Root Metaphor Research Articles

On Paths from Angst to Redemption: Southeast-Asian Root Metaphors and Key Scenarios

On Paths from Angst to Redemption: Southeast-Asian Root Metaphors and Key Scenarios

From sequence to simultaneity: tonalities and organizational change in digitalized organizations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to inspire a different way of thinking about digitalization and organizational change by theorizing simultaneity as an alternative to the otherwise dominant root metaphor of sequence in the literature on digitalization and organizational change.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical argument is based on a reading of central contributions to the literature on digital technology and organizational change, and particularly inspired by the work positing a constitutive entanglement of technology and organization. We argue for an extension of this line of thinking with a reading of Latour’s notion tonalities. The relevance of the theoretical argument is demonstrated through an illustrative empirical example of the phenomenon digital-ready legislation.FindingsThe paper identifies sequence as a root metaphor in the organization and digital change literature. It develops a simultaneity view and illustrates its relevance through the example of digital-ready legislation, pinpointing how technological, organizational and legal elements are attuned to one another at the same time rather than in sequence.Practical implicationsThe sequentiality view has dominated the change management research, which has travelled from research into practice. The simultaneity view has the potential to offer a new approach to planning change, with a focus on the simultaneous alignment of, e.g. legal, organizational and technological elements.Originality/valueThe paper offers an alternative to dominant views on digitalization and organizational change, drawing on an overlooked notion in Latour’s scholarship, namely tonalities. This has potential to qualify the entanglement thesis and develop simultaneity as a new metaphor for understanding digital change.

Invisible Digi-Work: Compensating, connecting, and cleaning in digitalized organizations

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical vocabulary that allows us to better understand not only the visible effects of digitalization on organizations but also the invisible work that arises in and around the digitalized organization to prepare, maintain and repair its key features. Drawing on feminist science and technology studies and their classic concept of invisible work, we challenge some of the dominant spatial root metaphor assumptions in current research and develop an alternative metaphoric of digital work and the digitalized organization. We develop the theoretical concept of invisible digi-work as a corollary to the already established concept of digital work and flesh out three types of work that we conceptualize as invisible connecting, compensating and cleaning work. This analytical framework captures aspects of work that tend be out of sight and devalued in dominant accounts. As such, it represents a theoretical alternative to imageries of digital spaces that lead to an overemphasis on the affordances of new digital technologies, establishing an alternative ground for interrogating work at margins, which is essential to the constitution of digitalized organizations. Theorizing invisible digi-work is in line with recent calls in organization studies to go beyond the visual and investigate the indirect and less visible implications of digitalization.

COVID-19 and Religion

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a social drama in which churches, government, and individual actors have played prominent roles. While neo-conservative evangelicals have resisted governmental and scientific overreach in the name of “faith over fear”, liberal religious groups have joined in government and medical efforts for the good of the commons, offered comfort and assurance to those suffering, and called for support of the poor at home and abroad. Religions have turned right and left, from apocalyptic “resets” of global order to new calls for social justice. In this context, the root metaphor of the epidemic has been called up as a historical construct that helps to conceptualize, analyze, and act upon the COVID-19 crisis. Searching the past helps us see that not everything about COVID-19 as a social drama is a new or unheard-of challenge. For example, there are new evocations of the black death of 14th-century Europe that became a crisis in the church, as well as the great Lisbon earthquake in 1755, which upended the confidence of the European Enlightenment. Another way to appraise the dimensions of the COVID-19 outbreak is to call on the varied approaches characteristic of the sociology of religion, that is, to consider how ideology and belief are socially constructed in order to account for new intellectual responses to societal challenges. Does religion always produce the “collective effervescence” Durkheim posited? Does religious change always arrive downstream of cultural change, or can it also become an independent variable? This article attends primarily to the sharp responses of conservative religious expression in the face of attention-getting upheaval, which has readily translated into right-wing political action and electioneering. But the social uplift and altruism of liberal religion is not neglected either. Thus, this article provides an account of how science and governmental action have both been challenged and embraced in response to COVID-19. As such, it is not an empirical study stemming from new Pew-like social polling. Rather, it is a wide overview rooted in sociological methods and theory for tracking religion historically and presently in America in a manner that aims to inform a discussion of how COVID-19 has impacted religion and religious expression, and vice versa.

