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It has been suggested that conceptual models can be used to enhance the training of novice end‐users. This paper discusses the part played by metaphor in conceptual models, provides examples of end‐user training incorporating metaphors, and contends that metaphors facilitate the development of accurate mental models. The more specific issue of the role of conceptual models, and by implication metaphor, in the training of end‐users remains to be investigated, and a research agenda for this purpose is outlined.

The relationship between individuals and institutions is a core feature of the microfoundations of institutional theory. This chapter analyzes the role of conceptual metaphors, a standard ingredient of theory building, in shaping how we theorize this relationship. Using illustrations from the emergent literature on emotions in institutional theory, the author shows the significance of conceptual metaphors for theory building and argues for selecting conceptual metaphors that help craft a dynamic, recursive relationship between individuals and institutions, respecting core premises of institutional theory and offering new creative insights into this relationship.

Letters and opinions published in the Chronicle of Higher Education were analysed to identify metaphors relating to libraries used by faculty, academic administrators and librarians. Metaphors used in communications are assumed to reflect conceptual models held by the communicators. The qualitative methodology used in this study was built on the works of Schön, Reddy and Green. In this exploratory study, fourteen models of libraries were identified through linguistic examination of the appearance of the word stem ‘librar’ among published communications from academics. Differences were found in the conceptual models of libraries held among faculty, academic administrators and librarians. The study's findings suggest that to administrators in this case, libraries are contributors to the social structure of an academic environment, while to faculty, libraries are the repository for physical information resources to support their research. Librarians in the study tend to attribute an activist role to libraries, and to express a conceptual model of a library as a storehouse. The identification of metaphors about libraries, cited by academics, offers library managers insights into academic library users' conceptualisation of libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a more thorough understanding of cognitive social capital (shared representations) building in a multicultural marketing context.

An ethnographic study with in-depth interviews and observations are used to explore how Chinese entrepreneurs utilize cultural metaphors to build their cognitive social capital in the USA. Both Chinese entrepreneurs and their American stakeholders (consumers and business associates) are interviewed.

The three themes from the findings are cultural conceptual blending, frame shifting with stereotype dilution and metaphor conversion. These form the sub-processes of an overall process the authors name “cross-cultural shifting.” The use of visual and verbal cultural metaphors by the Chinese entrepreneurs leads to conceptual blending, a process of blending of elements and relations from various scenarios in the mind. A frame shifting and stereotype dilution follows, culminating in the conversion of the cultural metaphors into the deep (universally recognized) metaphors of resource and connection.

Given that metaphors are one manifestations of culture and also effective for communicating universally, they play a role in cognitive social capital building in a multicultural context. This exposition calls for further research the utilization of cultural metaphors in international marketing.

The variability in communication and comprehension of business stakeholders from different cultures influence their cognitive social capital building (cooperative behavior to exchange resources). This makes it imperative for multicultural marketers to understand the use of cultural metaphors to enhance cognitive social capital in a multicultural context.

This exposition on cross-cultural frame shifting will result in improved knowledge of the role of cultural metaphors in enhancing multicultural understanding, shared representations and cognitive social capital in international marketing.

The value of qualitative empirical research in the management and accounting disciplines lies in its “conceptual framing” of organizational actions, events, processes, and structures. Argues that the possibilities for conceptual framing extend beyond the highly abstract schema generally considered as “theories” by academics. In support of this argument, distinguishes five different forms of theorization. Explores the relationship between these theoretical “levels” and the different issues that empirical research explores, arguing that, as the “level” of theorizing “rises”, issues of agency give way to a focus on practice and, in turn, to a concern with structure. As this happens, research aims directed towards abstraction and explanation supersede those for contextualization and understanding. Concludes that views on “what counts as theory” are, currently, too narrow to conceptualize agency, emergence and change adequately in organizational life and, hence, the full range of significant empirical phenomena that characterize the management and accounting areas are not being researched.

The purpose of this paper is to document the conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003) found in the talk of Greek and Australian adults to describe how people think about money. As money becomes increasingly abstract, understanding money, dealing with debt and encouraging financial literacy become more problematic.

Semi-structured interviews of a small sample (n = 7) are analysed using Lakoff and Johnson’s model of metaphor to map the underlying conceptual structures of money.

