Using Metaphors in Organizations - Essay Example

Running head: Metaphors in Organizations Using Metaphors in Organizations Pallavi Bichali Academia Research Abstract This paper is meant to explain influence of metaphorical explanation of organizations through Gareth Morgan’s views as explained in his book, Images of the Organization (2006). Morgan, G mentions that different metaphors give rise to different theories of organization and management, and an understanding of these processes can help us master the strengths and limitations of the different viewpoints, and that we can use this knowledge to become more effective leaders and managers. In this topic, a metaphorical analysis with the usage of two different metaphors for one organization has been adopted, and has been elaborated; these are meant to help in discovering perceptions formed through these metaphors about the organization. The organization in discussion is Starbucks, the U.S based coffee shop with its global presence. We will try to understand Starbucks through metaphors of Organization as brains and Organization as culture in Morgan’s method. The matter is further advanced to discuss their limitations through distorted views, concealed facts, and impacts of perception on management and people. The discussion finally concludes with an explanation on interrelation between metaphorical expressions of an organization and recommendations to make metaphorical expression more effective in understanding and managing organizations in a better manner. Using Metaphors in Organizations Introduction Metaphors have been explained in, as early as, Aristotle’s time who had said, “midway between the unintelligible and the commonplace, it is metaphor which most produces knowledge” (Morgan, G; 2006). The fifteenth century definition of a metaphor is that it is a figure of speech in which a word or a phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest likeliness between them. (Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary). Metaphoric expressions in organizations vary depending on the needs such as institutional, organizational, professional, economic, cultural, political etc. Organizational goals in usage of metaphors spread over three aspects such as creating a perception of the organization, providing information useful for a diagnosis of the organization, and to provide an experience of the organization’s character in an emotional, sensorial, and a cognitive manner. Metaphors make an important contribution in understanding the nature and complexity of an organization. In this topic, we explore two different metaphors for one organization, and identify the ways in which they explain the nature and complexity of systems of the organization in a much simpler manner. The two metaphors used to understand the organization are organization as brains and organization as culture as explained by Morgan (2006). General understanding of an organization, in the form of theory and reasoning, is significantly influenced by the metaphorical representations. This has been proven time and again through enormous research on various successful and unsuccessful organizations. This study is meant to lead to understanding an organization through lenses of two different metaphors and examine how these metaphors influence theory development and academic thinking about the organization. Scholars have explained that the ability of a metaphor to progress and simplify academical thoughts of organizations is based upon (1) the degree to which that metaphor is seen to capture multiple salient features of organizations and (2) the ease with which the metaphor is understood (Cornelissen, J and Kafouros, M;.2008) Further, we also try to analyze the implications of these metaphors on the organizational view. As quoted by Morgan (2006), “metaphors create insight. But they also distort. They have strengths. But they also have limitations. In creating ways of seeing, they create ways of not seeing. There can be no single theory or metaphor that gives an all-purpose point of view, and there can be no simple ‘correct theory’ for structuring everything we do. The challenge facing modern managers is to become accomplished in the art of using metaphor to find new ways of seeing, understanding, and shaping their actions.” Thus, we also try to examine the limitations of these metaphors on the organization by explaining the hidden facts that are not seen through lenses of these two metaphors. The two metaphors describing Starbucks’ in Morgan’s categories of Organizations as brains and Organizations as cultures that are being discussed are 1) Starbucks’ Real coffee experience and 2) Starbucks’ Quality of Life. Where a metaphor ideally represents a sign of genius and implies an intuitive perception of similarity among dissimilars, these two metaphors for Starbucks as an organization stand true. A practical demonstration of the power of metaphors and their use in generating deep understandings of the nature of organisations and organizational life has been illustrated with Starbucks as an example. The characteristics of a metaphor of flexibility, expressibility and ability to expand the meaning are elaborated through these two metaphors. Morgan (2006) also argues that a metaphor develops and spreads better if its creators and audience have a high level of familiarity with it. Metaphor I: Taste of Life: Starbucks’ Real coffee experience through the power of organizational brains. As scientifically proven by an American psychologist, Karl Lashley, the human brain can work even if ninety percent of it is removed, which is not possible by any man-made machinery. However, the same was argued by the writer Taylor with regards to creation and functioning of organizations. He compares the functioning of organizations to that of brain with the same capacity of flexibility, resilience, and innovation (Morgan, 2006). All of these elements or attributes have been proven to exist in many successful organizations. A classic example here is Starbucks coffee shop which has evidenced a tremendous growth globally over the last few decades, with its roots laid in a single shop in Seattle’s Pike place market in 1971 (Cagan, J & Vogel M, C. 2001). Starbucks is a service-oriented organization aimed at providing optimal experience to its customers. Their