University of Central England
Msc 2001/02
ORGANISATION BEHAVIOUR
“METAPHORS”
Report by: Arpan Dutta
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. You have to step out of what you are currently thinking in order to see things differently”
…. Einstein
Abstract
The paper explains the use of machine, biological and power metaphors in order to understand organisations. A Metaphor can influence the construction of models and theories and the analysis of its use can reveal important tools of thought. The machine or Square wheeled wagon metaphor is used to represent the organisation in terms of job design, input, output, mechanism, equilibrium, goal and control. The biological metaphor (Living system) will be discussed in terms of growth, openness, individuality, adaptability and reproduction. The other part of this paper will look at the power metaphor, by highlighting the consequences of the organisation control and leaders` excessive use of power over employees. The last part will look at the complexity and applicability of metaphors in understanding organisations.
Introduction
Metaphors are a “basic structural form of experience, through which human beings engage, organize, and understand their world”. (Morgan, 1983). Metaphors tend to explain things that cannot only be described by words. “It is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of idea is used in place of another to suggest likeness or analogy between them”. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Words and metaphors are thus lenses, which effect what is perceived, what is ignored and how perceptions are interpreted. Hills and Levenhagen (1995) suggest that metaphors and other mental models provide means for individuals and, ultimately, organisations to create and share understanding. The models will articulate what is important and unimportant. Through metaphors an organisation develops a common language throughout the organisation. Organisations are complex, a single word or model cannot explain it all.
Morgan (1986) argues “ organisations are many things at once”. To complement Morgan’s ideas, Clegg (1994) believes that “ Multiple ways of looking at an organisation are required to achieve better understanding of their complexities and contradictions. Any single metaphor is partial”
When explaining my organisation, three different metaphors have been formed. Nietzsche (1979) says “ The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself”. The metaphors will be used to understand both the white and black part of my organisation in a simpler form. The word “simpler” has been used because as Weick (1989) suggests “ metaphors are not just catchy phrase designed to dazzle an audience. Instead they are one of the few tools to create compact descriptions of complex phenomena”
An organisation as a Square wheeled wagon
My organisation has been compared to a `square wheeled wagon` by referring to some of the machine functions i.e. inputs, outputs, mechanism, equilibrium, goal, processes, design and control. The metaphor was formed due to the fact that the organisation does not appear to have any kind of strategies; the focus is just on day-to-day activities only. The myopic view of leaders, lack of strategy and lack of support from the management influenced my decision to use this metaphor. Employees have the ability to see but they are blindfolded.
The diagram on the diagram page (link on right) has been drawn to show how the square wheeled wagon would look like when describing my organisation. The diagram will represent a number of ideas, as suggested by Bruner (1990: 64-65) that “I believe that we shall be able to interpret meanings and meaning-making only in the degree to which we are able to specify the structure and coherence of the larger contexts in which specific meanings are created and transmitted”.
The basic description of the diagram is a wagon being pulled by leadership and pushed by the support staff. The wheels on the wagon are square; they are moving but not smoothly, there is too much static frictional force. The pushers are at the rear and the management in front, may be what is important to recognise is that the cargo of the wagon is ROUND WHEELS! The paradox is that, pullers are too busy trying to meet their goal, pushers do not see anything ahead of them apart from the hands of their bosses, an obvious opportunity to blame them for lack of vision. None of the leaders takes time to step back and observe possibilities for improvements.
