Communicating Organizational Development : Metaphors in Strategic Plans

The use of metaphors to communicate and manage organizational development is examined. Metaphors can be attractive or alienating, persuasive or perplexing, disturbing and even banal, depending on their context and interpretation. Drawing on the strategic management literature and applying discourse analysis, we identify and contrast different types of metaphors that are particularly useful for strategic communication. We propose a metaphorical continuum and illustrate it using texts from a single university’s six strategic plans over a 20 year period. We discovered that the university’s rise in the global rankings was accompanied by an evolution in metaphorical language from the techno-rationalism of re-engineering to the nurturing of organic development. We conclude that a mixture of conceptual and generative metaphors is helpful to balance tensions among stakeholders with conflicting interests, and thus create a more inclusive organization. Our analysis leads to suggestions on how metaphors can be used to make sense of organizational development, and specifically for communicating strategic plans to attract and engage stakeholders.

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