The “Metaphor” Metaphor

This chapter revisits Gareth Morgan’s seminal book Images of Organization and considers its main thesis—that organizations have no essence, but we can bring out their features through the metaphorical lenses we see them through—in the context of pragmatist-hermeneutical philosophy. Morgan’s “metaphor” metaphor approaches organizations as texts, inviting readers to become sophisticated readers of organizational life. Images of Organization, rather than providing ready-made answers, provides its readers with the resources to search for answers, thus enabling readers-practitioners to refine their ordinary practices of understanding, and become phronetic practitioners who must simultaneously maintain what Dewey called “a state of doubt” while searching for better candidates of belief.