Organizational Metaphors - Essay Example

Running Header: Reflective Essay on Organizational Metaphors Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code & Name: Date of Submission: Reflective Essay on Organizational Metaphors Yousefi (2005, p. 2) suggests that organization is developed wherever individuals come together to achieve something. Organizations across the world are confronted with obscurities and ambiguities. This challenge makes us to scrutinize their external and internal environment that leads us to develop understandable images of an organization. During the process, our cognition of organization and reflective faculty play vital parts. Organizations are easily subjected to using metaphors to describe them (McKenna 2000, P. 425). Every management and organization theories are based on metaphors or implicit images that enable us to see, imagine, and understand situations in partial ways. Metaphors are known to develop insight but can also distort. Metaphors invite people to view the similarities while ignoring the differences. It stretches imagination in a manner that can develop strong insights, but at the peril of misrepresentation. Organization metaphors that have been reflected in this essay are machine metaphor, organism metaphor, culture metaphor, and brain metaphor. The members of group were Anisa Patel, Khaleel Hussain, and Great Maduka. The group started with gathering members who would later be involved in the group presentation. Since the group is formed by a number of members, it qualifies to be an organization with an aim of achieving required results in the assignment. This organization can be visualized as machine. This metaphor has origins in the worldview, and treats organizations and systems as enormous mechanizing, consisting of parts that functions together to make an entire operation successful (Robbins 2001, p. 91). The group that was formed comprised of different parts, which include the members and leader of the group. Taylor was one of the most eminent individuals among those who started the organization as machine metaphor. The desired operation of the machine is to operate efficiently and this implies to making organization more efficient. There was use of reduction analysis to determine rules and laws for the environment where group discussions were held. There was little difference between the non-human and human parts of the group. In particular, group members were perceived as parts of the machine itself. The goal of the group was to improve the efficiency of each and every part of what considered as the whole mechanical system. This implies that the group was working hard to make sure that every member in the group is contributing and gaining to the maximum from the discussion held. Creativity and innovation in contributions was also the main aspects that were emphasized to the members in order to improve the efficiency of the organisation. Every member in the group was challenged to come up with his or her unique idea concerning organisations and management. Additionally, the group had its leader who was controlling the plan of discussions. The leader was mandated with a role of informing the group members on the venue and time of holding group meetings. Being at the top of hierarchy, group leader was responsible of seeing into it that every member attends the group meeting on time. When the mechanistic viewpoint is used, it has profound implications for the manner that we act and view within the world. When a system is perceived as a machine, this means that it is being controlled by something or someone. Metaphors of machines are related with structures of hierarchy, where something or someone, position at the peak of the pecking order, has final guidance on the machine. Rooted in the reductionist paradigm, the machine in metaphor is made of parts and each has predictable effect and cause relationships with the other parts. In the machine, every event is started by another part. Due to prominent cause and effect relationships, a system that is operating under machine principles should operate in a predictable way (Odubiyi 2011). When anything in the system goes amiss, the summary is that it should be feasible to correct it by scrutinizing the root cause. The group members are the major components that helped to maintain the discussion and hence resulting to quality contributions. When the members were vibrant during discussions, there was inducement to encourage inactive members to start contributing. The machine metaphor has been found to work effectively specifically in organisations that are associated with huge production of similar products. The group was concern in producing a huge number of ideas that are inclined only to organisational management. Additionally, the metaphor is found to fit well within a stable environment and where the organisation human elements are complaint. This is inline with the group activities since discussions and presentations were all held under excellent academic environment and also the members were bound to stick by the rules of the group. It is also important to indicate that organisations that are run on principles of machine can sometimes tend to adapt change in a slow manner since the human factor is viewed as elements. Due to some few limitations that were presented by the machine metaphors, it turned out to be of essence to apply organism metaphor. The proposal of utilizing organism was initiated by Bertalanffy and was the main pioneer of idea that living organisms might be perceived as open to their environments instead of closed separated systems favoured by the classical analytical technique. The Bertalanffy idea has gained more prominence where many people have utilized ecological, biological, and organic metaphors to explain human organisations. Due to human behaviour, it was hard for the leader to make sure that everything ran according to the group plan. The organism metaphor is related with a varying view of systems than machine metaphor (Vasiloaia 