Exploring Organizational Identity in Strategy Work: Towards an ...

Exploring Organizational Identity in Strategy Work: 

Towards an Embodied Metaphor Perspective 

Claus D. Jacobs 

Exploring Organizational Identity 

in Strategy Work: 


1 

Prof. Claus D. Jacobs 

The Swiss National Science Foundation 

Professor of Strategy and Organization 

University of St. Gallen, Switzerland 

claus.jacobs@unisg.ch 

Goals 

• To re-emphasize the relevance of organizational identity 

to strategy work 

• To highlight the relevance of metaphorical mapping 

for studying of organizational identity 

• To develop and demonstrate a multi-modal elicitation 

approach 

of metaphorical mapping based on embodied realism 

2 

Presentation outline 

• The concept of organizational identity 

• Organizational identity, strategy and metaphors 

• Towards a multi-modal elicitation approach 

• Case example: Cellco 

• Summary and conclusion 

Loizos Heracleous, 

Warwick Business School 

David Oliver 

HEC Montréal 

3 

Jacobs, Oliver and Heracleous 2008 

The screen versions of these slides have full details of copyright and acknowledgements 

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The concept of organizational identity 

4 

5 

Organizational identity: 

concept and perspectives 

• Organizational identity refers to the collectively held 

self-concept of “who we are as an organization” (Sillince, 2006) 

• Initially, Albert and Whetten (1985) suggested organizational identity 

convergent, objective set of central, enduring and distinctive 

characteristics of an organization 

• However and in challenging these premises, 

others have suggested it as a social accomplishment in terms 

of a “temporary, context-sensitive and evolving set of constructions” 

(Alvesson et al., 2008: 6) 

• Such social constructionist, processual view puts identity work 

as the forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising 

identity-related constructions (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003) 

at the heart of scholarly interest 

Organizational identity, strategy and metaphors 

• The relevance of identity to strategy depends, to a large extent, 

on the specific concept of strategy 

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2




Why organizational identity matters for strategy 

• As intangible, socially complex and causally ambiguous micro-resource, 

Fiol (2002) suggested organizational identity 

as a source of competitive advantage 

• Equally, Grant (1991) suggested that a specified and shared sense 

of organization’s raison d’être 

improves strategy development processes 

• Gioia and Thomas (1996) found organizational identity 

to be central to an organization's ability to engage in strategic change 

• Rughase (2007) pointed to organizational identity as an important 

cognitive constraint when evaluating external opportunities 

or internal capabilities 

7 

8 

Organizational identity attributes 

as well as resource qualities 

call for social meaning negotiation 

• Whether a resource is a candidate for offering an organization competitive 

advantage is typically assessed against four criteria: 

– Value, Rarity, Inimitability and Nonsubstitutability (VRIN) 

• On this note, Sillince (2006) suggests that four key aspects 

of an organization’s identity are important 

– Attractiveness, Distinctiveness, Centrality and Endurance 

• Thus, if an organizational identity is considered attractive, distinctive, 

central and enduring as per the organizational members, 

it might provide the organization with competitive edge 

• e.g. Apple might help illustrate Sillince‘s point that an organization‘s identity 

provides a competitive advantage 

Organizational identity and metaphors 

• Metaphors (viewing a target domain A (‘life’) 

in terms of a source domain B (‘journey’) 

are key components of narratives 

• A constructionist viewpoint on metaphors 

emphasizes their central role in human sense making and understanding 

• Metaphors play a central role in conveying actors’ perceptions, 

values and beliefs that shape frames for interpretation 

and guide social reality construction (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) 

• Metaphorical mapping can give rise to novel, 

emergent meaning regarding the unknown/contested domain 

(e.g. organizational identity; Cornelissen, 2005) 

• Other typical metaphors for organizations include: 

– The organization as a machine 

– The organization as an organism 

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3




10 

Making sense of and through metaphors: 

projection vs. elicitation approaches 

• Cornelissen et al., (2008) have suggested to broadly group research 

on metaphor in organizational studies roughly along two dimensions 

• Methodological approach 

– Discursive/contextual approach: 

emphasizes locally-specific uses and meanings 

of metaphors 

– Cognitive linguistic/de-contextual approach: conceives of metaphors 

as general organizing principles of thought and experience 

• Focus/basic orientation 

– Projection (established): a deductive approach that ‘applies’ or ‘projects’ 

a set of given metaphors to organizations 

– Elicitation (emergent): an inductive approach that ‘identifies’ or ‘elicits’ 

