The system metaphor framing power in organization theory: historical roots and

managerial implications

José Malavé, Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA)

Ramón Piñango, Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA)

Abstract
Research on metaphors in organization theory has addressed issues such as conditions of
metaphor effectiveness and the articulation of novel and complex metaphors. Scholars have
noticed, however, a need for studies on the roots and preeminence of certain metaphors,
particularly that of the organization as a delimited object, a system. This essay explores —by
applying insights derived from Lakoff theory of metaphor and recent contributions by
Cornelissen and colleagues to the analysis of historical examples— the roots and framing power
of the system metaphor in organization theory. It also highlights an implication of the system
metaphor use: it both delimits an object (the organization) and institutes a particular allocation of
power within it. What management theorists (notably, Gary Hamel) find at the root of some
troubles in coping with contemporary challenges is a particular distribution of power in large
organizations deriving from the way of conceiving and designing them.

Keywords: metaphor, system, power, social science, organization theory

The "organization is a system" has been, undoubtedly, a persistent and powerful metaphor in
organization theory. The resulting concept of organization incorporates the properties of a
bounded space, a particular body. This result is consistent with Lakoff's (1993) theory of
metaphor as a way of transferring knowledge from a source domain to a target domain. In this
sense, the "organization is a system" metaphor preserves the logic of containers, and its related
inference and action patterns. Such categories as within-without, we-they, controlled-
uncontrolled, collaborator-competitor, and the popular SWOT scheme, relate to this metaphor.
Besides, according to Lakoff's theory, the understanding provided by the system metaphor
frames a set of possible actions; e.g., in strategy terms, recruitment, capture, control, campaign,

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offensive, aggressive, territory, transfer, imitation (Cummings & Wilson, 2003). The strength
and persistence of a metaphor derives from, Lakoff explained, specific experiential basis and
realizations; e.g., procedures for representing, accounting, appropriating, controlling, managing.
An important stream of research on metaphors in organization theory has been advanced by
Joep Cornelissen and colleagues (Cornelissen, 2005, 2006, 2008; Cornelissen & Kafouros,
2008a, 2008b; Cornelissen, Holt & Zundel, 2011; Cornelissen, Kafouros & Lock, 2005;
Cornelissen, Oswick, Christensen & Phillips, 2008). Their findings and calls for work on
unanswered questions show a promising way of developing inquiry on organization theory, by
focusing on knowledge production, use, and transfer. This essay attempts to contribute to the
understanding of the historically pervasive power of the system metaphor in organization theory:
its historical roots and managerial implications.
The system metaphor constitutes a high-order metaphor in social science. A common
operation in transferring knowledge from systems to social phenomena consists in setting
boundaries and, though not immediately obvious, attributing the systems closing to some agents'
acts, from which their authority derives and through which a representation of power becomes
coherent with an "order of nature" and acquires legitimacy (Douglas, 1987). The use of the
system metaphor, a "founding analogy" in Douglas' terms, reinforces its framing power and
conceals its framing of power.
Gary Hamel's critique of the "orthodoxy" that it takes a crisis to change a large organization
allows to gather, in a wide-ranging sense, a managerial implication of the framing power exerted
by the system metaphor; all the more powerful, since its consequences are neither explicitly
intended nor foreseen.

It often takes a crisis to change an organization because in most companies the authority to
set strategy and direction is highly concentrated at the top. As a consequence, a relatively
small group of people at the top can hold the organization's capacity to change hostage to
their own personal willingness to adapt and to change (Barsh, 2008: 6).

Hamel argued that, in order to create conditions for innovation, (1) organizations needed to
change their power distribution, (2) this required a "mental revolution" of the sort claimed by
Taylor for adopting the factory model, and (3) this will happen neither "overnight" nor "without

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some trauma and some risk taking." The argument proposed in this essay is that such a mental
revolution requires, first, to recognize the framing power exerted by the system metaphor from
time immemorial.
The essay comprises four main sections. First section presents a brief account of Lakoff's
theory of metaphor —a basis for analyzing the system frame. Second section summarizes some
works by Cornelissen and colleagues on the use of metaphors in organization theory, from which
guiding questions for this discussion derive. Third section delineates the roots of the system
theory of organization, by means of historical examples chosen to show the building of the
system frame. The purpose is not to discuss current organization theory, or the "state of the art"
in the field; in fact, this is one of the recommended courses of action for future work. Fourth
section explores the experiential basis of the system metaphor coherence and strength: the
instituted role of managers in organizations. Some concluding remarks address implications of
the system metaphor frame, and suggest avenues for future work.

