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A Academy of Management Review 2003, Vol. 28, No. 2, 190-197.

DIALOGUE

A Comment on the Role of Metaphor in Knowledge Generation

Professors Oswick, Keenoy, and Grant (2002) present a compelling argument on the role of metaphor in knowledge generation. The authors build their argument on the suggestion that tropes such as metaphor, metonymy, and synec- doche, on the one hand, operate within the "cog- nitive comfort zone" (2002: 294) of similarity and, thus, are unlikely to foster generative insights, whereas tropes such as anomaly, irony, and par- adox are based on dissimilarity and can, on the other hand, offer genuine insights. The authors argue that metaphor emphasizes "middle-range similarity [that] is intuitively conservative and, thus, cognitively prescriptive rather than liber- ating" (2002: 298). Metaphor, in this perspective, promotes "analytical closure... [and]... func- tions as an aid to knowledge dissemination rather than knowledge generation" (2002: 298). They conclude that it would be more fruitful, from a knowledge generation perspective, to "resort to conceptual ironies rather than organ- izational metaphors in the analysis of organiza- tional phenomena" (2002: 301).

Even though this is an appealing viewpoint, it is theoretically problematic. First, metaphors are not, in fact, based on high levels of similar- ity, as the authors argue. Second, metaphors are not simply useful for disseminating existing knowledge: they have delivered generative in- sights in organization science by virtue of not only revealing previously unseen associations but also creating new ones between target and source domains. Third, the similarity/dissimilar- ity distinction on which the authors base their argument is itself the kind of "false binary op- position" (2002: 296) they criticize.

Aristotle originally suggested that "meta- phors should be transferred from things that are related but not obviously so" (Rhetoric, 3:11: 5), in order to maximize their generative potential. This is very different from the notion of "opti- mum overlap" (2002: 297) proposed by the au- thors, which suggests high levels of static sim- ilarity between pre-existing entities or domains. Constructing metaphors from domains that are not obviously related, as Aristotle suggested, is

a creative process of relating A to B that can lead to generative insights precisely because of its potential to create cognitive associations or cor- respondences that did not exist before. This is the essence of Black's "strong creativity thesis" (1979: 37-39), which holds that metaphorical statements are not simply creative by revealing aspects of the target domain that were already there but by cognitively constituting such as- pects by virtue of the two domains they bring into interaction. These metaphors are what Schbn refers to as generative metaphors, capa- ble of generating new perceptions, explana- tions, and inventions (1979: 259), and what Black refers to as strong metaphors, possessing a high degree of "implicative elaboration" (1979: 27).

Thus, it is problematic for the authors to argue that all metaphors are nongenerative, based on examples of the use of single, nongenerative metaphors, such as viewing atoms as solar sys- tems (Oswick et al., 2002: 298). The multiplicity of metaphors in organization science, as exempli- fied by Morgan's (1986) seminal work, illustrates the opposite situation. Far from constraining knowledge generation (Oswick et al., 2002: 294), Morgan's work was instrumental in loosening the hold of the positivist systems orthodoxy in organization science and in legitimating the employment of alternative viewpoints, to an extent far beyond the original metaphors he proposed. The generative potential of meta- phor should not be judged metonymically, as Oswick and colleagues do, based on examples of weak metaphors, but, rather, on the totality of generative advancement of organization science based on metaphors as a class of tropes. It is therefore inaccurate to argue that meta- phor "functions as an aid to knowledge dis- semination rather than knowledge generation" (2002: 298).

Further, the similarity/dissimilarity distinc- tion on which the authors build their argument is precisely the kind of "false binary opposition" (2002: 296) they take to task. Aristotle's view of metaphors implies that similarity and dissimi- larity are not discreet entities but, rather, form a continuum along which types of tropes could be mapped. Irony and anomaly, thus, are not dis-

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tinct from metaphors, as the authors imply, but simply farther along the continuum toward dis- similarity. Far from being a distinct class of tropes, therefore, irony and anomaly are useful in knowledge generation in the same way met- aphors are: as a way of either revealing previ- ously unseen connections, associations, or cor- respondences or constituting new ones (that will still need to be pragmatically and empirically valid). Thus, the authors' example of Galileo's comparison of the world to a sphere (2002: 295) was generative not because it was anomalous but precisely because it highlighted empirically valid and previously unseen correspondences between the world and spheres.

REFERENCES Aristotle. 1991. On rhetoric. (Translated by G. A. Kennedy).

New York: Oxford University Press. Black, M. 1979. More about metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.),

Metaphor and thought: 19-43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Morgan, G. 1986. Images of organization. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Oswick, C., Keenoy, T., & Grant, D. 2002. Metaphor and ana- logical reasoning in organization theory: Beyond ortho- doxy. Academy of Management Review, 27: 294-303.

Schan D. A. 1979. Generative metaphor. A perspective on problem-setting in social policy. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Met- aphor and thought: 254-283. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Loizos Heracleous National University of Singapore

The Edge of Metaphor Professor Heracleous's trenchant but essen-

tially misdirected critique permits us to briefly address some important and much neglected conceptual-theoretic issues that were beyond the scope of our initial note (Oswick, Keenoy, & Grant, 2002). We have two points of clarification and one of substance.

First, Heracleous claims that "metaphors are not, in fact, based on high levels of similarity." This view appears to fly in the face of conven- tional usage. Heracleous's anomalous position seems to be based on the long-standing ambig- uous status of "metaphor" as an analytic cate- gory in organizational science; the problem is

that, in the literature, the concept of metaphor is employed both as a generic term to cover all tropes and also as a specific trope in its own right. Heracleous's expressed preference for dealing in "metaphors as a class of tropes" clearly favors the generic meaning. Used gener- ically, "metaphor" does indeed embrace a range of allegedly "lesser" tropes, which-for their effect-involve differing degrees of similarity and dissimilarity between the source and target domains.

We would be the last to claim that concepts have fixed meanings, but our analytic concern was to explore the analogical potential of a va- riety of tropes. In conventional usage, among these, metaphor (and the subtropes of metonymy and synecdoche) and simile rely primarily on similarity. According to the most comprehensive dictionary we could find, metaphor is a "figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is properly appli- cable" (Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 1994), whereas simile involves "a comparison of one thing with another" (Compact Oxford En- glish Dictionary, 1994). Indeed, Morgan himself argues that "metaphor proceeds through im- plicit or explicit assertions that A is (or is like) B" (1986: 13)-a definition that appears to conflate simile within metaphor (and clearly privileges "similarity"). Hence, we opted for the conven- tional understandings of the differences be- tween specific tropes (and our analytic preju- dice was well sourced; see Oswick et al., 2002: 297). Inexplicably, Heracelous has simply cho- sen to ignore this and operate with the alterna- tive conception of metaphor.

Second, Heracleous triumphantly accuses us of basing our argument on the construction of a "false binary opposition"-a practice we specif- ically disparaged-because we differentiate tropes in terms of the extent to which they rely upon similarity or dissimilarity. This is a curious charge, for the mutually implicated nature of similarity and dissimilarity was central to our analysis of how some tropes "work." As a criti- cism, it is perhaps best regarded through the metaphor of the "cheap shot."

Finally, to our point of substance: Heracleous insists that "metaphors are not simply useful for disseminating existing knowledge" but "have delivered generative insights..,. as exemplified by Morgan's (1986) seminal work." However, he