METAPHORS OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION: CASTING NEW LIGHT AND LOOKING IN DARK CORNERS

摘要

In our "Call for Papers" for this special issue, we sought submissions that ''use metaphors to cast new and revealing light upon our activities as educators and the institutional structures within which we live and work." Metaphors, in the seminal work of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), are used to build abstract concepts from concrete ones. We use metaphors to gain understanding of something uncertain, such as organizations, by associating it with something we know a lot about, such as a machine (Morgan, 1997). When we sent out the call, we expected to elicit root metaphors reflective of who we are as management educators and how we think about the enterprise of management education. The submissions reminded us, however, that metaphors of management education can work at different levels. As a matter of fact, the majority of the papers focused on a "micro" level―metaphors of what we do in the classroom (or online). Seven of the 41 manuscripts we received were so narrowly focused (on specific management course content) that they fell outside the domain of our Call.