A SKETCH OF LAKOFF'S THEORY OF METAPHOR

Lakoff defined a metaphor as a mapping from a source domain to a target domain, and the
mapping as "a set of ontological correspondences that characterize epistemic correspondences"
(Lakoff, 1993: 207). This is why people can reason about one domain in terms of the knowledge
derived from another. A corollary of this theory of metaphor is that knowledge transferred
includes a set of alternatives of action, which the actor can easily recognize. Lakoff illustrates
this with, among many other examples, the "love is a journey" metaphor, in which for
overcoming a difficulty lovers can fix the relationship (vehicle), remain in a nonfunctional
relationship, or abandon the relationship. Although a particular set does not necessarily restrict
possible actions, the structure of correspondences becomes a frame that facilitates some ways of
perceiving situations and precludes others. Mappings work in the manner of habits or routines:
"mostly unconscious, automatic, and used with no noticeable effort" (Lakoff, 1993: 245).
According to Lakoff (1993: 212), "many of the most basic concepts in our conceptual
systems are also normally comprehended via metaphor." The higher the level of abstraction of a
concept the greater the need of using knowledge transferred from a known terrain for explaining
its meaning to another person. For example, the meaning of the abstract concept of "category"
comes easily to mind by means of one of the simplest metaphors: a container. The procedure of

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tracing a bounded space and establishing what belongs or not within it seems to be a strong habit
of the mind. Lakoff showed that the classic syllogism resembles the topological properties of
containers. Consider, for instance, Talcott Parsons' (1968) use of a syllogism for defining social
systems as open systems: if a social system is a living system, and all living systems are open
systems, therefore a social system is an open system. This shows the topological properties of
containers: if X is in category A and category A is in category B, then X is in category B.
Spatial inference is a general level of metaphoric understanding. Lakoff analyzed, for
instance, the conceptualization of time in space terms: if time has extension, then it is
measurable. The generalization of spatial inferences goes even further, as Lakoff shows in his
analysis of the "event structure metaphor": states as bounded regions and changes as movements
into or out of states. Through examples in English language of these and other related mappings,
Lakoff finds empirical support for the thesis that abstract reasoning, "appears to be based on
spatial reasoning" (Lakoff, 1993: 228).
Where this way of reasoning (mapping) comes from? Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss
advanced in 1901 a plausible conjecture:

It is certainly not without cause that concepts and their interrelations have so often been
represented by concentric and eccentric circles, interior and exterior to each other, etc. Might
it not be that this tendency to imagine purely logical groupings in a form contrasting so much
with their true nature originated in the fact that at first they were conceived in the form of
social groups occupying, consequently, definite positions in space? (Durkheim & Mauss,
1963: 83).

Lakoff asserted, in turn, that the structure of correspondences in mapping from one domain to
another is not arbitrary. Certain mappings tend to appear, or fit, more easily than others, which
depends on their relation to common experience: "correspondences in real experience form the
basis for the correspondences in the metaphorical cases, which go beyond real experience"
(Lakoff, 1993: 240). This can easily be seen in the metaphor "more is up," which relates to the
experience of seeing a pile getting higher as more things are added to it, and extends to different
realms as shown in such expressions as high (social) class, high quality or high technology. In
commonly used tools —geometric forms, statistic graphs, organizational charts— different

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metaphors acquire realization. "Such objects are ways in which metaphors impose a structure on
real life, through the creation of new correspondences in experience. And once created in one
generation, they serve as an experiential basis for that metaphor in the next generation" (Lakoff,
1993: 241).
Metaphor realizations operate in various ways: from a diagram showing what is inside or
outside a certain organizational unit to a ritual required for acceptance within a certain
community. Lakoff described different vehicles of metaphor realization: cartoons, literary works,
myths, social institutions, laws, and many others. Metaphor correspondences correlate to
experiential correspondences that make them powerful tools of learning and compliance. The use
of metaphors in organization theory offers, in this sense, a rich field for inquiry into the
understanding and representation of abstract concepts.

METAPHOR USE IN ORGANIZATION THEORY: ISSUES AND QUESTIONS

Cornelissen and Kafouros (2008b) distinguished between primary and complex metaphors: from
the atomic to the molecular. Their "typical example" of primary metaphor in organization theory
is that of the container or bounded region. They analyzed examples of metaphors (machine,
computational system, designed object, neural system) and showed the progressive elaboration
and articulation of features that produce a complex image. Notwithstanding their complexity, the
metaphors remain "coherent": "organizations as agents who direct and initiate actions and move
in response to constantly evolving environmental circumstances" (Cornelissen & Kafouros,
2008b: 963).
The metaphor of the organization as a certain body engaged in interactions with an
environment seems to be the result of a "constraint of reality" that dictates "what is plausible and
therefore imaginable" (Cornelissen & Kafouros, 2008b: 964). This explains continuity and
change in the evolution of organization theory: "Although metaphorical imagination leads to
creative and novel emergent meanings, it is often anchored in previous meanings and familiar
primary metaphors" (2008b: 970).
Cornelissen and Kafouros (2008b: 971) stated that the "embodied experiences of movement
through a defined space" are the ground for a primary metaphor that, in turn, gives rise to the
"metonymic compression" of talking about the organization as a single actor. Cornelissen (2008),
by using a corpus of natural talk, studied how people talk about organizations. An interesting

