Training Blog

In Images of Organisation, Gareth Morgan talks about learning the skill of “reading” situations. This is particularly important for people dealing with business situations. “Skilled readers develop the knack of reading the situations with various scenarios in mind and of forging actions that seem appropriate to the readings thus obtained”. The metaphor “implies a way of thinking and a way of seeing that pervade how we understand the world generally”.

Morgan wasn’t intending to categorise different types of business, rather offer different ways of looking at them. The metaphorical lens can help people understand their experiences with them.
Morgan uses eight metaphors to create “images of organization”:

• A Machine – Businesses are often designed and operated as if they are machines, with highly visible structures and procedures. They offer continuity and security, but tend to fit people into jobs rather than allow much creativity
• An Organism – This means seeing the businesses as behaving in similar ways to our own biological mechanisms. When the environment around us changes, so do our bodies. Successful businesses are often adaptable and open to change. This may mean that its structures and procedures are less fixed.
• A Brain – Seeing a business as a brain means realising it has to be able to respond to change and also capable of rational thinking and intelligent change. Being open to inquiry and self-criticism often produces the ability to innovate: as Morgan puts it, businesses become “learning systems” that are able to self-organise.
• A Culture – When you speak of businesses as cultures, we are referring to the fact that they are made up of sets of values, perspectives and principles, held and sustained by the people who work there.
• A Political System – Businesses are not only about structures, cultures and hierarchies, they are also about politics. Politics in this context is about the social relations between individuals and groups in a business that involves authority or power. Organisational charts that plot the lines of communications between people will reveal some, but not all of the politics.
• A Psychic Prison – This more abstract metaphor suggests that some businesses are constrained by themselves. Conventional or usual, ways of organising work and thinking about it can limit change and the adoption of alternative business strategies. Looking at the business in these terms encourages us to dig beneath the surface in order to see the restrictions real or otherwise that may be affecting the business and its ability to operate successfully.
• Flux and Transformation – Morgan suggests that the secret to understanding businesses from this perspective lies in understanding the constant change shaping our lives. To understand a business we have to appreciate it as an ever changing thing. It grows & regenerates in order to survive.
• A Vehicle for Domination – This metaphor introduces the idea that businesses can be or an attempt to be dominant. They can or try to impose their will on others. Again it encourages us to dig below the surface in order to understand and appreciate how business can exert power and influence.

Morgan’s framework is considered to be useful as one way of understanding business. It’s not intended to suggest fixed types of businesses. Businesses are likely to be a mixture of different metaphors, which can change over time, or according to circumstance. The metaphors can help to highlight the complexities of a business and their potential impact.