Trust me that is the way we have been doing things here! Our leaders do not care at all, the changes are too slow as the wheels are moving reluctantly, the problem isn’t that people cannot FIND the solution; it is that they can’t even SEE the problem! We are still living in the era of scientific management where the job has to be done the way it used to be, and employees were only born to work and others were born to lead. Mullins (1985:51) explains how Taylor adopted an instrumental view of human behaviour together with the application of standard procedures of work; workers were regarded as rational, economic beings motivated directly by monetary incentives linked to the level of work output. Similarly to my organisation, the management and employees are too caught up in past practices that have always worked before and short-term goals to attain. Although Drucker (1976:23-7) argues that Taylor was aiming at removing physical strain from doing work the wrong way, in a system like the square wheeled wagon organisation, there is no flexibilities and there is lack of employees’ involvement. Employees should not only be there to push the wagon, they should be given an opportunity to advise the management the best ways to do their work. The idea of applying lubricants (negotiations, compromise and involvement) to smoothen the situation is not entertained by the management. The smoke now can easily be seen, this is due to friction, and the organisation is likely to burn unless we respond quickly to this warning sign.
The organisation has an opportunity for changes, but we are all either blindfolded or myopic. The ROUND WHEELS are already in the wagon, this means best practises already exist in our organisation, if only we could take the time to be more objective about change, change our work design, discuss opportunities and possibilities, and challenge the way things are done.
The work design does not appear to provide any useful technique and instead production managers are given too much power over workers. There is no participatory approach in their leadership, leaders cannot push the wagon, and they are not aware of the physical part of the job as they are pulling from the other end. Even during high staff turnover still the wagon has to be pushed the same distance as when we are full staffed!
An organisation as a Biological system
This part is aiming to show how an organisation can be compared to a living system. Some aspects of biological organisation are investigated through the analysis of metaphors associated with biosystem as a kind of text. Biosystems can have an organisation interpretive capacity; this would be true of genomes, cells, brains, immune systems, organism, ecosystem and societies (Paton 1992:279-294). Although my organisation is considered to be a like a living system, Levins (1984:18-27) warns that, no single model of a biological system can be sufficiently comprehensive to account for realism, precision and generality at the same time.
When we talk of living systems as organisations we talk of the factors that influence the life of living things such as; birth, growth or maturation, decline and death, in some cases the term regeneration has been used referring to the ability of the organisms to emerge with new shapes and structures. The organisation has been described as a species living in a population where there are other species. May be the first step in describing this metaphor would be to compare the biosystems and subsystems of the living organisms with those found in the organisations.
My organisation comprises of the board of directors, directors, CEO, managers and employees. This can be compared to the biosystems, according to Markman et al (1980:227-241) he describes the biosystems as the system that consists of interrelated parts, they can be described in terms of a part-whole relationship and have common properties with physiological objects called collections. Within the biosystems there are subsystems, likewise the organisms can be described from a physical point of view to cellular level. Likewise, our organisation has directors, managers, head of departments and sub-departments. It is a highly departmentalised organisation, but the issue here is whether the departments and sub-departments are working in a co-ordinated way, as it is the case in the living system.
The body appears to work as a distributed system, exerting self-control up to a point in which homeostasis is achieved. Each part receives constant on what the whole is like and it acts accordingly. There is a monitoring/control system that does not interfere with each part as long as situations are normal, but this monitoring /control system (executives) is capable of sending information that is not open to discussion to the parts under any circumstances i.e.` do this as directed`, `respond ASAP` and many more of that nature. If you make decisions or object, then were different, in our organisation the system is not co-ordinated due excessive control exerted by some of the parts (Managers), although we all belong to the whole.
In the past few years we have witnessed a number of conflicts within the organisation, there has been a rise of competitions amongst departments due to the overlapping of responsibilities. Managers and executives do not feel that they are part of these problems; they are more interested with the end results. It is just like if one fails to feed or meet the physiological needs of his/her body but still expects to meet the homeostatic state, have enough energy for work etc. Morgan (1998: 37) believes that employees are people with complex needs that must be satisfied if they are to lead full and healthy lives and to perform effectively in the workplace. It is time that managers and executives realise that they are part of the same organisation, like different cells in the same body.
It is important to consider that all cells of an organism have the same information to begin with, even though they only use a part of it to do their specific job (they all share the same vision and mission explicitly- this is an anthropomorphism). However as they (cells) differentiate they appear to become different, but that they emerged from the same cells, they are similar. In an organisation, this might mean that leadership, decision-making, intelligence, learning, production etc must be elements of each persons job or they will not get done well. If this is not the case, we are likely to end up with specialisation, compartmentalisation and reductive separation and find ourselves in an `us/them` environment.