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question was whether the metaphor of an organization as a person is an antecedent or an effect of
the "organization-for-members" metonymy. Although he recognized the possibility of tracing the
metaphor back to "the logic of granting a corporation with the legal status of a person"
(Cornelissen, 2008: 93), his analysis of language use favors the opposite interpretation: the
metaphor is a consequence of using the metonymic expressions. However, the question invites
further discussion. Lakoff's ideas of the cognitive role of metaphors and their realizations would
seem to support the antecedent interpretation: metonymic expressions (or, in general, any
linguistic expression) would be instances of a higher-level metaphor.
Metaphors of the organization as an entity or an actor play a key role in understanding such
an abstract concept as "an organization," and explaining its features in common people language
and in social scientists theories. The question is to what extent such a role goes even further to
bound thinking and theorizing. Has the container metaphor precluded the use of "primary
metaphors that cast organizations as physical emergent patterns of association, accomplished
performances or as ongoing movements" (Cornelissen & Kafouros, 2008b: 972)?
Cornelissen and Kafouros (2008b: 957) noticed the scarcity of explanations about the roots
and pre-eminence of certain metaphors in organization theory (a machine, an open system, or an
organism), and that such questions "have not been adequately addressed." By distinguishing
between primary and complex metaphors, it is possible to show the evolutionary and creative
nature of metaphors. The question is whether changes and novelties in metaphors are really
"moving" understanding or are they trapped within a "root" metaphor. By quoting Tsoukas and
Knudsen (2003), Cornelissen and Kafouros (2008b: 959) stressed the need for historical
perspective: scholars draw "on the conceptual resources and modes of thinking and arguing of a
historically developed language community." By looking at the use of metaphors in one field, the
researcher might find that even the rebellious acts of the youngest members of a community
reveal the persistence of ancestors' uses. This relates to previous findings by Cornelissen,
Kafouros and Lock (2005) on the role of root metaphorical images in organization theory, in the
sense that their framing and inferential power guides reasoning and knowledge on organizations.
"In doing so, they simultaneously enable and constraint our scientific endeavours" (Cornelissen
& Kafouros, 2008a: 376).
How do those root metaphors acquire their framing and inferential power? Cornelissen, Holt
and Zundel (2011) advanced a series of propositions on the conditions of effectiveness of

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analogies and metaphors in legitimizing strategic change, which may provide insights on the
more general phenomenon of the framing power of metaphors. First, they found support for the
thesis that structural metaphors (e.g., love is a journey, business is war) are more effective (in
providing understanding and gaining acceptance) than simple comparisons of superficial
features; they cited Douglas' (1987) idea of a "naturalizing analogy" for illustrating conditions of
metaphor effectiveness. Second, metaphor effectiveness depends on cultural familiarity (for
expected users). Finally, a metaphor's legitimacy and capacity to guide interpretations require
alignment between the provided frame and their users' expectations.
Cornelissen, Holt and Zundel (2011) call for a search beyond the restricted context of
episodic changes within specific organizations. They formulated a question that inspired the
present discussion: "how and when such frames acquire cognitive legitimacy and become fully
naturalized and taken-for-granted in a particular social setting, whether that is a specific
organization, or even, beyond that, a field of organizations" (Cornelissen, Holt & Zundel, 2011:
1713). Thus, for this essay's purposes, the question is how and when the system metaphor
acquired cognitive legitimacy and became taken-for-granted in theorizing about organizational
phenomena.
Cornelissen and Kafouros (2008a: 376) claimed, "questions on the (historical and social)
development of metaphors as well as the sociological dynamics involved in their selection and
retention remained unexplored." In a similar vein, Cornelissen (2006: 704) called for a
"reflective use of metaphor," in the sense that organization theorists be aware "of their own
theoretical assumptions and the metaphorical images that lay at the root of their work, and to
spell these out together with the thought trials that they engage in." All this amounts to a call for
searching into the historical roots of such metaphors, as the system frame, which are able to
guide understanding. The next section attempts to contribute a response to such a call.

