Images of an organisation: the use of metaphor in a multinational company

This article presents the results of a metaphor‐based investigation of managers, supervisors and team leaders drawn from the UK subsidiaries of a large US multinational. Participants were asked two main questions, namely: if you were asked to compare your organisation to an animal – what animal would it be? and If the organisation was part of a car – what part of a car would it be? The selection of animals equates to aspects of organisational change. Images of heavy and slow moving animals exemplified low levels of change activity while lean, fast moving, and often predatory animals portray an adaptive organisation responding to a turbulent environment. The car part descriptions were largely concerned with aspects of corporate strategy and primarily conveyed the characteristics “movement” and “direction”. The article discusses these insights in relation to the case study organisation. It also considers the role, status and utility of metaphor in the study of organisations.