core product is coffee, and its service includes providing the best coffee using a range of options and complementary products in comfortable environment that significantly enriches the experience of drinking coffee and enhances the beginning, middle, or end of the customer’s day. Its success is linked to the strategic work of the organizational brains involved. Their strategic management practices can be very well compared to the images and functions of brain as explained by Morgan (2006). Just like how the brain functions with or without its entire part, the strategies adopted by Starbucks were aimed at functioning in an independent fashion. The main strategic component of Starbucks is its standard quality across the globe. Their Total Quality Management concept plays a vital role in achieving the desired standards, and has had substantial implications for a number of organizational phenomena, ranging from teamwork to product innovation and bringing continuous improvement in their products and services. Current discussion focuses on knowledge for theoretical sophistication with a few empirical investigations done by researchers into the incidence and nature of practices in continuous improvement. The aim of Starbucks to provide their customers with ‘the real experience of coffee’ goes beyond the taste of rich coffee. This experience requires efforts of high-quality raw material and machinery, timely service, availability of resources, etiquettes of the employees, and value for money. There are other concealed aspects behind achieving this experience such as teamwork, training, learning and development, strategic decision making, active participation, and the motivation to achieve the desired results. Comparison of this organization, with its employees possessing all these traits, with a hologram in the same way that Morgan has explained in his book, Images of Organization, can aid in understanding an organization as a brain. To explain this further, employees form the fundamental resource of any organization; their attitude and approach determine the growth of the organization. Their involvement in routine pattern of activities similar to that of the human brain coupled with inventive nature function like a human brain. Their capacity to receive information, signals, impulses, and to show reactions along with the mechanical data systems available for communication, data storage and retrieval form the core elements of the entire functioning. In the absence of any of these components, the sophisticated systems including human resources can still function effectively with the help of the organization’s contingency methods. Hence, Starbucks as an organization is comparable with the human brain. Providing customer delight has been Starbucks’ aim and for this Starbucks’ strategy of empowering its employees with certain level of decision making plays significant role. While the policies and practices follow a routine pattern, similar to the left-brain effect, empowerment through decision making will lay emphasis on creativity and innovation, similar to the right-brain effect. Also, the continuous improvement concept adopted by Starbucks keeps the right brain of employees working incessantly. The efficient management information systems, training methodologies, learning and development programs in Starbucks form an integrated learning unit similar to the capacity of the brain, thus creating a learning organization. A drive for self-regulated and self-learning behavior is emphasized by implementing a robust key performance indicator system and performance management system. These two systems aid in supporting Morgan’s principles of theory of cybernetics in this manner: The robust and accurate systems focus on quality and show the significant outliers in terms of performance and factors of environment affecting Starbucks business. Secondly, the Starbucks’ policies and practices highlight issues deviating from their operating norms, thereby helping in a root cause analysis of the issues. Thirdly, their performance management system aids in identifying mistakes of employees and flaws in their operating systems. Fourthly, along with performance monitoring system, customer feedback system helps in identifying underlying issues bothering the customers; both these methods help in drawing appropriate action plan in order to achieve the desired goal. Starbucks’ strategy of ‘Just In Time’ (JIT) in coordination with other suppliers of raw materials has been a great success factor in its business. To ensure high-quality standards in its raw materials used, Starbucks has launched the Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E) Practices to maintain sustainable supply of high-quality coffee beans, achieve economic accountability, promote social responsibility within the coffee supply chain, and protect the environment (Starbucks Corporation; p 20). This brings Starbucks into the virtual organizations category. Limitations of this metaphor: The metaphor ‘Taste of Life: The Real Coffee Experience” has in itself expressed its role in Starbucks; however, the fact that it does not give the ‘complete’ picture to the outsider should not be ruled out. For example, in spite of all the contingency planning meant for continuity of business in place, it does not address certain limitations. Limitations of learning abilities of employees, plans to deal with a complete potential breakdown of the information systems or data systems cannot be understood through this lens. It does not illustrate the mechanisms of ease and speed of communication flow in the organization. This can be seen in the Total Quality Management practices followed in Starbucks which require a lot of time to show their results. On one hand, any layman can understand the coordination required in order to give its customers the real coffee experience and the same may be quite visible at the outset, on the other hand it does not speak about the required cooperation and coordination of various departments of the organization. Secondly, one may not understand the prevalence of failures in achieving their goal due to certain socio-cultural, environmental, and behavioral factors. The reason could be traced to their practice of uniformity of standards that may or may not be acceptable to all people of the world. Metaphor