ON THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE SYSTEM METAPHOR

The now familiar notion of system achieved legitimacy by its grounding in analogies with the
order of nature, and a high degree of sophistication by its formalization in mathematical
expressions. However, the idea of system is not as "modern" as commonly thought. In ancient
Greece times, music theorists used a system (from the word sustēma: sun- "with" and histanai
"set up," according to the Oxford English Dictionary) for classifying and imposing order over a

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wide arrange of styles and rhythms, in accordance with laws of universal harmony (Henderson,
1975; Michaelides, 1978). At the inception of modernity, Thomas Hobbes used a notion of
system that inaugurated the idea of social system. Thus, by using the "organization is a system"
metaphor, organization theorists follow a well-established procedure.

Hobbes' Leviathan and the Roots of the System Metaphor in Social Thinking
Hobbes stated his purpose in writing Leviathan, published in London around 1650, at the end of
the book: to design a scheme or plan convincing enough, "to set before mens eyes the mutuall
Relation between Protection and Obedience" (Hobbes, 1991: 491). His scheme became a
landmark of political thinking, but it also posited an object for subsequent work in social science.
Hobbes designed what today observers would call a simulation model: "NATURE... is by the
Art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificiall
Animal... Art goes yet further, imitating that Rationall and most excellent worke of Nature, Man"
(Hobbes, 1991: 9). The first part of Leviathan —consequently titled "Of Man"— exposes the
available knowledge and cultural resources of the time, including praise of accounting as a way
of countering the uncertainty an unreliable human nature introduces into daily affairs.
Notwithstanding the argument about a pact or contract, Hobbes stressed the need for a visible
power, a "terrour" of power: "Covenants, without the Sword, are but words" (1991: 102). In a
sense, he used a theatre metaphor (Pye, 1988): power must be visible on the stage. The story of
the emergence of order out of chaos belongs to the same theatrical apparatus.
Hobbes presented authority as something given to an actor —authorization to act— by an
audience created, in turn, by the same act. Goldsmith (1968: 160) explained the stratagem:
"Because the creation of the community and the creation of the sovereign are accomplished by
the same act, the community only exists by virtue of the existence of the sovereign, and the
community can only act through its representative, the sovereign." The same representation
produces the social body and the power securing its existence, though this part of the act is to
remain out-of-sight and/or taken-for-granted.
Hobbes introduced in chapter 22 the concept of system, which is perhaps the act of birth of
the system frame in social theorizing. However, today readers of Leviathan, looking for the
concept of system, may feel some disappointment: a few pages headed by a simple definition of

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system, according to contemporary standards. Nevertheless, a closer look at this definition may
reveal some interesting details:

Having spoken of the Generation, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth, I am in order to

speak next of the parts thereof. And first of Systemes, which resemble the similar parts, or
Muscles of a Body naturall. By SYSTEMES; I understand any numbers of men joyned in one
Interest, or one Businesse. Of which some are Regular, and some Irregular... Of Regular,
some are Absolute, and Independent, subject to none but their own Representative: such are
only Common-wealths (Hobbes, 1991: 155).

Hobbes' treatment of systems passed unnoticed among noted scholars (e.g., Baumrin, 1969;
Bertman, 1981; Gauthier, 1969; Hampton, 1988; Karskens, 1982; McNeilly, 1968; Mintz, 1962;
Oakeshott, 1975; Pye, 1988; Skinner, 1972; Strauss, 1966; Thomas, 1965; Tuck, 1989; Watkins,
1973). An exception is a statement by Goldsmith (1968: 159) relating the system to the
representation procedure: "The theory of personation provides a general explanation of 'systems'
—organized groups, or 'bodies politic.' The unity of a system is the unity of its representative."
Commonwealths, corporations, and other "bodies politic" are, in Hobbes' view, particular
cases of systems: entities delimited and established through the exercise of power. "I speak not
of the men, but (in the Abstract) of the Seat of Power, (like those simple and unpartiall creatures
in the Roman Capitol, that with their noyse defended those within it, not because they were they,
but there,)" (Hobbes, 1991: 3). The distinction between regular and irregular systems refers to
the existence or not of a representative; lacking representative, an irregular system is simply a
concourse of people. This distinction and the treatment of systems as "similar parts" suggest that
Hobbes used a didactic way of explaining such abstract matters to his contemporaries. Using
analogies with geometric figures was a common procedure for Renaissance people: "to attend to
the structure of complex forms as combinations of regular geometrical bodies and as intervals
comprehensible in series" (Baxandall, 1991: 101). Hobbes' regard for geometry is a recognizable
feature of his work: "And civil philosophy is like geometry because we make both lines and
figures and commonwealths ourselves; correct political construction is entirely in man's power"
(Goldsmith, 1968: 11; quoted from Hobbes' Six lessons to the professors of mathematics).

