Developing a Metaphor for Self-Managed Organizations

Introduction

The objective of the chapter is to present a metaphor that helps understand modern-day organizations. The transformation of the workplace has created the need to develop more up to date metaphors that can help explain how the organizations of the future will operate. The transition from traditional work to project-based activities entails modifications in collaboration, leadership, autonomy, and responsibility. New forms of organizations are emerging. Hybrid, self-managed, and temporary organizations seem to be the rule. In this new environment, a gap in organizational metaphors can be identified. A new mindset is, therefore, essential to determine whether a new metaphor can reflect the evolution of organizations in the new millennia and if this metaphor will result in meaning-making. In creating metaphors, previous ideas need to be analyzed and compared (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011), including metaphors by Morgan (2006), Ortenblad, Putnam & Trehan (2016), Shultze & Orlikowski (2001), and Gmür (2006).

Metaphors in organizations are common for meaning-making about the way businesses operate under specific conditions. Imagery is used to help people connect with specific ideas that are representative of a particular era or time frame. This chapter aims to present a metaphor for organizations in the new business ecosystems, including the New Ways of Working (NWoW). The Avocado metaphor was selected as an acronym for Advanced Value Organizations that are Consistent, Autonomous and Decision-Oriented), to create awareness of alternative conceptualizations (Alveson & Sandberg, 2011) of organizations in ever-changing environments. The Avocado metaphor (AVOs for short) was developed based on emergent, hybrid, self-maturing, and self-managed temporary organizations. It was constructed through bricolage (Boxenbaum & Rouleau, 2011), bringing in concepts and ideas from different areas. The idea of advanced-value was developed to describe organizations that emerge within organizations, becoming highly productive, and outperforming others; that are protean in nature, adapting to changing demands, hybridizing as required; organizations that self-organize, self-manage and self-evolve which most of the times operate based on time-constrained projects, hence becoming temporary organizations.

The Avocado metaphor was created as a response to modern-day business contexts. It can be located in the spectrum of organismic organizations as an open system with a precise lifecycle, strongly influenced by its environment, reflecting global trends of smaller designs creating organizations within organizations and teams of teams. In this new organizational setting, metaphors are useful in promoting understanding of new designs and forms of organization. Theoretical foundations are presented to justify the selection of the Avocado metaphor. General information on avocado trees and fruits is integrated to help develop a general overview of the context of the metaphor.

Theories on emergence, hybrid, self-maturing, self-managing, and temporary organizations are introduced and then compared against underlying characteristics of avocados, presenting a novel approach to modern-day organizations. Avocados can be used as a viable metaphor for organizations. Although native to Mexico and other tropical countries, avocados have achieved a cosmopolitan status, and, because of increased trade, the product is present in virtually every country around the world; therefore, the metaphor can be well understood. This particular fruit has been at the center of media attention as it was linked to millennial consumption and lack of savings culture; political and economic mishaps between Mexico and the US; a source of household accidents of public figures, and it was also at the center of the so-called Guacamole crisis of 2017 due to a workers’ stoppage in avocado orchards in Mexico.