How can leaders use metaphors of organisational culture to lead better

How can leaders use metaphors of organizational culture to lead better?

Metaphorical thinking serves leaders as a useful way of studying organizations and as a crucial aspect of the cognitive process in management.

Metaphors of organizational culture

Metaphors are a feature of language, and their changes reflect the transformations in our ways of thinking and speaking, as well as in our organizational activities. Depending on the perspective, a metaphor can be perceived as a useful technique or a foundation facilitating the understanding of an organization. However, it must be remembered that the use of metaphors should not be completely arbitrary. Metaphorical thinking gives us certain clues, indicates features of the object of our analysis, and stimulates creative thinking, but identifying the given object with a metaphor does not make any sense. Still, using and discovering the quasi-metaphorical process in interpreting management should enhance our understanding of organizational life (cf. Schmidt).

Organizational culture is often interpreted as a metaphor and described in metaphors. After all, in Morgan’s understanding, culture is a metaphor for the organization. As a result of the development of cultural management studies, several metaphors describing organizational culture have emerged. This has also led to a clear distinction between the representatives of various paradigms who perceive culture in their ways.

Functionalists mainly use metaphors of organizational culture, understood as a method of integrating the organization that brings together its key values, management philosophy, and directions of development. Interpreted from a functionalist perspective, organizational culture can thus be compared to “social glue,” “a clan”, “a resource,” or “a compass”[3]. The ideal model presents a strong, coherent, and well-integrated organizational culture that bonds together the whole organization (like “glue”). It can therefore be a source of employees’ identification with the organization, strengthening their loyalty, giving them a positive image of the organization, and building a sense of unity reinforced by common goals and values (“a clan”). Organizational culture is subject to control, whose scope depends on the needs of the organization and its managers. According to functionalists, it, therefore, serves as a tool that facilitates increasing productivity and employees’ commitment by unlocking the social and emotional potential of the organization (“a resource”). Organizational culture also determines the direction of the organization’s development. It expresses goals and values and serves as an organizational creed (“a compass”). Furthermore, organizational culture is also the source of organizational philosophy, which influences people in both conscious and subconscious ways.

In the case of non-functionalist paradigms, the metaphors of organization and organizational culture are identical. If one accepts the assumption informing the root metaphor, according to which organization is not “something an organization has” but “something an organization is”[4], a comparison between an object and an organization is equivalent to comparing the object to organizational culture. Among the most common metaphors of the organization are: a temple, theater, text, language, a work of art, acting and drama, flux, autopoiesis, and a brain. The metaphors of temple, theater, and language have been used, among others, Linda Smircich (“Organizations”), Mary Jo Hatch, and Barbara Czarniawska-Jorges to describe interpretive and symbolic aspects of organizations. The metaphors of acting, drama, and works of art were taken from Ervin Goffman, one of the founders of symbolic interactionism. The metaphorical approach to organization and also to an organizational culture that is depicted as a brain, flux, and autopoiesis was put forward by Gareth Morgan. Interpretive metaphors compare culture to complex social processes and complex entities (a brain). It can be argued that, in cognitive terms, their potential to interpret and explain reality is limited because they explicate difficult management processes by making references to equally complex and difficult entities such as the brain, language, or social processes. At the same time, however, these metaphors point to the uniqueness and exceptionality of management, understood as a complex social process.

Critical management studies (CMS) uses many cultural and organizational metaphors that convey the essence of oppression and inequality, as perceived from a critical perspective. One of the most popular metaphors compares an organization to a psychic prison, a tool of domination and oppression, a political system, an ideology and totalitarianism, war and battle, and the panopticon[5]. The metaphor of the psychic prison was proposed by Morgan, who in his book Images of Organization mostly used it to describe certain obsessive, repressive, and self-censoring aspects of the human psyche. The perception of culture as “a tool of domination and repression” is quite popular and is commonly used in critical management studies to describe the negative aspects of cultural control. This is also true of such metaphors as ideology, war, and the panopticon. According to representatives of CMS, organizational culture is a source of ideological “false consciousness" and “symbolic violence,” as well as the conflict that is inherent to the system and the struggle of social groups. The panopticon, by contrast, is a historical metaphor. Borrowed by Michel Foucault from Jeremy Bentham, it refers to a perfect model of surveillance and control. Alluding to Hugh Willmott and Mat Alvesson, Micha Zawadzki proposes a metaphorical understanding of organizational culture as an emancipatory tool[6]. The metaphors used by the proponents of critical management studies are rather one-sided and ideologically laden since they focus only on two aspects of organization: oppressiveness and control. Underscoring the above-mentioned aspects of management, these comparisons tend to neglect their positive dimensions. Still, they accurately reflect the nature of radical structuralism.

