An ethnography of metaphor usage in IS projects : from description to domination

Griffiths, M

Abstract

This study presents the story of a three-year ethnographical field study, from December
2000 to December 2003, conducted at a North West based Management Consultancy.
Throughout this period the organisation experienced accelerated growth from two sites
with a workforce of twenty, to six sites with a workforce of forty-five. There were two
major IS implementation projects conducted in that period resulting in pervasive
organisational change for this growing workforce. A controlling mechanism by the
organisation's domineering Managing Director was the strategic 'planting' of two
hegemonic metaphors, in the guise of 'Tigger' and 'Eeyore', two characters from the
children's storybook Winnie the Pooh. This was done to pre-empt and avert resistance
behaviour. An objective of this study was to explore this use of metaphors to coerce
certain users into compliance with management aims in IS projects. Existing studies tend
not to report upon management's explicit use of metaphor to control workforce behaviour
in this manner. It could also be argued that this explicit use may have only been observed
due to the rich insight of this longitudinal ethnographical study. Key features of the
mechanism of metaphors 'working' in this case was the observation of a complex
network of other underlying dominant metaphors in use in the organisation, enabling the
submissive, unwavering, acceptance of the two hegemonic metaphors. A central
contribution of this study is to highlight the power of mutually reinforcing metaphors
when applied in a suitable context, so extending and reinforcing existing metaphor
research within the IS field.
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Citation

Griffiths, M. An ethnography of metaphor usage in IS projects : from description to domination. (Thesis). Salford : University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2012
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2007