2009, p. 165). From the group leader point of view, all events were expected to be guided by something or someone. Due to human nature, organic metaphor is applicable to systems that are viewed as self-regulating or autonomous. Members of the group tended to fix the time and venue of meeting that fitted their own programs. Organism metaphor treat organisation as an integrated system of interrelated relationships and processes. Though, group leader had a mandate of controlling the group, there was sense of self-discipline among majority of members. Self-discipline was the main factor that allowed members to keep on attending discussions and maintaining punctuality. This discipline is counted as the main factor that contributed to innovation and creativity that emerged on the entire process. According to Kendall (2001, p. 187), organism metaphors are participatory and they place the person within the system. In this metaphor, individuals exist inside the system and they are part of it, instead of being outside it and controlling it. All members were part of the group and they operated within the group. The organism metaphor is based on participation, harmony, and developing balance via relationships with others. As much as the leader could have wanted the group to be as effective as a machine, there was need to have harmony among the members in order to cultivate the seed of quality participation, creative contributions and effective leadership. The organism model eliminates the need of where people are either treated as dehumanised parts of the machine or treated as controllers (Handy 2000, p. 133). Members within the organisation are perceived as living sentient beings, with feelings, characters, and thoughts. There has been a regular tendency in management of organisation towards metaphors of organic, and specifically towards organisation models to view organisations as members of complex ecosystems. In an ecological point of view, the organisation is assumed to exist as part of an ecological system, competing with the rest for survival as indicated in Darwinian natural selection principles (Humberto & Varela 2003, p. 96). In context of this metaphor is that the solution to survival for the human organisation is for it to discover a specialist position, and to become particularly adapted for that position, hence reducing the effect of direct competition from the rest. The group was able to come up with rules and regulations that guided it throughout the process and also the group leader worked hard to cultivate self-drive and discipline among members. This was seen as a niche for the group to proceed efficiently and emerge as an outstanding organisation among other groups. The members adapted to carrying out extensive researches in order to cope with required outcomes. Skills in research were the key to success of the group. High skills in communication were also utilized as the main pillar of discussions and hence managing in keep the group intact. Since the group was viewed as a part of a compound ecosystem, it interacted and acted within environment or a wider context. The wider context of groups includes aspects of academics and where need emerged there was interaction between groups. To utilize a term from theory of cybernetic, this model is an open system. The organisation as an organism also intermingles with other organisations in its surroundings, and as they interact among themselves, this develops adaptation and change (Humberto & Varela 2003, p. 97). Therefore, this metaphor mainly focuses on the significance of cooperation. The recognition of collaboration between organisations and their surroundings is one of the major strength of the organism image. Organisational ecology allows persons to comprehend the correlation between organisations and their surrounds. Majority of contemporary societies share a lot in common although it would be inappropriate to ignore cross-national variations in culture since it is of great importance. The path of history has shaped many differences in national social views and characteristics of the life meaning and in national style and philosophies of management and organisation. For instance, our group relations among members and concept of work were dissimilar from those in the other groupings. Culture is also viewed as a property of an autonomously defined social unit. (Asim 2005, p. 5). This is unit whose members share a considerable number of common experiences addressing internal and external problems. In the context of the group, all members shared a common goal that was to accomplish task ahead. Over the period of discussions the members of group developed a shared view of the way the environment around them works. The culture of being innovative and extensive researching was nurtured among group members. The shared view of the world is known to have led to the formation of fundamental beliefs and assumptions that have worked sufficiently to be ignored. The basic beliefs and assumptions were learnt in the process of tackling challenges encountered by the group. Therefore, culture is viewed as a learnt result of a group experience and it is mainly found where there is a definable group with a considerable past of togetherness (Robert 2006, p. 2). Organisations are sub-societies that contain their own distinguishing patterns of sub-culture and cultures. A certain organisation may perceive itself as a family or a tight-knit team that trusts in working as one. The other may see itself as the best in the market and intending to maintain the status quo. Other organisation may be highly fragmented, separated into groups that have varying aspirations as to what their organisation should be or group that think about the world in very different ways. Such patterns of shared meaning or belief, integrated or fragment, and backed by different operating rituals and norms can apply a decisive force on the total ability of the organisation to tackle challenges it faces. In the context of the group, every member understood