organizational wrongdoing, opening new possibilities for organizational reintegration and the repair of broken trust. Not only does the reading of W1A change when the audience considers what is happening in the real BBC, but also our interpretation of what is happening in the BBC may change when we watch W1A.