Recently I was pulling together some content around governance for social software and it reminded me of a quote from a book that struck me about 10 years ago.
“Finding the right metaphor or model is even more critical than developing a better set of policies. ...A metaphoric struggle is currently in progress over how we should imagine our organizational structures for communication and decision making. ... the network is in the process of replacing the pyramid. ... All of these metaphoric frames of reference elevate different values and lead in different directions for an institution's culture and governance.” (emphasis added)
(Eric Mount, (1990). Professional Ethics in Context: Institutions, Images and Empathy. Louisville: Westminster / John Knox Press. pg. 85)
Published in 1990 !! That is almost 20 years ago! And we are still in the middle of this struggle. I find it interesting the linkage between our use of metaphors and how we imagine our organizations and the values and governance. Our core values would seem to fit some metaphors better than others … do we ever have cognitive dissonance?
How do we think about our organizations? … our customers? … the competition? … the world?
No comments:
Post a Comment