Exploring Morgan’s Metaphors: Theory, Research, and Practice in Organizational Studies

Gareth Morgan’s monumental book, Images of Organization, revolutionized the field of organization theory. In honor of Morgan’s classic text, this edited volume, Exploring Morgan’s Metaphors: Theory, Research, and Practice in Organizational Studies, illustrates how Morgan’s eight metaphors inform research, practice, and organizational intervention in a variety of contexts. Including contributions from well-known experts in their fields, specifically, Joep Cornelisen, Cliff Oswick, David Grant, Hari Tsoukas,  and Gareth Morgan, this new text offers fresh perspectives and sets forth new metaphors for conceptualizing organizations in today’s workforce. Readers will gain insights and guidelines into the different ways that Morgan’s metaphors and metaphorical thinking can be used to better understand organizational life, as well as how to study and develop organizations.

Anders Örtenblad is Professor of Organization and Leadership at the faculty of social sciences, Nord University, Norway. His main research interests are fashionable management ideas and their travel in space and time; organizational learning and the learning organization; management education, and the use of metaphors for and in the study of organizations and education. He has published articles in journals such as Human Relations, Management Learning, and International Journal of Management Reviews, and edited books published by Edward Elgar Publishing, Routledge and Sage.  

Kiran Trehan is Professor of Leadership and Enterprise Development at Birmingham University. She has published a number of journal articles, policy reports, books and book chapters in the field. Her work has been supported by grants from research councils, government departments, regional and local agencies, and the private sector. She has been a Guest Editor for multiple journals and serves in national advisory roles that shape debates and policy in leadership, diversity, and enterprise development.

Linda L. Putnam is a Research Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her current research interests include discourse analysis in organizations, negotiation and organizational conflict, and gender.  She is the co-editor of twelve books, including The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Communication (2014), Building Theories of Organization: The Constitutive Role of Communication (2009) and the author/co-author of over 180 journal articles and book chapters. She is a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association, a Fellow of the International Communication Association, and a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Academy of Management.