Organization Metaphor

Diversity is the acceptance and embrace of the differences among beings, creatures, beliefs, norms and values of the living beings. According to Mats Slvesson, an appealing metaphor may stand in the way of a less elegant but more accurate and elaborate description. In my opinion, the metaphors employed will not always illuminate the researchers’ basic view of the phenomenon. Because of the limitations of current metaphors, complex understanding is perhaps more often derived from a synthesis of different metaphors than from a single one. Due to the reasons above, this short essay will critically analyze the phenomenon of diversity based on the below two metaphors: instrument of domination and brain.
Instrument of domination is a metaphor which focuses on the imbalanced power within organization. In the view of Morgan, organizations are class-based phenomena characterized by deep-rooted divisions between the interests of capital and labour. For example, white-collar workers are regarded as secure and privileged middle-class institutions while blue-collar workers are not. According to this metaphor, while there does diversity exist among people with different power, those, who with more power is easier to push others than the employees with less power. If this persists, diversity can create problems, for example, low power employees may increase their resistance and more serious, they may resist the powerful manager, argue for their own power and last lead to organization chaos and lower controlling power. In sum, to a certain degree, instrument of domination metaphor do not support diversity and think diversity can create problems and is not profitable.

Strictly speaking, we may blind ourselves to the idea that nondominating forms of organization may be possible. Besides, this metaphor merely articulates an extreme form of left-wing ideology. Hence, next, distinct view of diversity will be analyzed through brain metaphor.

The root metaphor of brain shows that