Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

The complex and often imperceptible nature of organizational culture and its metaphoric representations hold greater sway over organizational behavior than is typically understood. The use of metaphor to navigate cultural undercurrents is largely underutilized during change initiatives, which can significantly increase change failure, estimated between 50% and 75% for nearly forty years. An arts-based approach called Imaginal Metaphor Inquiry (IMI) is proposed as an initiatory phase for organizational change to help ensure the right questions are being asked before the wrong problems are solved, and to inclusively engage a diverse set of participants on whose cooperation change success rests. Participant drawings are central to the inquiry process as visual responses to critical questions the organization faces. Hand drawings are a portal into pre-verbal imagination, which becomes a source for increasing an organization’s capacity to create possibilities, actions, and outcomes not accessible through rational, analytic problem-solving approaches. As pictorial metaphors, drawings expose unspoken or unconscious values, beliefs, assumptions, and conflicting ideologies that often sabotage change programs and embrace aspects not often tended to such as grief and anxiety while incorporating extrarational ways of knowing and cultural metaphors. Imaginal Metaphor Inquiry offers a different way of knowing influenced by a different way of (literally) seeing current conditions. Through imagery and dialogue, IMI helps reconceptualize change as appealing experimentation, which allows organization members to experience change before committing to a strategy, and to shift focus from the change itself to how imagination can shape a resilient, creative culture that subsequently influences strategic decisions.