When Harry, the human, met Sally, the software robot: Metaphorical sensemaking and sensegiving around an emergent digital technology

Robotic process automation (RPA) is often used in organisational digitalisation efforts to automate work processes. RPA, and the software robots at its heart, is an equivocal and contentious technology. Adopting the products of theorising approach, this study views metaphors as central sensemaking and sensegiving devices that shape the interpretation of RPA among stakeholders towards a preferred reality of ways of seeing and experiencing software robots. The empirical materials are drawn from research in three Australasian organisations that have implemented RPA. Grounding our analysis in the domains-interaction model, we identified three root metaphors: person, robot and tool, their constitutive conceptual metaphors, and intended use as heuristics devices. Our findings show that metaphor is a powerful device that employees rely on to make sense of their experiences with a new digital technology that can potentially shape their roles, work practices and job design. In addition, managers and automation team members intentionally leverage metaphors to shape others’ perceptions of a software robot’s capabilities and limitations, its implication for human work and its expanding benefits for organisations over time, among others. Metaphor as a precursor to more formal theory provides scholars with a vocabulary to understand disparate experiences with an emergent automation technology that can be further developed to generate a theory of seeing automation and working with automated agents.

Unpacking the circular economy: A problematizing review

AbstractTransitioning to a circular economy (CE) model has been proposed to solve many grand environmental challenges. While research on CE has been extensively reviewed, less is known about the implicit underlying assumptions of this work. Understanding these assumptions is critical as they typically go unchallenged yet play a significant role in shaping research fields. In this paper we conduct a problematizing review to critically analyse and make explicit the in‐house, root metaphor and ideological assumptions that inform the framing of CE. Firstly, we demonstrate various in‐house assumptions about CE, such as an emphasis on the business case for CE and the relationship between CE and corporate sustainability. Secondly, root metaphor assumptions include circularity and industrial relationships resembling biological metabolisms. Finally, the dominant ideological assumptions‐neoliberalism and ecological modernization‐guide scholarly thinking about growth, consumption and profit maximization. Based on our analysis and drawing on the ongoing CE debates within broader environmental studies, we suggest new agendas for future research. We contribute to the growing literature on CE in business, management and organization studies by identifying assumptions that may be misleading or limiting for future CE research, as well as to the conversations on grand challenges by discussing the implications of how challenges and solutions are framed.

Paradigm, specialty, pragmatism: Kuhn's legacy to methodological pluralism

AbstractAlongside claims that ‘the methodological pluralism debate has been won’, worries grow just why the victory is not shared by the wider social sciences and applied disciplines. Remedies are sought but mainly tinkering on presentation tactics. Against this status quo, this article argues for a critical reflection on theoretic approaches to methodological pluralism. Seemingly convenient for legitimating diverse methodologies though, the Paradigm root metaphor has from the very beginning trapped methodological pluralism theorising in a no‐win battle. Drawing on Kuhn's later perspective of scientific change as ‘proliferation of specialties’, this article posits that the enhanced evolutionist metaphor fits better with methodological pluralism by depicting the increasing variety of methodologies as deepened division of labour and combined‐use of methodologies as enlarging human competence. In Kuhn's spirit, this article calls for a strongly pluralist, responsive approach, not so much in flexibly ‘managing paradigms’ or ‘living with incommensurability’ as in reflexively deliberating the comparative advantages of adopting different theoretic approaches in terms of efficacy in facilitating compelling theorising and sharing ideas with practitioners.

