“Organizations are complex and paradoxical phenomena that can be understood in many different ways. Many of our taken-for-granted ideas about organizations are metaphorical, even though we may not recognize them as such. For example, we frequently talk about organizations as if they were machines designed to achieve predetermined goals and objectives, and which should operate smoothly and efficiently. And as a result of this kind of thinking, we often attempt to organize and manage them in a mechanistic way, forcing their human qualities into a background role. By using different metaphors to understand the complex and paradoxical character of organizational life, we are able to manage and design organizations in ways that we may not have thought possible before.”

—  Gareth Morgan , book Images of Organization

Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 13; Cited in: Morgen Witzel (2011) Fifty key figures management, p. 205

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Gareth Morgan 24
Organizational theorist 1943

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