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 A procedure of spatial representation played a definite role in the building of Leviathan, a
social body. "The Word Body, in the most generall acceptation, signifieth that which filleth, or
occupyeth some certain room, or imagined place" (Hobbes, 1991: 269). The system concept,
with the suggestion of a spatial object, served Hobbes for explaining not only the common
character of the commonwealth and other "unions of men," but also the needed attention to their
properties: the maintenance of shapes and the following of rules. Apart from commonwealths, all
regular systems were subordinated to the sovereign, who authorized them, and constituted with
letters, e.g., those for the government of provinces, colonies, towns, universities, colleges,
churches, or "for the well ordering of forraigne Traffique" (corporations).
Leviathan is an impressive construction made of articulated metaphors —mythical creatures,
the human body, religious themes, accounting, the theatre, geometric figures, among others—
designed to convey a convincing representation of an emerging social order, through the
compelling power performed by an actor who, in turn, provides the system's existence and unity.
This powerful image set the frame for subsequent metaphorical expressions in the development
of social science.

Parsons and the System Metaphor in Modern Social Science

Hobbes' Leviathan inaugurated a paradigm (Kuhn, 1962) or a research program (Lakatos, 1987)
for the social sciences. The definition of a system by charting a certain region became the
starting point of social scientific inquiries. The absence of such an explicit procedure means that
scholars start by taking for granted the existence of an object. The system became an inherent
characteristic of modern times rather than a matter of academic fashion or the adoption of a
convenient image by individual scholars. Such a metaphor expresses a form of life in which
boundaries, levels, compartments, constitute "natural" elements of the social order, with social
systems as containers of people energies ready for application to specific tasks.
The system frame achieved a high degree of elaboration in the work of Talcott Parsons, for
whom the concept of system referred to "a complex of interdependencies," internal and external,
around which "all sophisticated theory in the conceptually generalizing disciplines is and must be
organized" (Parsons, 1968: 458). The above-mentioned syllogism for defining social systems as
open systems served Parsons to introduce the concept of function and explain that any system is
a differentiated subsystem of a larger system. Parsons and colleagues developed the famous four-

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function scheme by searching for an "action-space": a four-dimensional yet Euclidean space, "in
the sense that... it is 'rectilinear'... and that time enters into the analysis of process in essentially
the same way that it does in classical mechanics" (Parsons & Bales, 1953: 85).
What kind of metaphor did Parsons use? He seemed to be using a biological metaphor, by
starting from living beings for defining open systems and functions. However, Parsons isolated
symbolic interaction as the specifically social, and regarded language as the matrix of symbolic
systems and religion as the master system in cybernetic terms. Thus, rather than an organism, the
metaphor in use seems to be a cybernetic control system.

The self-sufficiency of a society is a function of the balanced combination of its controls...

This includes the cybernetic aspect of control by which systems high in information but low
in energy regulate other systems higher in energy but lower in information... Thus, a
programmed sequence of mechanical operations (e.g., in a washing machine) can be
controlled by a timing switch using very little energy compared with the energy actually
operating the machine's moving parts or heating its water (Parsons, 1966: 9).

Take into account the cultural resources available to each particular theorist: Hobbes used a
mechanical watch to represent life, a "motion of limbs," whereas Parsons used a washing
machine to represent self-adjusting processes. This is how a metaphor, the system in this case,
evolves through changing historical conditions and languages.

The "Organization is a System" Metaphor

In his Structure and process in modern societies, Parsons (1960) shows a transition from general
social theory to organization theory, by applying the frame provided by the system metaphor.
Organizations, as differentiated units of a larger system, become themselves systems; and
organizational dynamics becomes a dynamics of bounded entities.
Max Weber had already defined an organization as "a system of continuous purposive action
of a specified kind" (Weber, 1947: 151). This definition referred to a particular kind of entity:
"corporate groups" or relatively "closed" social relationships. The closing a social relation
(subjecting membership to conditions) results from an act of "appropriation," by which insiders
enjoy advantages or rights, which give sense to being a "member." In the context of the