Generally, the postmodern understanding of organization is metaphorical. This means that the majority of ideas and theories are based on metaphors and analogies, rather than being constructed in a literal way. This phenomenon is closely connected to the fact that postmodernism is much indebted to Wittgenstein’s “language games” and “linguistic turn,” as well as to its literary, artistic, and textual roots. As described by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, a rhizome is one of the earliest cultural metaphors, used by postmodernists to describe a shapeless tangle of threads whose roots are hard to trace. “Simulacra” and “the matrix,” by contrast, communicate the idea of postmodern hyper-reality, in which the essentialist notions of sense and truth are no longer valid. Cultural processes are a game, a simulation. They serve as multiple curtains behind which no core truth or reality can be hidden (Baudrillard). The metaphors of a supermarket, collage, and happening represent culture as an eclectic, indeterministic, and unpredictable entity that can be internally contradictory and develop spontaneously. Most postmodern metaphors are used in a literary rather than cognitive sense. This is because postmodernists, as supporters of radical humanism, claim that literature is a better tool for understanding the world than the authority of science. Such a way of thinking, however, leads to excessive attachment to popular cultural metaphors, which are too often used uncritically. Zygmunt Bauman, for instance, has published extensively on the concept of the “liquid modern world.”[7] He has written fascinating essays in the field of cultural philosophy. However, apart from various unsystematized observations, they do not offer any results from empirical research.

Metaphors can therefore be attributed to a specific way of thinking connected with a particular paradigm. This means that each interpretation of a metaphor accentuates certain prior assumptions and brings to mind associations and images that are characteristic of a given cognitive perspective.

The metaphors given above for organizational culture correspond to the four paradigms proposed by Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan. However, it is important to note that, depending on the interpretation, many of them can also be used in various other paradigms. This brings us to one of the features of metaphorical thinking, which is that the cognitive and pragmatic functions of a metaphor depend on its interpretation. The metaphor of the organization as a brain can, for instance, be functionalist if we assume the computational theory of mind to be true. Organizing is thus primarily seen as being based on learning and processing information. However, if we assume that the brain is responsible for perception, interpretation, and understanding of the world, then we emphasized reflective processes, and we can contextualize the metaphor in the discourse of symbolic interactionism. Other metaphors used in management discourse, such as a temple, text, and language, similarly have multiple meanings and fit in various paradigms.

TSome metaphors aredeeply rooted in the management discourse (glue, a clan, a resource, theater, language, a prison); are used occasionally but are not very popular (a work of art, a collage, a chameleon, a matryoshka); have been taken from other discourses of the humanities and social sciences (the panopticon, a rhizome, simulacra, and a matrix); or are new (a shooting range and a labyrinth, obsobsessive-compele last two metaphors in each category ironically illustrate the thesis of the interpretive character of metaphors. When interpreting a given entity, we can compare it to another because of the nature of language and our cognitive apparatus. Thus, culture can, for instance, be compared to various attractions in a theme park or even to mental disorders or emotions. Interpreted as “a shooting range and a labyrinth,” organizational culture is oriented towards one effective solution: success. The metaphor of “a haunted house” alludes to the dark side of human nature. The comparison to “a masked ball” brings to mind an instant association with multiple organizational roles and identities. The metaphor of “a house of mirrors” evokes multiple, distorted reflections. As regards the metaphors of cultural processes depicted in terms of mental disorders, one can also easily find various arbitrary points of reference. Organizational culture in the NFS paradigm can ironically be read as “an obsessive thought” about the need to reach cognitive certainty and perfection in management, which is conspicuous in “compulsive actions” such as an obsessive search for methodological perfection—the perfect scholarly method” of cognition and culture management. Organizational culture in the paradigm of Critical Management Studies (CMS) can sometimes be reminiscent of a paranoid vision caused by persecutory delusions. Consequently, culture can be seen as a tool of oppression, “false consciousness,” psychological manipulation, and as a social engineering technique used to control and exploit employees. An uncritical attitude toward these persecutory delusions might cause paranoia among the seemingly healthy members of an organization. In the paradigm of symbolic interactionism, organizational culture can be compared to schizophrenic psychosis. Culture understood as “schizophrenia” is characterized by a split (Greek schisis) between emotions and reflective thinking, which unfortunately leads to permanent dysfunction. Similarly, the postmodern “autism” of organizational culture can be interpreted as an instance of management discourse being enclosed in its world.

