Chapter 1 -- Images of Organization
Introduction
Effective managers and professionals have to become skilled in the art of "reading" the situations they are attempting to organize or manage.
Skilled leaders have a capacity to remain open and flexible, suspending immediate judgments until a more comprehensive view of the situation emerges.
All theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors that lead us to see, understand, and manage organizations in distinctive yet partial ways.
We use metaphor whenever we attempt to understand one element of experience in terms of another.
The premise that all theory is metaphor had far-reaching consequences. Any theory or perspective is also incomplete, biased, and potentially misleading.
A way of seeing created through a metaphor becomes a way of not seeing.
Metaphors can generate a range of complementary and competing insights with which we can learn to build on strengths and different points of view.
Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.