This paper argues that the abstraction of money has led people to search for a conceptual object. The forms and features of this object are recovered by tracing the metaphors, their presuppositions and entailments. This shows that people think about money as a physical object that needs to be carefully managed to avoid bodily harm and personal physical discomfort. Specifically, money is an object with weight that physically constrains the body, a substance that can be addictive albeit with the agentive capacity of sentient beings.

While the physical and corporeal nature of money implicitly underpins existing money management techniques (e.g. “jam jar” accounts), a detailed understanding of money as a (conceptual) object provides detailed discursive, lexical and persuasive resources for promoting sound financial behaviour and perhaps informing both economic and social policies.

While metaphor has been studied in economics texts, very little attention has been paid to the language that ordinary people use to talk about money. This research gives a clear picture of money as a metaphorically physical object.

Using the theory of sensibility and McClelland et al.’s (2013) metaphorical analysis, this study aims to analyse the accounting metaphors and meta-metaphor of The Hollow Men, a poem written by T. S. Eliot.

The analysis uses McClelland et al.’s (2013) five-step procedure to ascertain the poem’s metaphor use.

The Hollow Men depicts accountants as ritualistic and accounting voices as quiet and meaningless while its meta-metaphor conveys accounting as rites and shadows.

Although The Hollow Men’s use of Form 4 metaphors, where neither figurative nor literal source term is named, places an onus on the reader to infer meaning from accounting metaphor use, the analysis provides readers with a valuable structure for evincing accounting metaphors that present pervasive accounting issues facing the modern world.

Accountants, according to The Hollow Men, are hollow, devotees to plunderers and property and rain dancers. The Hollow Men situates the quest for accounting as a ritual for order and the preservation of the status quo.

The Hollow Men’s mages of accounting immersion in rites and shadows accord with the conceptual metaphors of accounting as magic and accounting as history.

The originality of this study rests in its introduction to McClelland et al.’s (2013) metaphorical analysis of accounting research.

This paper presents a framework for understanding the technological change and its impacts on environments where multiple versions of a technology exist simultaneously. Both orienting and limiting role of physical (skeumorph) and conceptual metaphors on the products, processes, and user experience in changing from a familiar functional implementation to the one employing new media is illustrated using examples showing the transition from wet photography to digital imagery and from surface mail to e‐mail. People use physical (skeumorph) and conceptual metaphors to orient themselves with new technology by understanding new functions in terms of earlier technological versions. Since new technology is adopted at varying rates and varying times, multiple versions exist at any given time. Sometimes expectations appropriate for earlier technological iterations obscure the challenges and possibilities presented by the new media implementation. This paper examines how new technologies challenge and are challenged by the contexts into which they are introduced. By understanding the function that physical (skeumorph) and conceptual metaphors play in facilitating technological change, we can become more conscious of the discontinuities between the new technological iteration and earlier implementations to gain deeper awareness about how “the new” functions differently and to help us engage new technology closer to its own terms and open up new possibilities for its use.

Educational planning depends on the interaction between mental processes and social behaviour. The ongoing disparity between planning and implementation calls for a shift in attention from technical problems to the more conceptual. An alternative way of thinking about educational planning is discussed. The basic idea that a plan is a symbol means that someone ostensibly gives it meaning. Metaphorical images are one way of attaining insight into such meaning. By elaborating 11 groups of metaphorical images of planning, a bridge between expression and impression is offered. A conceptual frame relates the metaphorical analysis to approaches of educational policy. This might open up a whole new area of analysis essential to the understanding of educational planning as a social process of change.

This study takes the position that the concept of fraud is socially constructed. Moreover, it asks why and how different understandings of fraud have emerged. Insights from the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 2003; Lakoff, 2002, 2004, 2009) are used to analyze language revealing dominant worldviews and metaphors regarding fraud. The research method is a case study (Yin, 2014), and the analytical approach used parallels the one described in O’Dwyer (2004). The research setting is a report issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which provides a context to study different understandings of fraud due to the report’s divided nature. The analysis reveals three alternative worldviews, representing different assumptions about reality, that are at the root of the different understandings of fraud. These worldviews also lead to the usage of different conceptual metaphors which allow the commissioners to interpret facts in a manner that supports each worldview’s assumptions. The paper also concludes by providing a nuanced and critical examination of the results of the commission concerning its understanding of fraud.