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economic division of labor, Weber (1947: 221) defined an organization as "a technical category
which designates the ways in which various types of services are continuously combined with
each other and with non-human means of production." Organization is here synonymous with
"plant": buildings, equipment, labor force, and management. The combination of this technical
sense with that of a closed relation strengthened the representation of organizations as bounded
entities, so that it became firmly established, obvious, for later theorists.
Philip Selznick's (1948) paper on the "foundations" of organization theory presented the
nature, problems, and possibilities of the "new-born" discourse on organizations. Selznick
summed up the current view on formal organization as the structural expression of rational
action. However, some "non-rational" dimensions of behavior are "indispensable to the
continued existence of the system," which the formal structures "never succeed in conquering"
(1948: 25). He referred to this interplay as the "organizational paradox" and proposed the
analytical method required for dealing with the "totality": "The organon which may be suggested
as peculiarly helpful in the analysis of adaptive structures has been referred to as 'structural-
functional analysis'"(Selznick, 1948: 28). This method makes possible to isolate a "stable system
of needs and mechanisms," and derive a set of imperatives (following Parsons' four-function
scheme). Besides, the organization became a more complex actor, in psychological terms,
including "Freudian" defense mechanisms.
Parsons criticized Weber's "inadequate attention to psychological problems" ("Introduction"
to Weber, 1947: 29). His own system model drew from generalizations of group phenomena and
socio-psychological theories. An important development of the system theory of organization
appeared later in a book titled The social psychology of organizations (Katz & Kahn, 1966).

Our theoretical model for the understanding of organizations is that of an energetic input-
output system in which the energetic return from the output reactivates the system. Social
organizations are flagrantly open systems in that the input of energies and the conversion of
output in further energetic input consist of transactions between the organization and its
environment (Katz & Kahn, 1966, pp. 16-7).

This use of the system metaphor shows how cybernetic concepts became a cultural resource, for
explaining such a target domain as the organization to a community of scholars and to a wider

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public. Self-regulation by feedback processes became not only common knowledge for people
working with computers or electronics, but also common terminology for educated people in
general. Among many other authors, Ashby (1972) and Bertalanffy (1968) contributed
influential expositions of cybernetics and general systems theory, Buckley (1967) used
cybernetic concepts in criticizing Parsons and Homans models, and Beer (1964, 1966) produced
popular applications of these ideas in the field of management.
Katz and Kahn formulated the problem of organization in thermodynamic terms as one of
maintaining the level of negentropy: the difference of energy density in the neighborhoods of the
system's input and output terminals. The problem is that entropy in the larger system containing
the organization would lead to no energy available. The organization task consists, precisely, in
avoiding the uniformity of energy distribution inside the whole system. How will the
organization be able to solve this problem? It depended on the organization's size and self-
sufficiency.

The primitive social organization is rooted in a given area of social space such as the
community, and its functioning and survival are direct functions of this larger segment of
social space. It has no resources or stored energy of its own and little power over its own
members or over the larger community. It is more an aspect of community functioning than
an independent organization. The large scale organization, though dependent upon the social
world, is also a force in its own right. It can influence the surrounding social space and can
store the money and the legal contracts which guarantee such influence (Katz & Kahn, 1966:
122).

According to this theory, organizations differ in permeability of their boundaries: there are
organizations whose boundaries are so "sharply defined, rigid" that it is not a matter of individual
decision to enter or to leave. The boundary condition accounts for the organization members'
perceptions, "the person within the system cannot perceive things and communicate about them
in the same way that an outsider would" (Katz & Kahn, 1966: 228), on which, in turn, depends
the organization's existence. The socio-psychological theory of organizing under the system
frame explains that the system attains a required order (the thermodynamic condition) due to the
individuals' absorption of a "culture."

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 The framing power of the system metaphor converted organization theory, as an academic
discipline, into the disciplined elaboration of a discourse about a dynamics of bounded entities
called organizations. The following statement is illustrative of such a discourse: "Organizations
in a structured field... respond to an environment that consists of other organizations responding
to their environment, which consists of organizations responding to an environment of
organizations' responses" (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983: 149). For the intriguing problem of the
boundary condition (through which organizations become the objects implied by the system
frame), Scott (1987: 171), for instance, adopted a straightforward solution: "All collectivities —
including informal groups, communities, organizations, and entire societies— possess, by
definition, boundaries that distinguish them from other systems."
In discussing the language of organization theory, Sandelands and Drazin (1989) argued that
the language used to explain the causes of structure does not refer to specifiable processes, but
starts from unexplained results. This language, characterized by "achievement verbs" (e.g.,
select, choose), has led scholars to an endless postulation of entities. Thus, the field of
organization theory became a battlefield, where "exogenetic" (environment selects) and
"endogenetic" (manager chooses) explanations compete in terms that "defy criticism and give
rise to empty but indisputable explanations" (Sandelands & Drazin, 1989: 473). The use of the
system metaphor could lead, for instance, to such dramatic and indisputable statements as the
following: "Disintegration of a boundary-maintaining system is precisely this disappearance of
the difference between 'internal' states and the environment. This is what is meant by death in the
biological sense" (Parsons & Bales, 1953: 92).