As the living system, our organisations` life (birth) started when it was formed back in 1985, managers had ideas of how a new baby was going to survive on this planet. The baby was christened (Tanzania Claims Corporation Ltd) and the mission statement was made clear to all relatives (employees). The idea here was to make sure the baby’s physiological and physical needs would be met in future depending on the growth and the size of the baby. The plan was not clear; in the beginning of 1990 there was a massive decline in profits due to the fact that Tanzania joined the free market states. There were many competitors who offered the same services as our organisation, the firm failed to pay salaries, the management responded to changes by laying off some of the workers.
The organisation neglected what Morgan (1998:41-63) described as “maintenance of homeostasis” and other factors that influence the life of an organism in the course of its life i.e. system evolution, natural selection and Ecology. In a nutshell, our organisation failed to predict both Internal and external needs of the organisation.
Homeostasis is the self-regulation and the ability to maintain a steady internal state. The organisation failed to meet the social needs of individuals by neglecting their needs. Morgan (1998:41) believes that the organisations can learn how to regulate their internal problems; i.e. lack of motivation by developing a “negative feedback mechanism”. Living organisms tend to vomit or throw out whenever they eat something that is poisonous or unfit for the body. There is always a defensive mechanism (auto regulation). The firm should have dropped all factors or management policies that appeared to be unsuitable to the workers so as to maintain the homeostasis.
The system evolution was described by Morgan as; a cyclical process of Variation, selection and retention of selected system characteristics that allow the system to move to more complex forms of differentiation and integration order to allow the system to deal with opportunities and challenges posed by the environment. Natural selection on the other hand explains how living organisms adapts to different environments; this can be compared to the firms, which are operating in a very competitive environments like ours. The idea suggests that there is survival for the fittest; failure to survive in business is explained as the problem with adaptation. The fall of the communist states in the 1990`s and the decision of Tanzanian Government to become a free market state, led to the changes in the population of species, the environment was favourable and all species joined the competition. Since then our firm has been facing competition in terms of resources and customers.
There are a number of species in the population, others we share the same strengths and weaknesses and others seem to be stronger than us. Our managers failed to predict this situation; we are likely to go out of business in the near future if the situation is not alleviated. It would be a sad story to see the extinction of our specie, it is hard to predict the style of death, may be we will be swallowed by bigger species (merger and acquisition).
Lastly, in order for our organisation to live to this metaphor, the managers should bear in mind that, a system is perceive whole only when essential properties arise from the relationship between its parts (managers-workers-customers relationship). The behaviour of the system is a property of the whole rather than a sum of the behaviours of its component parts. The organisation needs to form the “ adaptive system” that has the capacity to adapt to and with its environment.
The Power Metaphor
The political power metaphor will be used to explain my organisation in terms of its management structure, hierarchy, dominance, oppression, and control and work relations. Pugh (1997:319) believes that the power metaphor is very complex because power is something that is undercover because people who have it tend to deny it. Pugh adds that, even those people who want power do not want to appear to have hunger for it. Many powerful people will deny that they have any real power, even though it is at their disposal.
My organisation is full of controlling people; the managers and head of departments will always be seen smiling while exercising their domineering power through strict rules and policies. Punishments for late comers (clocking system) and warning letters are common things at our organisation. Even heads of departments have too much power over the workers; the CEO approves this because he is not interested in dealing with staff at the lower levels, he has used is delegating power by shifting the responsibilities to the supervisors who walk the floor at all times.
However Pugh (1997) believes that power can have both good and bad effects depending on the levels of it. Some say that people need power to be effective in an organisation, that is true but some people (supervisors and managers) appear to have more of it than others. He suggests that there must be a source of power and to discover this we need not only to look at individuals but also their positions within the organisations. Metaphors relating to power can be used to explain our working life and organisational experience, therefore showing us all sources of power.