The Ecological Root Metaphor for Higher Education: Searching for Evidence of Conceptual Emergence within University Education Strategies

Recent research has suggested that Higher Education would benefit from the adoption of institutional models that relinquish ties to industrial thinking and associated metaphors. This long-established, market-led managerial perspective has been colonised by neoliberal values that work against education. A move towards models that have greater resonance with ecological thinking is considered to better align the institutional purpose with tackling the wicked problems of the current century and promoting social justice. This paper considers the role of root metaphors in promoting and maintaining an ecological perspective and asks if there is any evidence for the emergence of ecological thinking in institutional education strategies that might support the development of the imagined future of the ecological university. Qualitative document analysis suggests that the move towards the adoption of the ecological root metaphor will require a punctuated change that is not compatible with the typical incremental nature of change within universities. The incremental adoption of ecological terminology may trigger an increase in pedagogic frailty if the root metaphor remains linked to the neoliberal ideology of consumerism. The construction of strategy documents needs to consider how key concepts are related to each other and how they can portray a coherent image of the institution’s ambitions.

Surveilled, harmonized, purified

The human body has long occupied a central role in religious praxis across the globe. Recent decades have witnessed a change in academic studies aimed at theorizing the body and its relationship with society and the cosmos. This article adds to this discourse by demonstrating the pervasiveness of the body as a root metaphor in medieval Chinese religious culture. The notion of the body as a microcosmic replica of the social, political, and metaphysical realms, and the need to synchronize it with the natural cycles of the universe, played a key role in the emerging doctrinal and liturgical schemes of Buddhism and Daoism, China’s two main organized religious traditions. Using the apocryphal medieval Buddhist scripture The Sutra of Trapusa and Bhallika as a case study, and reading it against the backdrop of earlier religious, medical, and philosophical texts, this article argues that visions of the body as an object of surveillance by the celestial authorities, and its purification and harmonization through ethical practices and ritual means, were hailed as the most significant religious activities in Buddhist and Daoist communities alike in medieval China, a feature that continues to occupy a central place in contemporary Chinese religious life.

A Literatur Review in Learning Organization

The learning organization idea represents a shift in how organizations are developed and grow. Within the training and development literature, staff development and individual learning were emphasized. This review undertakes a critical review of the confused and confusing literature on the learning organization. Draws on both psychological and organizational perspectives and focuses on the distinction between organizational learning and the concept of the learning organization. The discussion is centered around the issues of learning organization and the nature of learning organization. The issues include the neglect of intra-organizational phenomena and a lack of clarity regarding the treatment of the organization, the nature of learning itself, the lack of an accepted theory of what constitutes a learning organization's culture and climate, the impact of organizational size, the role of teamwork within the learning organization concept, and the fundamental question of whether the learning organization is a variable or a root metaphor. This article looks at some of the problems with the learning organization literature and then asks whether the learning organization is a concept that is applicable to organizations. Much of the literature on organizations doesn't take into account the unique nature of organizations in terms of their membership and the people with influence within them. Collaborative learning allows employees to gain new knowledge, skills, and attitudes by working together. Finally, it concludes with a consideration of the issues involved in creating a learning organization.

Disrupting Disruptions: Charting and Challenging Notions of Gender in Philippine Feminist Theologizing

The growing discipline of feminist theology in Asia and in the world, which involves many Filipinas, entails an increasing attentiveness to gender diversity beyond heteronormative expectations and a broader sense of solidarity among women and others who have experienced exclusion due to gender. An analysis of writings by Philippine feminist theologians Mary John Mananzan, Judette Gallares, and Agnes Brazal, using a threefold schema of “inclusion/addition,” “deconstruct and transform,” and “critique, reject, and start again,” reveals heteronormative gender assumptions and a pattern of moving beyond these. This shows that feminist theologizing is a very dynamic activity that adapts and responds to new ideas flexibly. One common theme that emerges out of feminist theologizing is the image of the babaylan, which provides an opportunity for greater solidarity with various gender identities as a vernacular resource and root metaphor.

