The irony with metaphor is that while the speaker or author is using it to paint an image of one thing as another, ‘the financial storm’, ‘the Arab Spring’… these are illusory, in reality there was no storm, nor Spring. “Welcome to the mysterious world of metaphor, in which everything is something it is not” […]
Book Review Subject: Organizational Behaviour
Adaptive Space
The original research question they set out to answer was “what is the process by which ideas emerge and flow n the organization?”. The spark for the image of the answer, as Arena notes, that in 1989 sociologist Ray Oldenburg ‘pioneered the concept of a ‘third place’’, a ‘free trade zone’ that provides a sense […]
Breaking Bad Habits
“That’s the way we do things around here,” is the give-away phrase that, according to Vermeulen, signals the presence of a bad habit that needs to stop. These are often enduring structures, systems, processes and ways of working that once helped improve organizational performance, but are no longer relevant and may be hindering innovation. These […]
Inspired Leadership
So what is the formula for becoming a leader that can get ordinary people to perform extraordinarily? What is it that you need to be inspirational? For many of us that extra element might seem slightly mystical; a special manner or charisma that some people just have. Gaskell does not wholly subscribe to this view, though […]