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Images of Organization, Chapters 1 and 2 Critical Anaylsis

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Reflection Journal #1 1

Reflection Journal #1
From the reading, Images of Organization Chapters 1 & 2

Reflection Journal #1
Chapters 1 & 2 In the first two chapters of Images of Organization, the author, Gareth Morgan defines the theory of metaphor and how it is applied to organization. He challenges the reader to examine metaphor as a tool that is used to understand and recognize organization (Morgan, 1998, p. 5). He also cautions against perceptual distortions and bias of metaphor. In chapter two, Morgan presents organization as a machine, illustrating the theories of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Max Weber, and Frederick Taylor. Chapter one introduces that the underlying thesis of this book is “all …show more content…

If everyone does their job according to the process, the organization, or tool, acts as a machine by delivering those predetermined results. Just like in the lion metaphor, the machine metaphor is biased. It ignores the fact that human beings make up the machine. As human components of this machine, we have feelings, opinions, imagination, and initiative that may or may not be part of our role within the machine. It did not come as a surprise to me to learn that much of what was originally learned and adapted about mechanistic organization was derived from the military. Frederick the Great of Prussia, who ruled from 1740 to 1786, was inspired by mechanical toys, such a mechanical men. He reformed his army into a machine with the inspiration of these automated toys and thereby reduced his soldiers to automatons. Much of what we understand of the military was developed through his early reformations: “military order and rank, specialization of jobs, command language, standardized and use of equipment, differentiation between command functions, fear of authority, and systematic training” (Morgan, 1998, p. 22). Through Frederick’s mechanistic army, his machine-like processes were adopted by both factory and office settings. However, it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that these ideas were composed as a theory of organization and management. Max Weber is considered to be one of the first organization theorists. He theorized “the

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