Religion and the Environment in the Rhetoric of Thomas Berry and Pope Francis

Thomas Berry, geologian, has been called one of the leading commentators on religion and the environment. This paper compares Berry’s writings with Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’. Pope Francis and Berry both use the root metaphor of integral ecology that implies a connection and reciprocity with the universe. However, Berry focuses on the rights of the earth that has existed billions of years before humankind. Humans are part of the earth community. Pope Francis focuses on social relations between human beings and the consequences for the environment because of egoism and begins his analysis with the past 20 centuries. Berry does not disagree but gives a special place to the earth and believes once respect is given to the earth social problems will be solved. Pope Francis wants to awaken a dialogue, where Berry believes we have become locked into reified stories, some of them from the Judeo-Christian interpretation of the Bible. Berry uses the metaphor of a “new story.” His story leads to cosmogenesis, or a new created order. For both writers, the challenge is implementation before it is too late for the human community.

An Analysis of Metaphor in Sport News of thejakartapost.com

The tittle of this research paper is "An Analysis of Metaphor in Sport News of thejakartapost.com ". This research was conducted with the aim to describe, analyze the types also the meaning purpose of metaphors used in January 1st -31st 2021 sport news of thejakartapost.com. This research is included in research using a qualitative approach. The research data is in the form of word which is assumed to be a metaphor contained in the news. The main research instrument is the kinds of metaphor using Haser theory that transform to the research data classification table. Based on the results of research on the 75 articles in sport news of thejakartapost.com, it was found 20 articles which is using metaphor language. There are 43 metaphors and found 11 Absolute Metaphors (AB), 8 Dead Metaphors (DM), 4 Implied Metaphors (IM), 6 Mix Metaphors (MX), 5 Root Metaphors (RT), and 9 Primary Metaphors (PM). There are types of the usage of the metaphors in every sentence and phrase are almost the same, but the types of metaphor in the sentences and phrases are mostly using a primary and absolute metaphors.

Editorial:Narrative‐BasedApproaches in Psychological Research and Practice

Editorial:<scp>Narrative‐Based</scp>Approaches in Psychological Research and Practice

Antecedents of Organizational Culture in its Relevance with Change Management, Moderating Role of Transformational Leadership and Employee Empowerment An Analysis of HEI of Peshawar Region

The rationale of the research is to investigate the importance of organizational culture in a Dynamic era of 21st century where only those organizations remain triumphant who transform change in their business. Whenever organization focused on change they encounter intense resistant from their employees as well as for conceptualizing of organization, culture conceived either as a variable or as a root metaphor. Philosophical stance of research was based on positivism and follows more deductive approach for this study. Cross sectional data of ten private sector organizations of Peshawar region were chosen. The findings of the study were moderately interesting in terms of change management with the important role of leadership found insignificant p&gt; 0.051 and but shows weak relevance. However the results of organizational culture and change management were found significant P&lt; 0.01 at 1% level of significance. Recommendation portion of the study suggest us that for the success of an organization culture play pivotal role in the dynamic parameters of change. On the other hand the role of empowerment played significant role for producing better organizational culture. Keywords: Organizational Culture, Organizational change, Leadership, Empowerment.

Beyond nostalgia in the search for identity: Black liberation theology and the politics of reconciliation

Practitioners of Black liberation theology often reflect on the emergence of this theological expression by means of a nostalgic launch into the past, seeking ways to address some of today’s most pressing concerns. In this sense, much of what is known about Black liberation theology, including its identity, is premised on how we engage with nostalgia. However, the problem with the rendering of history through a nostalgic lens is our propensity to populate this reality with half-truths; in the process, we present an idealised version of events, sometimes ignoring the objective facts at our disposal. This is most evident in the tendency to look back at the ‘best’ of the past whilst comparing it with the ‘worst’ of the present.Contribution: The purpose of this contribution is not to focus narrowly on what Black liberation theology (or its practitioners) has done well because this has limited value. Instead, a more productive undertaking necessarily includes what the late Vuyani Vellem refers to when he asks the question: ‘What lessons has Black theology not learned?’ Often regarded in binary terms, liberation and reconciliation as root metaphors in Black theological thought provide a framework through which practitioners are challenged anew to reflect on some of South Africa’s most pressing concerns.

