| This phenomenological study describes a top management team's use of metaphor in talk (dialogue) to make meaning of ambiguous, uncertain situations in its environment. The study explores the content and process of a top management team's use of metaphor to structure thoughts and actions. This theoretical focus extends awareness of the influence of language beyond conscious, deliberate reasoning devices to include unconscious, out-of-awareness framings, schemas and perspectives (Goffman, 1974) shared by the team. The analysis is based on Lakoff and Johnson's (1980, 1999) theory of conceptual metaphor. The conceptual frame reviews top management teams and language emphasizing metaphor to show how the two are inextricably related in making meaning.; The research design involves prolonged observation of the subjects' dialogue over a three-month period of time. This approach enables the researcher to identify the metaphorical utterances that occur in social interaction. Individual and group interviews extend our understanding of the team's "lived experience" (Husserl, 1931) and sensemaking (Weick, 1995) at the collective level. Team members operating as coresearchers verified findings and conclusions to establish trustworthiness, credibility and dependability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Miles & Huberman, 1994).; This study found the top management team conceived of its uncertain environment as experiences of war resulting in the metaphor work as war. The remainder of the team's metaphors revealed its thoughts and experiences of other everyday abstract concepts like time as a moving object, time as a limited resource, work as sports, the mind as machine , and emotions as physical forces. Metaphors were used to structure abstract concepts into more comprehensible ways, as a kind of "shorthand" for the team. Metaphors were used in the context of physical, cultural and ontological orientations, formed intersubjectively and mostly unconsciously in ongoing interactions.; Conclusions show the influence of team composition, culture, and individual need for power affected the team's effectiveness and use of metaphor to make meaning in an ambiguous, uncertain environment. Implications and recommendations for future research about top management teams and meaning making through metaphor are provided for research, theory and practice. |