When Dahl (1990) defined power as “the ability to get another person to do something that he/she would not otherwise have done” he was aiming at the use of power in a sense that “fists speak louder than words”. Therefore power in a simple language can describe a person who does not speak but who acts using sharp words, guns, swords, fists to force others into submission, and this is a first source of power. At my organisation, managers and supervisors could only act by using warning letters, their languages are confined in their hands, they are rarely seen trying to initiate verbal communication to identify staffs` problems. The job has to be done first, the laws are there to be followed and adhered to, and failure to comply could lead to dismissal.
The authority or the ability to influence others (politics) is another source of power in my organisation. The person who speaks fluently is empowered and may also empower others to create, direct and dominate organisational relationships. Likewise, the CEOs` ability to delegate his power to the managers and supervisors always led to confusion as the employees do not know whose order to be followed first. Employees tend to be submissive; the reason for this is that, most people view their jobs as means to an end therefore limiting the organisation influence over them.
Owners of businesses have power over their employees i.e. “it is my business, I own it, I make the decisions”. Under these circumstances employees have to wait for orders and directives from the business owners. In my organisation the managers could not raise issues that are against the business owner, people had to die with their grievances. The fist is tightened firmly, the blood vessels are constricted therefore there is limited flow of blood to the brain, they are stiff-necked, the managers can neither talk nor listen to workers because their fists are sharper and stronger than their brains.
In democracies or power to rule (Greek – Kratia –cracy) rests with the people (demos) and exercised through participative representation, co-determination or coalition. But Autocracy as opposed to Democracy an individual or a small group of people through force and ability to reward followers holds the power to govern, control and own resources. A good example is when investors or shareholders determine the wages and rewards system within an organisation. Like wise in my organisation, employees do not have a say over their pay and rewards, everything has been organised by the top managers.
Conclusion
We have seen how metaphors can be used to explain an organisation. A situation is uncertain if we cannot identify an appropriate paradigm to associate it with. However metaphors tend to limit the ways of seeing positive things. Some people cannot work unless they are controlled, may be the metaphors should also address the positive sides of power and control.
The use of biological metaphor should also agree to the facts that living things were not created to live forever and death is inevitable, may here we should also talk of the nature of death i.e. natural, suicidal or caused by external forces. We need to extend the metaphors further because, every thought comes with a value already tacked onto it by the brain processing system, and the first cognition stands if no further thoughts are given.
Lastly, my organisation will benefit from these metaphors by using them as mirrors to reflect on leaders. This will offer them an opportunity to view themselves from a different angle.
Bibliography
1. Pugh, S.D (1997) Organisational Theory, 4th Ed, London: Penguin books
2.Clegg, C., 1994, " Psychology and information technology: the study of cognition in organizations." British Journal of Psychology, November 1994.
3. Hill, R. C. and M. Levenhagen, 1995, "Metaphors and Mental Models: Sense making and Sense giving in Innovative and Entrepreneurial Activities." Journal of Management 21(6): 1057-1074.
4.Morgan, G., 1983, "More on Metaphor: Why We Cannot Control Tropes In Administrative Science." Administrative Science Quarterly 28: 601-607.
5.Morgan, G., 1986, Images of the Organization, Newbury Park, California, Sage Press.
6.Nietzsche, F. W., 1979, . Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, D. Breazeale, ed., Atlantic Highlands, NJ, Humanities Press.
7.Weick, K. E., 1979, The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2nd ed., Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley.
8. Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of meaning, Cambridge MA; Harvard university Press
9. Levins, R. (1984). The strategy of model building in Population Biology; Cambridge MA
10. Markman, E.M 91980) Principles of Organisation in the learning of the Hierarchical Relations –Cognition 8: 227 –241
11.Paton, R.C. (1993) Towards a Metaphorical Biology- Biology and Philosophy 7:279-294
Assignment 2