II: Quality of Life: Starbucks as the best employer by creating a sound organizational culture. The phrase ‘Quality of Life’ actually refers to an award conferred upon Starbucks for being the best employer by the Optima Awards (Hammers, M; pp 58-59). Starbucks earns this title owing to the sound organizational culture created and driven among its employees, which in turn is transmitted to its customers in the form of best customer service. Morgan (2006) explains that, in literal terms, culture usually refers to the patterns of development reflected in a society’s system of knowledge, ideology, values, laws, and day-to-day ritual. A lot of research in the nineteenth century on primitive societies has revealed that culture influences the societal development and this influence is seen in the society’s way of life, working patterns, living standards, needs of people, their attire, routines, rituals etc. The more convenient methods and developments useful to the society, business, and environment are considered as good cultures. At a business or a production level, societal routines and rituals seem to be unique for each line of business. For example, the service industry follows different kind of routines than production industry, and industrial production sector follows different routines than that of domestic production. These differences are based on the needs of their end products like customer services, manufacturing of goods, agricultural growth etc. Thus organizations are said to possess or represent a ‘culture’ which as a metaphor has the ability to explain the organization itself. Creation of an organizational culture is often a deliberate process in line with the goals of the organization. This is exactly what is being followed at Starbucks. While customer satisfaction is a key to the success of any business, employee satisfaction is what creates it. Starbucks goal to deliver a great cup of coffee to every customer is also to give the customer a Starbucks Experience, and this is created through a connection they will have with their local Starbucks outlet. Starbucks strongly works on earning and maintaining the trust of their employees, whom they call partners, and this also means improving their customers’ experience. Creation of best possible workplace environment for their partners, one that attracts and retains the most talented individuals and is regarded as a great place to work takes high priority on Starbucks goals. This is achieved through employee empowerment, regular employee feedback through surveys, fair reward and recognition for performance, providing training and development, upholding workplace policies and respect for employee rights, and ensuring safe and healthy workplace. Its employee empowerment is achieved through practices such as encouraging its partners to keep in mind its mission statement, monitoring management decisions, submitting comments and questions if they encounter anything that runs counter to any of the six points of their mission. Starbucks also offers comprehensive benefits to its partners in various parts of the world. It plays an important role in supporting its partner’s health and well being through its wellness initiatives, outreaching its new partners, advocating for their healthcare reforms, providing safe and healthy work environment, and maintaining a Caring Unites Partners (CUP) Fund. Starbucks emphasizes strongly on business ethics and compliance through its efficient training and development programs for its partners. Starbucks Standards of Business Conduct (SBC) facilitates legal compliance and ethics training, investigates sensitive issues including potential conflicts of interest, and provides mechanisms to partners to voice concerns; these practices provide a feeling of justice and comfort to its partners. Starbucks motivates its partners also by providing grants upto a certain percentage in their Stock options depending upon their profits which makes the partners feel recognized for their efforts in one more manner. However, specific benefits differ from regions and countries. These deeply held values and practices for employees have inspired the organization and have been driving Starbucks for nearly two decades. Limitations of this metaphor: Reasons for distorted view of this metaphor are rooted in many aspects. To begin with Morgan’s argument on the influence of national cultures on organizational cultures provides us a useful insight of limitations associated with this metaphor. Though employee satisfaction is one of the main reasons for organizational growth at global and national levels, a thorough understanding and analysis of human resource policies and practices in different countries based on the similarities and variations of national and organisational cultures are required for effective management of people. The same topic was extensively researched and discussed by Professor Hofstede whose analysis, with respect to culture, states that organisations’ and nations’ economic activity and management are largely influenced by social values. The studies proposed that different contingency variables such as focus on similarities between societies and focus on differences between societies, rather than ‘culture’ explain differences between organisations in different societies. His study revealed that work-related values between management and organisation are culture-bound and can be used to mediate ‘social norms’ of an organisation between the people and their behavioural outcomes. (Rowley, C & Lewis, M (ed) 1996 p 121) A very important point stressed by Hofstede (2007), in this regard, is the influence of national culture reflecting on the corporate culture of its founders. Nationality, in the form of values of founders gets converted into practices of the followers. Hence, influence of nationality on organizational culture cannot be ruled out. This limitation has dangerous implications for practice as advocating this metaphor may pervade one’s metal models of the organization and its environment. As quoted by Senge (1990), “mental models determine not only how we make sense of the world, but how we take action,” (Bratianu, C; 2008). To this effect, the culture metaphor creates a perception and the reality gets filtered through the metaphor, managers’ actions tend be inclined