Is it alive? LO16396

Linda Lord (lslord@teleport.com)
Sun, 28 Dec 1997 20:47:11 -0800 (PST)

Replying to LO16362, Steve Eskow --

You quoted LO16361 as

>In this view the metaphor-as-lens is not "true": every metaphor shows a
>design by what it leaves out as well as by what it shows us.

and you added

>As David points out, all these are different fictions, different metaphor,
>with no one of them having ultimate validity. For those of us who are
>practitioner the usefulness of a particular fiction, or metaphor, is in
>the value we find when we "read" a particular situation through that
>metaphor.

I bring to your attention "Images of Organizations" a very well done
exploration of various metaphors applied to understanding org by Gareth
Morgan (Sage 1986).

Considering taking the discussion to a slightly different perspective I
also bring to your attention a very recent book by the Director of MIT's
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Steven Pinker. The title is "How the
Mind Works" and it's truly delightfully written, I hardly even know I'm
learning while I turn the pages raptly. I imagine one of our challenges
in examining organizations is trying to get a place to put our fulcrums-in
other words, it may be the viewer disorting the view as much as the
environmental noise or organizational culture or ??????variables yet to be
named. I think you'll like Pinker's approach and it may give a little
more spice to the dialogue on-line.

-- 

lslord@teleport.com (Linda Lord)

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>