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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.

While metaphors are widely used in strategy teaching and development, this study aims to present an approach how to benefit from metaphor analysis in strategy implementation. The authors find that metaphors used by organizational actors in strategy implementation processes carry a great range of implicit meanings and tacit knowledge that – when made explicit and critically examined – may serve as early warning signals to anticipate difficult or problematic developments in the strategy rollout phase.

The authors conducted narrative interviews with the main protagonists involved in the implementation of a strategic knowledge management project for the sales force of a multinational telecommunication solution provider. The data collected resulted in the surfacing of distinct groups of metaphors used by different organizational groups at different phases of the project implementation.

The metaphor analysis showed that metaphors not only reflect but also foreshadow project developments, and thereby reveal organizational conflicts that may erupt at later stages of the strategy implementation. Learning through metaphors can be realized through a sensitization to the detrimental effects of particular metaphors, as well as through the revelation of inconsistencies between the metaphors used and the exposed behaviors.

The study is an in-depth case study of a strategy implementation project in one organization. While the findings are related to the particular case context, the methodological approach to use metaphor analysis as an early warning signal in strategy implementation can be replicated for strategy implementation processes in general.

Organizations may use metaphor analysis as a tool to calibrate to what extent their strategy implementation is aligned with initial strategic objectives. Metaphor analysis will be particularly helpful to check if there is an alignment in the implementation approach between different organizational groups. Such analysis can serve as an early warning signal for the strategy implementation phase.

The approach provides an inexpensive but very effective way of anticipating problematic project developments and unforeseen difficult collaborations during strategy implementation processes. With its focus on metaphors, it captures implicit meanings and connotations that business languages tend to filter out, yet that play a powerful role for enabling or obstructing strategy implementation.

This paper conceptualises how managers psychologically experience and respond to crises via metaphor analysis.

This paper uses a discourse dynamics approach to metaphor analysis. Conceptual metaphors were analysed and developed into concept maps through 37 semi-structured interviews with senior managers from different portfolios within 16 public universities in South Africa after #FeesMustFall protests.

Five domains emerged, including (1) looming crisis, (2) crisis onset, (3) crisis triage and containment, (4) (not) taking action and (5) post-crisis reflection. These domains shape a framework for the crisis adaptation cycle.

This study suggests that organisations should pay more attention to understanding emotions in crises and can use the adaptation model to develop their managers. It shows how metaphors can help explain affective and cognitive experiences and how emotions shift and evolve during a crisis. Managers should be aware of early signs of the crisis and its potential impact on their business operation in the looming and recognition stages, analyse the situation and work collectively on possible actions to minimise losses and maximise gains.

This is a rare investigation into the emotions of senior managers in the public sector in a social movement and national crisis via unconventional research methods to advance cognitive appraisal theory in crisis management.

Interactive media strategies and digital tools have enabled advertisers to target children with promotional offers and creative appeals.

Based on theories related to metaphors in advertisements, cognitive comprehension by children, promotional appeals, and presentation techniques, the research for this study comprised a content analysis of 1,980 online banner advertisements with reference to use of metaphors, promotional appeals, creative content, and selling techniques.

The research study concludes that online advertising to children, in contrast to traditional advertising vehicles, is characterized by (a) a vibrant visual metaphor, (b) surfeit of animated content, (c) interactive features, (d) myriad product types, and (e) creative content for a mixed audience of adults and children.

This study argues that the impact and content of the Internet as a new advertising medium are distinctly different from traditional characteristics of television and print.

Research on cultural entrepreneurship has explored the role of language in making and giving sense to novel ventures and market categories and in legitimating them. We analyze how an emerging de novo market category, quantum computing, is constructed through the use of analogies and metaphors. Through a multimodal analysis of interview and newspaper data, we find that in addition to using analogies and metaphors to highlight familiarity, actors also use such tropes to expound the weirdness of the new category, thus marking it as profoundly different and novel. Such tropes have a dual function; they draw the boundaries between science and laypeople but also arouse awe and curiosity among the audiences. Our study thus casts light on the cultural work during de novo category emergence.

Metaphor is a powerful change agent when applied to course redesign. In this chapter, we examine the influence mental models have on our thinking and the potential consequences they have for our learners. By choosing a metaphor to frame our redesign process, we reveal our ideas about our content, our learners, and our instructional style and how they fit together. This all-important first step in the redesign process can be a game changer; leading us to create the kind of learning experience we seek for our students and for ourselves. Metaphor provides means to break away from default patterns of thinking, inspiring us to play and develop new approaches to teaching and learning – facilitating the redesign necessary to bring about learning in an online context. We examine real examples of courses redesigned using metaphor, and then we embark on an exploration of other metaphors and their likely influence on decisions related to course redesign. In the end, we revise the course redesign model to include metaphor.

Metaphor is an important concept for clean language interviewers. This chapter describes what metaphor is and overviews the experimental research showing the potential for metaphor to influence interviewees. It expands on the brief introduction to metaphor in Chapter 1 and describes the role clean language can play by enabling interviewees' metaphors to be elicited, explored and modelled without the influence of the interviewer's metaphors. It justifies the value of a heightened awareness of the ubiquity and variety of metaphors and their involvement in the different phases of qualitative research; and builds an argument for how a clean language interviewing approach to metaphor can enrich the research process.

We investigate how Salesforce’s key people used analogies and metaphors during the deployment of their (then) radical business model innovation. Our analysis shows how Salesforce’s entrepreneurial team skillfully used a mix of analogies and metaphors to communicate its innovations and differentiate the company from its competitors. We also show how business model innovators can weave together analogies and metaphors to create distinct meta-narratives that elicited strong emotions and helped construct a memorable organizational identity that galvanized stakeholders around the firm’s ecosystem appeal. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for business model and cognition research.

This paper adds to the literature on societal grand challenges by shifting the focus away from business firms and other formal organizations as key actors in addressing such challenges toward the inherent organizing capacity that lies in the use of language itself. More specifically, we focus on the organizing capacities of metaphor-based communication, seeking to ascertain which qualities of metaphors enable them to co-orient collective action toward tackling grand challenges. In addressing this question, we develop an analytical framework based on two qualities of metaphorical communication that can provide such co-orientation: a metaphor’s (a) vividness and (b) responsible actionability. We illustrate the usefulness of this framework by assessing selected metaphors used in the public discourse to make sense of and organize collective responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the flu metaphor/analogy, the war metaphor, and the combined metaphor of “the hammer and the dance.” Our paper contributes to extant research by providing a means to assess the co-orienting potential of metaphors in bridging varied interpretations. In so doing, our framework can pave the way toward more responsible use of metaphorical communication in tackling society’s grand challenges.