towards the ideas created by the metaphor. They will tend to act upon the misrepresentation of the organization than on the much more complex real organization leading to unintended and, sometimes, undesirable consequences. The metaphor of culture created in Starbucks also conceals the existence of monotony associated with certain operating procedures. Though it gives an idea of existence of complimentary innovation and other human resource benefits, it may not bring to limelight the norms and policies hindering these practices with time. The dark-sided characteristic of a metaphor is its loss of generative power with time, which means the concept gets paused and staged at one point with not much relevance to the current situation. Moreover, dependence on a single metaphor is potentially dangerous as the same metaphor can have different meanings to different people impacted by their perception due to national culture, social and environmental factors. Conclusion: Metaphorical way of looking at an organization is a very useful way of understanding the organization, developing new concepts and theories that can help in better management and growth of the organization. This can potentially have a very positive influence on the society and environment as well. The discussion above explains how two different metaphors for the same organization can create completely different perceptions and theories in terms of their operations, people, customers and stakeholders. In conclusion, emphasis on metaphors can be considered as one of the oldest, most deeply embedded, even indispensable ways of knowing in the history of human consciousness and also form the basis of some of the most central ideas of understanding a concept. In fact, many theorists have agreed with the three reasons Ortony, A (1975) provided as to why metaphors are necessary and not just nice. These theories state that metaphors provide a compact version of an event; they enable people to predict characteristics that are unnamable, and; they are more vivid emotionally, sensorially and cognitively because they are close to perceived experience. In spite of the power embraced by metaphorical expressions, their exploitation creates lot of misunderstanding of the concept. The positive outcomes of metaphorical expression of organizations as brains can be attributed to the sophistication in information processing systems used by the organization, their capacity to handle huge data, and their ability to think and act strategically. On the other side, the positive outcomes of metaphoric expression of organization as culture can be attributed to employee satisfaction, motivation, morale, learning and development, the resulting customer satisfaction thereby growth in business. These positive outcomes of metaphorical understanding can further be attributed to Morgan’s (2006) definition of metaphorical relationship of organization which states, ‘the use of metaphor implies a way of thinking and a way of seeing that pervade how we understand or world generally.’ The two metaphors and Starbucks: The two metaphors explaining Starbucks as ‘The taste of life’ and as ‘Quality of Life’ are very familiar expressions for one to understand and interpret. However, these expressions expose our understanding to one side of the coin and are also perception-oriented. The other side, which we address as the limitations, need to be examined before reaching at any conclusion. Upon examining the independent outcomes of these metaphors, a pattern of similarity and interrelation can be found. The similarity is that both the expressions create perceptions of the organization in the manner one wants to think or see the situation in context. Interrelationship of both the expressions lies in the thought that both these expressions draw our focus to the fact that certain strategic practices have been adopted by the organization which could have resulted in the comparisons depicted through the metaphors. Secondly, the perception created from one metaphor due to the practices followed can be perceived for the other metaphor by someone else. For example, the C.A.F.E practices may be viewed as a part of culture of Starbucks too. Thirdly, both these expressions do not guarantee retention of their creative properties with time. They also do not explain anything about the changes, or potential changes, that can be expected. Our goal to broaden the spectrum of understanding these two metaphorical expressions of Starbucks considering appropriate opportunities and limitations should also include certain recommendations made in view of close-to-accurate understanding of these metaphors. Recommendations: Understanding organizations through lenses of metaphors generally limit our options of developing the right theory as metaphors help in understanding the organization by paying attention to only those factors that are similar between the metaphor and the organization, and hiding the facts that are not shared. However, understanding organizations through many metaphors, each of them concentrating on a single section or group of similar sectors can certainly prove more useful for the purpose, similar to the manner we tried to understand Starbucks through two different metaphors, each of them concentrating on one aspect of the organization. The discussion shows an interrelation between the two metaphors, which paves way to our understanding of relationship between organizational goals and the factors responsible for achieving these goals. A thorough and acknowledged understanding of this fact by managers can lead them to pursue a parallel and much more efficient strategic management and people management. Morgan (2006) provides some useful insights to learning organizations in order to be more meaningful through the lenses of their metaphors. The organization should be able to foresee their challenges in a much more comprehensive manner and be prepared to face those challenges with appropriate strategies in place. They should be able to improvise their routine norms and operating procedures on a continuous basis according to the environment and the foreseen challenges. These strategies should be strong enough to produce the right organizational pattern without any distortions or hidden challenges. 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