The metaphorical method is commonly used to examine and change organizational cultures. Its key advantages include openness and reflective nature, thanks to which this method is both unorthodox and creative. This is particularly useful in studying and understanding such complex and ephemeral phenomena as organizational culture. On the other hand, using metaphors in cultural management studies has several limitations:

1. The reflective method is unstructured and unstandardized, and thus its usefulness is limited to its creative aspects and does not cover systematic analyses and measurements. After all, metaphors are only used in qualitative and interpretive research.

2. The analysis of “new metaphors” (culture as “a theme park” or “a mental disorder”) indicates the dangers inherent in this way of interpreting reality. The arbitrariness of comparisons can lead to a total loss of cognitive function. It could then be replaced by the creative function, which is itself connected with imagination and associations (Oswick and Jones).

3. Discriminating between a metaphor and a literal presentation can be difficult. In general, language is metaphorical, a fact to which most people do not usually pay much attention. Is “a resource” a metaphor? When this article talks about the metaphor of “a resource” that “helps unlock employees’ potential,” it is using two further metaphors: “Unlocking” is a mechanical metaphor that compares starting an action to opening a lock with a key, while the term “potential” is borrowed directly from physics.

4. It is often very difficult to assign a metaphor to only one paradigm since its understanding depends on its interpretation. The meaning of the comparison is rather fluid; for instance, although “organizational glasses” originally derived from the functionalist paradigm, in time they have become a method of interpreting organizational culture by other paradigms. “Organizational glasses” are an interpretive metaphor as well, since culture is also seen as synonymous with the perception of reality. “Black organizational glasses” could represent the perception of reality by culture, approached from the perspective of the critical paradigm.

5. The perception of organizational culture as being synonymous with the whole organization is characteristic of non-functionalist paradigms. It considerably broadens the area of comparison, which makes these paradigms too general and imprecise.

The analysis of the nature of the metaphorical approach and its problems presented in this chapter does not address all aspects of this complex issue. It is possible, for instance, to name other cultural metaphors used in research and management education. For example, M.J. Gannon describes the metaphorical understanding of organizational culture as a computer, a tree, a whale, a gene pool, a rainbow, a prism, a school, a skyscraper, and a filter[8]. Another problem resides in the multiplicity of ideas and the lack of consensus regarding the canonical metaphorical method in management.

[3] Alvesson M., Understanding Organizational Culture, Sage, London 2002, pp. 16-41.

[4] Smircich L., Concepts of culture and organizational analysis, „Administrative Science Quarterly”, No. 28, 1983, p. 347.

[5] Alvesson M., The Play of Metaphors, [In] Hassard J., Parker M. (eds.), Postmodernism and Organizations, Sage, London, 1993.

[6] Alvesson M., Understanding Organizational Culture, Sage, London 2002, pp. 16–41; Alvesson M., The Play of Metaphors, [In] Hassard J., Parker M. (eds.), Postmodernism and Organizations, Sage, London 1993.

[7] Cf., for instance, Bauman Z., Liquid Fear, Polity, 2006.

[8] Gannon M.J., Cultural Metaphors: Applications and Exercises, <http://faculty.csusm.edu/mgannon/docs/CULTURALMETAPHORS.pdf>.