ON THE EXPERIENTIAL BASIS OF THE SYSTEM FRAMING POWER

Our metaphor system is central to our understanding of

experience and to the way we act on that understanding.
George Lakoff

Now the question is how the system metaphor acquired its framing power. Douglas' (1987: 52)
analysis of institution strengthening gives a clue to understanding how a metaphor become
imposed upon thinking and acting, and therefore that using the system metaphor is far from

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being a matter of individual preference or mere chance. According to Douglas (1987: 91), "Our
social interaction consists very much in telling one another what right thinking is and passing
blame onto wrong thinking. This is indeed how we build institutions, squeezing each other's
ideas into a common shape so that we can prove rightness by sheer numbers of independent
assent." This is indeed a metaphor strengthening mechanism, but, as Lakoff explained, another
condition is required: an experiential basis. In Douglas' (1987: 98) terms, "we should relate what
is shared in our mental furnishing to our common experience of authority and work."
What could be that common experience of authority and work related to representing
organizations as those bounded entities called systems? Inside-outside distinctions have been
related, in Western culture at least, to claims of possession and dispossession, appropriation and
expropriation, from which images and metaphors spill over into cosmologies, ideologies,
literature, and science (Starobinski, 1975). According to an established tradition, at least since
Hobbes' Leviathan, creating a system and endowing an agent with authority over the created
object result from the same act. In modern organizations, a particular character —the manager—
becomes the incarnation of authority, which gives rise to all sorts of justifications. As Bendix
(1974: 1) cogently wrote, "Whenever enterprises are set up, a few command and many obey. The
few, however, have seldom been satisfied to command without a higher justification even when
they abjured all interest in ideas, and the many have seldom been docile enough not to provoke
such justifications." For Bendix (1974: 444), such justifications or ideologies of management
"result from the legacy of institutions which is 'adopted' by each generation much as a child
'adopts' the grammar of his native language."
Endless elaboration of justifications has to deal with the fact of unequal distribution of
resources and privileges, which poses intriguing puzzles for scientific and philosophical
speculation. According to Bendix (1974: 299): "As it became apparent that the tasks of
management were indeed complex and required uncommon skills, it also became necessary to
see to the training of future managers which implied, of course, that these skills could be taught
and learned." Thus, it was no longer necessary to invoke innate qualities or any other advantages
in the struggle for life, in order to justify managers' authority. The manager deserved a status
exclusive for those with the mastery of a discipline.
The disciplining condition reflects itself on a coherent discourse. An example drawn from
managerial education illustrates this point. Mintzberg (1990: 187) criticized Harvard Business

15
School's tradition of strategic management, by relating it to the case method: "Bear in mind that
time is short: the external environment must be assessed, distinctive competences identified,
alternate strategies proposed, and these evaluated, all before class is dismissed in 80 minutes."
This way of teaching and theorizing shows how a frame becomes enforced, and coherence
ensured for an ideology that justify the manager's authority in terms of decision-making abilities.
The process consists in narrowing conceptual pathways towards certain passage points: the
principles of the discipline that distinguish a particular profession. As Samuel Weber (1982: 68)
remarked:

These principles form the cognitive basis of laws, rules and techniques, which constitute a
discipline, and a praxis requiring a long period of training and initiation. Although a
specialized branch of knowledge, such a discipline is regarded as comprising a coherent,
integral and self-contained domain, based upon an equally self-contained "natural" state of
things.

The existence of bounded entities under the rule of professional managers becomes a natural
state of affairs, among other things, by ensuring the repetition of a stereotyped way of teaching
and theorizing. This is what Samuel Weber (1982: 61) called conditions of "imposability": "by
focusing upon the conditions of possibility and impossibility of systems, what has been neglected
is what I would call the conditions of imposability, the conditions under which arguments,
categories and values impose and maintain a certain authority, even where traditional authority
itself is meant to be subverted."
Organization theory is certainly a field of prolific academic production, with innovative and
sophisticated arguments in permanent competition. In a field like this, the framing power (or
imposability) of the system metaphor shows its efficacy, precisely, in the rebellious attempts to
subvert the frame. Meyer and Rowan's (1977) famous paper, a challenging contribution to
organization theory, allows showing how powerful can be the system frame as a root metaphor.

According to the institutional conception as developed here, organizations tend to disappear

as distinct and bounded units. Quite beyond the environmental interrelations suggested in
open-systems theories, institutional theories in their extreme forms define organizations as

16
 dramatic enactments of the rationalized myths pervading modern societies, rather than as
units involved in exchange —no matter how complex— with their environment (Meyer &
Rowan, 1977: 346).