the local set of metaphors-in-use 

So far, most scholars have mainly focused 

on de-contextual projection 

Morgan 

1980, 2006 

Putnam & 

Boys 2006 

Cornelissen 

2005 

Hatch & 

Yanow 

2008 

Projection 

Palmer & 

Dunford 

1996 

Weick 1989, 

1998 

De-contextual 

Contextual 

Lakoff 1993 

Heracleous 

& Jacobs 

2008 

Gioia et al., 

1994 

Greenberg 

1995 

11 

Cornelissen et al., 2008 

Elicitation 

An elicitation approach accounts 

for the multi-modal potential of metaphors 

• Traditional work on metaphor 

has been primarily concerned with metaphors in language data 

• However, a metaphor is likely to be cued and represented 

in more than one mode simultaneously 

• Other modes or modalities include pictorial signs and images 

(image metaphor), gestures (metaphoric gestures), 

constructed artefacts (metaphoric artefacts) and sounds (sonic 

metaphor) (Forceville, 2002; Oliver and Roos, 2007) 

• Metaphoric artefacts in particular might express 

idiomatic metaphorical models in order to extend linguistic metaphors 

12 

Cornelissen et al., 2008 


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13 




Our multi-modal elicitation approach 

to metaphors and organizational identity 

is informed by embodied realism 

• “Mind is embodied, meaning is embodied, and thought is embodied in 

this most profound sense. This is the substance of an embodied 

realism… 

the locus of experience, meaning and thought is the ongoing series 

of embodied organism-environment interactions that constitute 

our understanding of the world.” (Johnson & Lakoff, 2002: 249) 

• Thus: 

– Reason is embodied, 

not a transcendent feature of the universe 

– Reason is not completely conscious, 

but mostly unconscious 

– Reason is not purely literal, 

but largely metaphorical and imaginative 

– Reason is not dispassionate, but emotionally engaged Lakoff & Johnson, 1999 

Embodied realism suggests individual identity 

formation as a process of metaphorical mapping 

Metaphorical 

mapping 

Our self as identity 

Our body as subject 

Embodiment as 

formative process 

14 

Gibbs, 2005 

Everyday 

embodied 

experience 

Manipulating 

objects 

Being located 

in space 

Entering into 

social relations 

Empathic 

projection 

Having an 

essential, 

'true' self 

15 

Such mapping is rooted in five everyday 

embodied experiences 

Metaphor system (example) Main focus Examples 

A physical object > The self 

Being in a normal location > 

Being in control of self 

Evaluative social relationship 

> Evaluative subject-self 

relationship 

Real situation > hypothetical 

situation 

Person 1 > Self 2, not the 

real self, doesn't fit essence 

Self control 

is object control 

Self control is being in 

one's normal location 

Subject and self 

as adversaries 

Empathic projection 

True self 

‘You’re pushing 

yourself too hard’ 

'I was beside 

myself with anger' 

'She's at odds 

with herself 

whether to stay' 

'If I were you I'd 

feel awful too' 

'I am not 

myself today.' 


5




A multi-modal elicitation approach to metaphors 

16 

Embodied realism informs some of the design 

principles of a multi-modal elicitation approach 

Aspect of identity 

in embodied realism 

Manipulating objects 

Being located in space 

Entering into social relations 

Empathic projection 

Having an essential, 

'true' self 

17 

Operationalization in multi-modal 

elicitation approach 

Embodied metaphors 

involve constructing physical structures and objects 

Objects, structures as well as actors 

have a spatial existence 

Groups of actors in organizational relationships create 

structures that represent organizational relationships 

Collectively constructed physical structures 

contain projected meanings 

Physical objects represent what actors consider 

'essential' to their identity 

Honouring this insight, 

OI formation can be facilitated through 

collective embodied metaphorical mapping 

"Who we are as an organization" 

(Organizational identity) 

Collective process 

of embodied 

metaphorical 


Metaphorical 


Organizational 

identity 

Subject 

Metaphorical 



identity 

Subject 

… 

Metaphorical 



identity 

Subject 

Embodiment 

Embodiment 

Embodiment 

18 

Jacobs, Oliver and Heracleous 2008 


6




A multi-modal approach aims at eliciting 

embodied metaphors of organizational identity 

• Process: up to 12 organizational members construct & debrief 

individually, then collectively, physical models 

of their organization & its main constituents 

• Materials: we rely on construction toy materials 

due to their effectiveness in swiftly creating 

rich images 

• Content: as part of the elicitation process, 

participants are asked «to build a model of their organization» 

• Outcome: we refer to the physical constructions as embodied 

metaphors since they are constructed with our body 

(primarily our hands) and they have a physical existence 

19 

Jacobs, Oliver and Heracleous 2008; Buergi, Jacobs and Roos, 2005 

Case example: exploring organizational identity 

in CellCo’s strategy work 

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Constructing OI in CellCo's business 

operations senior management team 

• CellCo: trendy European based mobile telephony provider 

• Eight senior members of business operations team at 

CellCo 

• 2002 strategy workshop – after being acquired by FixCo 

• Instruction: «Individually then collectively, build a model 

of your organization and its competitive landscape" 

