Diagnosing organizational identity beliefs by eliciting complex, multimodal metaphors

Claus D. Jacobs, David Oliver, Loizos Heracleous

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

21 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to extend the organizational development diagnostics repertoire by advancing an approach that surfaces organizational identity beliefs through the elicitation of complex, multimodal metaphors by organizational members. We illustrate the use of such "Type IV" metaphors in a postmerger context, in which individuals sought to make sense of the implications of the merger process for the identity of their organization. This approach contributes to both constructive and discursive new organizational development approaches; and offers a multimodal way of researching organizational identity that goes beyond the dominant, mainly textual modality.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)485-507
Number of pages23
JournalJournal of Applied Behavioral Science
Volume49
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2013
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • multimodal metaphors
  • organizational development diagnostics
  • organizational identity beliefs

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