the need of the group to work together while focusing on the main aim to be achieved. Rules that were set by the group served as norms and rituals. Every member had pledged to be punctual and to be committed to all meetings. There was experiment done by an American psychologist where he increasingly removed amounts of the brains of rats that had been trained to run in a maze. It was found that, as far as the visual cortex was not removed to avoid blindness, the researcher could remove up to 90% of their cortex without huge deterioration in their ability to manoeuvre their way through the maze (Morgan 2006, p. 71). This is not true to any man made machines. If 90% of radio components are removed, it will completely cease working. It is also possible to remove significant quantities of the motor cortex without paralyzing any of muscles groups. The only issue that occurs is a general reduction of performance of motor. The brain is incomparable with anything else. The brain has been evaluated as a holographic system of laser science. Holography utilizes non-lenses cameras to record information in a manner that stores the whole in every part (Morgan 2006, p. 99). The interacting light beams develop a pattern of interference that scatters the recorded information on hologram, which can then be used to reproduce the initial information. If shattered, any single piece can be utilized to redevelop the whole image. Holography shows that it is feasible to develop processes where the whole can be stored in every part, in manner that each part represents the whole. Neuroscience indicates that brain works in similar manner of holography where memory is spread in the entire brain and hence can be reconstructed from any of the parts. This explains why the rats retained capability to function sensibly fine even after huge portions of their brain had been extracted. The values, visions, and sense of purpose that holds organisation together can be utilized as a means of helping every individual absorb and understand the challenge and mission of the whole enterprise. With holography, it is possible to encode major elements of the entire organisation in the codes that unites its members. Every member in the group understood the values, vision, and operating norms of the group so as to develop a capacity for every person to be part and act in a manner that represented the whole. This means that every member of the group held an important role of making sure that the goals of group were achieved. In another perspective, constructing the whole into parts of organisation can be done via the development of effective information systems. Information systems are accessible from various nodes developing a possibility for persons in an entire organisation, even those in remote locations, to be fully participating in an evolving system of organisational intelligence and memory (Harari 1999, p. 65). Due some unforeseen circumstances, some members of the group could not be able to attend every discussion but they could contribute via other means such as emails and phones. The members are able to contribute and learn from the organisation information base and the ideas articulated. In conclusion, organizations are highly viewed in contexts of metaphors that describe them. The group was viewed as a machine to some degree since it was formed from parts that functioned together to make an entire operation successful. There was use of reduction analysis to determine rules and laws. The efficiency of system was ensured through creativity and innovations. Metaphors of machines are related with structures of hierarchy. Because the group was not totally viewed as a machine, the organism metaphor came into play. The organism metaphor is related with a varying view of systems than machine metaphor. Organic metaphor is applicable to systems that are viewed as self-regulating. There was sense of self-discipline among majority of members. The organization is assumed to survive as part of a system of ecology, competing with the rest for survival. Culture is viewed as a property of an autonomously defined social unit. This is unit whose members share a considerable number of common experiences addressing internal and external problems. All members shared a common goal that was to accomplish task ahead. The brain is incomparable with any man made machine. Holography shows that it is feasible to develop processes where the whole can be stored in every part, in manner that each part represents the whole. It is possible to encode major elements of the entire organization in the codes that unites its members. References Asim, K 2005, Matching People with Organizational Culture, Business Management Group, Inc., Newport Beach. Handy, C. 2000, Understanding Organizations, Oxford University Press, Oxford University. Harari, O 1999, ‘The brain-based organization,’ Management Review, vol. 83, no. 6, pp. 54-84. Humberto, M & Varela, F 2003, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Sage Publications, London. Kendall, J 2001, ‘Metaphors and methodologies,’ Living Beyond the Systems of Machine, vol. 7, no. 3. Pp. 174-211. McKenna, E 2000, Business Psychology and Organisational Behaviour, Psychology Press Ltd, East Sussex. Morgan G 2006, Images of Organization, Sage Publications, Inc., London. Odubiyi, J 2011, ‘The role of the machine metaphor in mixed-initiative organizational leadership,’ Business Management, viewed 10 February 2011, < http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Role-of-the-Machine-Metaphor-in-Mixed-initiative-Organizational-Leadership&id=59738>. Robbins, S 2001, Understanding Organizations, Oxford University Press, Oxford University. Robert, Y 2006, What is Culture in Organizations?, pp. 1-8. Vasiloaia, M 2009, ‘Managing Metaphorical Images of Organization,’ Economy Transdisciplinarity Cognition, vol. 2, no. 7, pp. 161-168. Yousefi, M 2005, ‘Organisational metaphors’, Business Administration and Marketing, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-14. Read More