ABSTRACT
This chapter explains what metaphors are and how they work. It explores the use of metaphor across different domains, including everyday life and digital contexts. The chapter provides an extended analysis to illustrate the relationship between metaphor and discourses about organisation. A metaphor is a figurative expression whereby something is described as if it were something else. Studies of metaphor have a long history in Western scholarship, going all the way back to classical Greece and Aristotle's work on rhetoric and speech-making. The metaphors reflect the cultural dominance of management ideals over those of labour in discourses associated with work organisation. These metaphors trace their lineage to the era of early industrialisation when work organisations were mainly concerned with the mass manufacture of commodities. contemporary management ideas about the nature of work and the espoused ideals about how employees should be valued holistically have changed dramatically in the last fifty years.
