The network metaphor has long been employed as a powerful way of evoking the imagery of the complex web of relationships that characterize our societies and organizations.1 For Morgan, who popularized the use of the metaphor as a tool within management studies in the mid-1980s,

metaphor is often just regarded as a device for embellishing discourse, but its signicance is much greater than this. For the use of metaphor implies a way of thinking and a way of seeing that pervade how we understand our world generally.2