Metaphors of Management and Organization in Germany and France

Bolman and Deal offer four frames with which to break down organizations: their structure, their human resources, their political environment and their symbolic meaning. They offer a metaphor to capture the essence of each frame (translated for orchestra here):

Geert Hofstede, G. J. (2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. New York: McGraw-Hill

Classical organizational theory evolved during the first half of this century. Formal organizational study spans the fields of business administration, economics, political science, statistics, sociology, psychology, and public administration. It represents the merger of scientific management, bureaucratic

L.G. Bolman and T.F. Deal’s (2013) bestseller provides four-frame model of an organization, which incorporates the structural, human resources, political and the symbolic forms.

Organizational metaphors help researchers to shape concepts of behaviors, management, and structure in a simple and easy for the perception image. Organizational theorists broadly utilize this tool to classify different types of companies in the contemporary world and to reflect their evolution throughout the history of organizational development. The metaphors of machine and organism have been used most frequently to facilitate understanding and communication about the complex phenomenon of organization (Smircich, p. 340).

John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, are attributed to the concept of “Resource Mobilization Theory” by linking formal organization to that of firms.

The French strongly resist changes to their traditional beliefs and institutions. By contrast, U.S. with lower uncertainty avoidance societies have organization settings with less structuring of activities, fewer written rules, more risk taking by managers, higher labor turnover, and more ambitious employees. The organization encourages personnel to use their own initiative and assume responsibility for their actions (Tian, F., 2009, p.92).

According to Miles et al. (1978, p. 547), an organization is both its purpose and the mechanism constructed to achieve the purpose. It means that the concept of organization is embracing both goals and all the elements that represent unique combination. Miles et al. (1978, p. 553) draws the conclusion that structure and the processes taking place inside the organization are closely aligned; it is hard to speak about one without mentioning the other. It is important to understand the conclusion drawn by Miles et al. (1978). It illustrates how the

Morgan used the metaphor organizations as culture to frame the complex relationships that exist within organizations. Examining organizations through metaphor allows one to imagine concepts and ideas through their own experiences. According to Morgan the power of metaphors is their ability to challenge innovative reasoning. Metaphors combine language and thought to develop new non-literal meanings, when applied they shape and enhance our reality. According to Morgan there has been extensive research regarding the metaphor of organizations as culture. Culture became a hot topic following the introduction of Westernization management styles into the Japanese commercial markets (p. 120). Morgan says that “organization itself is a cultural phenomenon” (p. 120). Culture is a system of knowledge, ideology, values, laws and day to day rituals. By considering organizations as culture, we can focus on the concepts related to the values, beliefs, knowledge, and ethos of the organization. As such we can use this metaphor to understand leadership and organizational behavior through the language and symbols that are most meaningful to us personally. Employees who wish to remain in their organization do best if they understand the components of the culture where they are employed.

Metaphors help simplify complex concepts by integrating an already know term to a new term, therefore making it more comprehensible to the readers. In his book, Images of Organization, Gareth Morgan (2006) simply applied metaphors in bringing to our understanding the different perspectives and faces of organizations (Bottero, K, 2013) This paper would pinpoint and attempt to examine the major metaphoric postulations of Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization. As Morgan would say, the entire management and organizational theories essentially emanate from implicit mind frames or metaphors that attempt to convince humans to see, know and visualize situations in

This paper will be about the relation between the cultural dimension ‘power distance’ and three management principles we chose and will also be about the applicability of these management principles. This is quite interesting because even though we know that the cultural dimensions, by Geert Hofstede, and the management principles, by Fayol, have something to do with each other, the more the cultural dimensions differ, the more the ranking of the management principles will differ in the compared countries. We will now try to find out if some of these principles are more linked to a certain cultural dimension, in our case Power Distance, than others and we will find out whether these

The view and metaphorical analogy of an organization as a machine was the result of the only frame of reference available at

In the early 1980s, Henry Mintzberg’s, constructed the organizational archetypes. In this model Mintzbeg introduces five types of organization structure and how they influence the functions of organizations. On the organizational model there are five categories which are: Entrepreneurial, Machine (Bureaucracy), Professional bureaucracy, The Divisional (Diversified), and Adhocracy. Entrepreneurial organization consists of one large unit with one or a few top managers. The organization is relatively unstructured and informal compared with other types of organization, and the lack of standardized systems allows the organization to be flexible.

When organizational concepts spread through national and cultural boundaries, they pass through cultural and structural problems in order to be ascertained. Taking Australia as the case study, in this study we examine how the distinct ways of examining issues dealing with public discourse relate with cultural and sociopolitical context.to emphasize on the creation of social cultural opportunity structure that defines the space which actors can work with, it’s important to examine the relevance of shareholders value in Austria. The shareholder orientation has mostly prevailed in the Anglo American countries such as German and Austria. However, the shareholder value possesses some challenges especially on the role and purposes of corporations as well as their interests. The new dimension of the study encompasses a political view that contains believes and the distribution of power in corporations and in the general society (Meyer, 2007) . Using the political approach to institutional change requires a lot of tracking in the changing factors in the competing issues. In order to track the competing issues we study the issue fields of the relevant actors that take part in joint activities. The different ways of giving meaning to shareholder value are explained in the institutional logic in this study. These include the following; the principles which guide and organize an institutional order which are the local views of the global perspective of the

The focus of the paper is the organizational framework. The Y-axis has the environment of the organization with Formal at one end and Flexible at the other end, and the X-axis has the role of the leader with Autocratic on one end and Democratic on the other. The framework will discuss the major relevant contributions of the following theorists; Max Weber, Frederick W. Taylor, Luther H. Gulick, Mary Parker Follet, Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, Herbert A. Simon, Charles E. Lindblom, and Dwight Waldo.