Starting from a critique of the assumption that formal structures effectively control activities, the
authors proposed to explain organizational structure without assuming that they "are
implemented in routine work activity" (Meyer & Rowan, 1977: 343). Institutionalized myths
play the explanatory role. In this theory, the role of managers consists in conforming
organizational structures to rituals and ceremonies prescribed by rationalized myths, thus
ensuring their legitimacy. This role requires a particular ability of managers: "In institutionally
elaborated environments, sagacious conformity is required: leadership (in a university, a hospital,
or a business) requires an understanding of changing fashions and governmental programs"
(Meyer & Rowan, 1977: 352).
Notwithstanding the claim for the disappearance of the organization as a bounded entity, the
notion of some-thing involved in exchanges with an environment persists. Besides, this theory
maintains a character whose abilities ("sagacious conformity," in this case) explain
organizational success and survival. Thus, the discourse remains within the same frame it is
questioning. The point here is not whether Meyer and Rowan show a greater or lesser grasp of
"reality" (organizations survive by incorporating legitimizing myths), but how the system
metaphor frames understanding. Perhaps, there are "real," practical reasons to maintain a stable
frame, as suggested by a nineteenth century philosopher, Heinrich Oppenheim, one of the Right
Hegelians: "How can one administer in common something that forms no finished whole and is
daily born anew and shaped anew in an endless and endlessly manifold production?" (quoted by
Habermas, 1992: 395).

CONCLUSION AND INVITATION TO FUTURE WORK

This discussion on organization theory is not to conclude by choosing between presence and
absence of the "organization" as a bounded entity. After all, it would be more interesting to
conceive of organizations as incomplete instead of complete wholes, unstable instead of stable
entities. The point is simply not to assume or take for granted the existence and properties of any

17
entity, as the starting point of the inquiry. What requires explanation is how a certain object, a
particular form of appropriation (a firm, for example), becomes visible, identifiable.
The conclusion is, rather, an invitation to keep the discussion going, and to reflect on the
implications of centering the organization on the figure of a manager. Organizing does not need
to be a problem of an individual who decides and appears as "the cause of the movement" or "the
origin of the idea," but a collective-cumulative enterprise through which a particular shape of the
real appears and persists, and in which the manager is but another participant.
Organization theory, under the system frame, provides a body of knowledge in which
professional managers appear at the centre of a world where their choices determine success or
failure. In a reified way of talking, rationality, intelligence or any other construct become
"things" to be measured, assessed, and attributed in greater or lesser degrees to individuals.
However, such constructs are but after-the-fact rationalizations or features of particular
situations, not descriptions of behaviors or individual features. March and Simon (1958: 170)
stressed that boundaries of rationality are "elements of the situation that must be or are in fact
taken as given, and that do not enter into rational calculation as potential strategic factors."
Michel Foucault (1977: 202) insisted that power derives from features of situations, not from
features of individuals: "There is a machinery that assures dissymetry, disequilibrium, difference.
Consequently, it does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken almost at random,
can operate the machine: in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even
his servants." If the existence of a delimited whole cannot be taken for granted, as a starting point
of the inquiry, much less can it be assumed that "it" has a centre from which movements start
and on which "its" success and survival depends; and that, accordingly, deserves authority.
This discussion invites future work. From a theoretical perspective, it is necessary to trace the
evolution of organization theory from those early contributions mentioned here to contemporary
ones, in order to verify whether the system metaphor remains a powerful frame, capable of
"domesticating" subverting attempts, and whether its use shows increasing understanding or
constrained reasoning. From another perspective, it is needed understanding on demanding
problems faced by real people working and living "within" and "without" organizations. In this
sense, the invitation has to do with a political implication of the system frame: the conferring of
authority to managers and the distribution of power ensued from it.

18
 At the end of The future of management, Hamel (2007: 254) formulate a worrisome
prediction:

Indeed, I think the most bruising contests in the new millennium won't be fought along the
lines that separate one competitor or business ecosystem from another, but will be fought
along the lines that separate those who wish to preserve the privileges and power of the
bureaucratic class from those who hope to build less structured and less tightly managed
organizations.

Large organizations struggle to becoming places where innovations burst and talented young
people find motives for working and giving their best. However, good intentions come up against
traditions: power distribution remains the same and horizons remain constrained by
organizational boundaries. The oft-repeated claim for rethinking management seems
inconsequential, though different ways of talking ceaselessly appear around such features as
mobility and connectivity that are becoming intrinsic to one field after another. An alternative to
the system metaphor might bring the knowledge transfer needed for transforming management,
in order to cope with the challenges posed by digitization and globalization in contemporary
world.

19
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