Cultural Metaphors: Their Use in Management Practice as a Method for Understanding Cultures

Abstract

This paper describes cultural metaphors and how they can be used in business and related areas. A cultural metaphor is any activity, phenomenon, or institution with which members of a given culture emotionally and/or cognitively identify. As such, cultural metaphors reflect the underlying values of a culture. Examples of national cultural metaphors include the Japanese garden, the Chinese family altar, and American Football. Ordinarily business students and managers have only a limited amount of time for studying culture and the manner in which it interfaces with their work. Cultural metaphors provide a quick, efficient, and easily understandable way of responding to this challenge. They build upon the perspective of cross-cultural dimensions, arguably the most important advance in cross-cultural understanding in the past forty years.