Framing Circular Economy: A Problematizing Review of the Assumptions

This paper reviews the diagnostic, motivational and prognostic circular economy framing of business and management scholars and makes the assumptions embedded in their framing explicit benefiting from a problematizing review. The review demonstrates various in-house assumptions about the circular economy with emphasis business models, business case, circular economy-corporate sustainability relationship, root metaphor assumptions about circularity, industrial relationships resembling that of biological metabolisms, and waste, finally ideological assumptions of natural capitalism that guide scholarly thinking about growth, profit maximization, consumption, ownership. The paper discusses these assumptions' implications for the growing circular economy literature within business and management and opens this domain with new conversations drawing on ecological economics and industrial ecology.

A Qualitative Study on Representations of Intellectual and Relational Capital Among a Group of Managers in an Italian Trade-Union.

The way in which managers perceive their organization's intellectual and social capital has an impact in shaping their choices and how they lead change. The aim of the study was to explore how the managers of a trade union framed the role of its intangible assets in a context of organizational change. A qualitative approach was used; 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the leaders of a trade union and then analyzed using the method of thematic analysis. Particular attention was paid to the metaphors the managers used to narrate change. The hypothesis underlying this approach is that metaphors are a meaningful resource in that they can convey how organization and its intangible assets are framed. In the results, three “root metaphors” are illustrated—the trade union seen either as a system of domination, an organism, or a culture—together with the consequences of each of these images for the perception and value attributed to the trade union's intangible assets. In conclusion, implications for changing management practices and for further research are discussed.

Ternary Taiji Models of the Traditional Chinese Self: Centered on Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist Cultures

Traditional Chinese culture is commonly viewed as a trinity of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Originally emerging from the Book of Changes, the concept of Taiji has a profound interactive influence with Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist thought in the history of Chinese philosophy. Because the construction of self-models is often closely related to thinking modes, as a root metaphor in the Chinese culture, the diagram of Taiji that best fits Chinese yin–yang thinking can be used as a prototype to explain the self-structure, the process of self-cultivation, and the realm of person making in the context of Chinese culture. This article reviews the Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist Taiji model of the self and the theory of self-cultivation realms based on these self-models and examines the similarities and differences among them. The ternary Taiji models of the self can complement one another and contribute to a more comprehensive, profound, and accurate understanding of the pluralistic connotations of the traditional Chinese self.

Transcendence and immanence into or onto creative pluralism in South Africa

Two philosophical tools are used in this article, namely (1) that of philosophical-pluralism and (2) transcendent pluralism as a kind of glue to enhance our examining of creative pluralism. There is a diversity implant in positive modus of understanding this pluralistic pristine of creative pluralism within transcendence modus. To help facilitate this pluralistic pristine, the author makes use of three constructivist paradigms that are distinguished and used, namely (1) exogenous constructivism (rooted in a mechanistic metaphor) emphasising the reconstruction of structures preformed in the environment; (2) endogenous constructivism (rooted in an organismic metaphor) emphasising the coordination of previous organismic structures and (3) dialectical constructivism (rooted in a contextualistic metaphor) emphasising the construction of new structures out of organism and environmental interaction.Contribution: The aim of this article is to present a coherent metatheory by specifying the boundary conditions in which each root metaphor (constructive pluralism) best applies. These above-mentioned versions of pluralism as tools are a reminiscence and a jubilee of the efforts made by sapiens through diversity onto or into pluralism to enable the religious hamlet to think and share. This pluralistic approach of orientation, I hope, will empower sapiens in their respective hamlets to define, articulate and designate to enhance their own epistemological and ontological vantage points wherefrom their individual, coherent and contextual ways of thinking, acting and projecting their lives in a positive modus by emphasising the reconstructions of their performance in their environment.