• Materials: construction toy materials 

21 

Jacobs, Oliver and Heracleous 2008; Heracleous and Jacobs, 2008 


7




Technology 

tower 

CellCo 

castle 

Brand: 

disconnected 

light house 

Operations 

team 

Bureaucracy 

Ghost 

of founder 

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Empty 

carousel 

Elephant 

and Tiger: 

3G licence 

The embodied metaphors revealed 

important concerns regarding the organization’s 

identity and competitive position 

Metaphorical mapping 

(Source to target) 

CellCo Castle as the 

recent conquest by FixCo 

Brand as disconnected 

light house 

Emergent meaning 

Previously strong 

and confident, 

now vulnerable 

Previously central, 

brand now peripheral 


identity attribute 

(Sillince, 2006) 

Fading autonomy as threat 

to attractiveness? 

Fading centrality? 

Elephant & Tiger sculpture 

as ambiguity of 3G license 

Ghost figure as bygone spirit 

of the founder 

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Ambiguous 

investment decisions 

Loss of inspirational 

leadership of the founder 

Enduring? 

Fading 

distinctiveness? 

• Clearly, the elicitation approach does not replace 

an overall strategy process 

• Yet, it provided an important initial diagnostic element that provided 

direction and guidance to the subsequent strategy formation 

• In particular, the approach 

– Revealed several key attributes of CellCo’s organizational identity 

as per the participants of this workshop 

– Identified and specified the strategic relevance of these attributes 

– Provided a list of micro-resources likely to be relevant to CellCo’s 

competitive position 

– Provided an initial evaluation and set of questions to be further explored, 

challenged or substantiated in subsequent strategic conversations 

24 

How was this exploration of CellCo’s 

organizational identity 

strategically consequential? 


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Summary and conclusion 

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Summary 

• Organizational identity matters for strategy work 

• Organizational identity can effectively be explored 

through an elicitation of local metaphors approach 

• An elicitation approach benefits from tapping into more than one 

modality (typically language) and mobilizes multiple modalities 

simultaneously 

• Embodied metaphors refer to metaphoric artefacts 

that are created through our hands and thus, 

multiple modalities and have a physical existence 

• The outcome of such process is a rich and nuanced set of 

organizational identity attributes that can then be assessed for their 

strategic relevance 

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Our approach informs several adjacent 

streams of research 

• Re: metaphors in organizations 

– Substantiates conceptually and methodologically an elicitation 

approach to studying metaphors in organizations 

• Re: organizational identity 

– Operationalizes an multi-modal elicitation approach to studying 

organizational identity 

– Offer embodied realism as a relevant perspective 

to organizational identity research 

• Re: strategy work 

– Demonstrates the relevance of materiality in sensemaking 

– Offers a structured approach to elicit embodied metaphors 

in strategy work – as well as their analysis 


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Thank you! 

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• Albert, S., and Whetten, D. 1985, Organizational identity, in: Research in Organizational Behaviour, 

Vol.7. Cummings, L. & Staw, B. (eds), 263-295, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press 

• Alvesson, M., Ashcraft, K. L. and Thomas, R. 2008. Identity matters: 

Reflections on the construction of identity scholarship in organization studies, Organization, 15: 5-28 

• Buergi, P., Jacobs, C. and Roos, J. 2005, From metaphor to practice in the crafting of strategy, 

Journal of Management Inquiry, 14: 78-94 

• Cornelissen, J. P. 2005, Beyond compare: Metaphor in organization theory, 

Academy of Management Review, 30: 751-764 

• Cornelissen, J.P., Oswick, C., Christensen, L. and Phillips, N. 2008, Metaphor in Organizational 

Research: Context, Modalities and Implications for Research, Organization Studies, 29: 7-22 

• Fiol, C. M. 2002, Capitalizing on paradox: The role of language in transforming organizational identities, 

Organization Science, 13: 653-666 

• Gibbs, R. 2005, Embodiment and cognitive science, New York: Cambridge University Press 

• Gioia, D.A. and Thomas, J.B. 1996, Identity, Image and issue interpretation: 

Sensemaking during strategic change in academia, Administrative Science Quarterly, 41: 370-403 

• Grant, R. 1991, The Resource Based Theory of Competitive Advantage: 

Implications for Strategy Formulation, California Management Review, 33: 114-135 

• Heracleous, L. and Jacobs, C. 2011, Crafting strategy – Embodied metaphors in practice, 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 2011 

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References 

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