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The history of Organizational Development (OD) reveals a much older tradition of organizational science than the conventional wisdom would suggest. By the 1960s and 1970s OD became self‐confident and dynamic. This period was not only highly experimental but established the principles of OD for much of the twentieth century. By the end of the twentieth century new images of OD had occurred and much of the earlier thinking had been transformed. This review illustrates some examples under a series of themes that have had a major impact on the discipline of OD and on the wider thinking of organizational theorists and researchers.

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 uses the analysis of metaphors to study the conceptions of research held by a sample of post‐doctoral researchers at five Australian universities. It is based on an analysis of the metaphors the researchers use in describing their research. The study produced four concepts that we have labelled “research is explorative”, “research is spatial”, “research is constructive” and “research is organic”. This study is unusual in its focus on post‐doctoral researchers and the use of metaphors to identify their conceptions of research. The primary aim of the study was to produce a view of post‐doctoral researchers conceptions of research. A secondary aim was to demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of metaphor analysis as a method of studying those conceptions of research. The study achieves both of those aims.

Motivated by Morgan’s (1997) analysis of the “paradoxical” role of metaphors in understanding and managing organisations, the purpose of this paper is to assess in what respects organisations using integrated reporting (IR) are on a “journey” of organisational change.

The paper analyses IR practitioner literature to interpret the IR journey metaphor more precisely. The authors then use in-depth interviews to assess the extent to which this metaphor captures how six early adopter organisations in Australia implement IR, and what changes result, over four years.

The journey metaphor implies substantive and holistic organisational change. By contrast, the authors find organisations use IR in contextual, instrumental and piecemeal ways. The authors propose a “toolbox” metaphor to help (re)present how organisations adapt their reporting to fit decisions already made, and challenges presented, through ordinary and ongoing strategic management.

Morgan (1997) stresses metaphors are invariably used to both describe and manage organisations. The authors’ analysis identifies specific ways the IR journey metaphor is descriptively misleading. The authors’ “toolbox” metaphor suggests different ways organisations are, or could, manage IR to create value.

This is the first paper to provide a systematic analysis of the IR journey metaphors, and to assess in what respects this metaphor captures actual organisational practice. The findings also challenge the broader notion in academic research that reporting frameworks can lead organisational change.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the underlying metaphors that hospitals use to establish their organizational mission. Metaphors impact the direction and managerial decision making of organizations, and provide a method to more easily communicate to a variety of stakeholders.

A text analytics process is run to evaluate the mission statements from the largest hospitals by revenue in each of the 50 states of the USA and District of Columbia to identify the types of metaphor-based organizational health management methods.

A cluster analysis is generated to evaluate primary mission-based metaphors, and metatriangulation is used to evaluate output, develop theory and provide practical implications for healthcare management.

Key contributions include a review of healthcare metaphors, an analysis for understanding commonly utilized metaphors, a theory building process for developing a new integrated value-based care management metaphor, and a value-based process is developed for providing healthcare managers an easy to follow and repeatable process for improving organizational communication.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, through metaphor analysis, the complex nature of the work undertaken by waiters and pursers on-board cruise ships. This is an under-researched field and empirical research has produced some interesting perceptions that these groups of workers have of themselves, of others, and of the world in which they work and live.

A total of 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted over the telephone from a sample of international participants. The data were analysed using a metaphor analysis.

There were three clusters of metaphorical illustration found: metaphors of the ship, metaphors of the environment, and metaphors of their occupation. The metaphors of the environment were split into two sub-clusters. One explored how participants understood the ship's space or work setting, and the second identified the strategies used as participants negotiated their way through their working and social lives. The stories collected from the workers have produced a very different but realistic perspective of the working lives of waiters and pursers.

Metaphors can only offer a partial view of a social phenomenon, rather than an all-encompassing view, which are furthermore specific to the research setting. Notably, for half of all participants English was not their first language, and consequently this may have had an impact upon their use of metaphors.

This research highlights the socio-employment relationship and complexities of working on cruise ships. In particular, it recognises behavioural learning practices and organisational bureaucratic utilities, which the industry relies upon for managing employees.

This study contributes new knowledge in an under-researched context exploring the sociological lives of hospitality cruise ship workers. The use of metaphor analysis has provided an interesting and useful route to extend understanding of cruise ship work.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how taxi drivers understand the customer service relationship as “dirty work” by examining the strategies they use to manage the taint associated with their work.

An innovative qualitative approach is taken that focuses upon the analysis of metaphors elicited in interviews with 24 taxi drivers.

Four different metaphorical understandings of the customer service relationship are provided: heroes, confidante, the unworthy, and predator. These metaphors are explained through a series of “hidden transcripts” (Scott, 1990). The impact of these different metaphors and hidden transcripts as sensemaking devices is addressed.

The paper uses an innovative qualitative method to argue that the construction of work as “dirty” or otherwise is located within the customer service interaction.