Metaphors, organizations and water: Generating new images for environmental sustainability

Abstract

Research across the social sciences and related fields has made it clear that metaphors underwrite both scientific and everyday thinking. Gareth Morgan’s work in this area, most vividly developed in his classic book Images of Organization, illustrates how metaphors underwrite thinking about organizations and the important role they can play in generating new thinking. In this study, we use and extend Morgan’s (2006) thesis of ‘organizations as instruments of domination’ (IoD) to reflect on critical issues in organizational studies related to water and the broader natural environment. We find extending the IoD image to be helpful: (i) in deriving and elaborating a metaphor that reflects a risky trend (‘organizations as water exploiters’); and (ii) in generating and developing a new metaphor that is explicitly normative and nature-centered (‘organizations as water keepers’). The water keeper image brings needed attention to water problems and invites further research on activist organizations (businesses and others) seeking to change thinking and practice related to environmental sustainability. We illustrate the water keeper metaphor (and the significant move away from the paradigmatic assumptions of hard anthropocentrism) with examples from environmental champion Patagonia, Inc. We then take up Morgan’s challenge to move beyond the IoD metaphor to envision non-dominating forms of organization. We revisit classic nature-inclusive metaphors and the under-explored paradigm of ecocentrism to evoke and reflect on broader notions of agency, interdependence, connectedness and social relations in transformed organizations.