ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the Change Agents (CAs) employed by Copperdale City Council drew upon central government documents—Working Without Walls and Working Beyond Walls —to transform work at Copperdale. In the management and organisation studies literature, metaphor has been used as a means of analysis, in different ways. A metaphors-as-power approach focuses on how power is exercised in relation to metaphor. The journey metaphor the CAs employed differs from the archetypical heroic journey that ‘involves leaving a safe, familiar place (home), enduring privations, facing temptations and dangers, prevailing over them, and returning’. The journey metaphor relates to change, new working practices and the need to create spatially flexible subjects. The chapter argues that using a journey metaphor to promote spatial flexibility may be a flawed project. Rather than a utopia of transient, empowered, skilled, enriched workers, the ‘journey’ which managers and staff were urged to embrace appeared to result in a loss of control.
