“Organizations must be able to adapt to their environment or fail.” Which metaphor best reflects this statement?

You are a prominent trade unionist at a local engineering company. Your manufacturing plant has recently been selected for a major redesign of production operations. The old design used a traditional labor-intensive manufacturing system, but the new system will be a highly automated, “cutting edge” production process. Computers and robots will take over many old tasks, but management has said that it will retrain all employees for new roles in the company. Management is certain that the proposed changes will make the plant more competitive. When management argues that the new system will secure the company’s future where “we all win” and shows dismay when the union expresses doubts, management is displaying which view of the organization:

Which of the following is not a major concern of the Domination metaphor?

Miller’s “Icarus Paradox” concept suggests that organizations get trapped in favored ways of thinking such that their performance diminishes over time. This arises because:

When considering how to deal with a stakeholder, managers should look at the stakeholder’s:

Interests and conflict are a significant part of which organizational metaphor?

You are a prominent trade unionist at a local engineering company. Your manufacturing plant has recently been selected for a major redesign of production operations. The old design used a traditional labor-intensive manufacturing system, but the new system will be a highly automated, “cutting edge” production process. Computers and robots will take over many old tasks, but management has said that it will retrain all employees for new roles in the company. Management is certain that the proposed changes will make the plant more competitive. However, the union has resisted the implementation of the new changes because of uncertainty about the future direction of the work force (it has been estimated that the size of the work force will decline by 20% in future years, through retirements and general turnover). The union has successfully worked to represent the rights of the company’s workforce in the past. You fear the loss of these hard-won gains and see the potential for the demise of trade union power within the organization, and a loss of traditional union jobs. Which metaphor provides the most insight on this situation?

When analyzing two competing companies that combine efforts to protect mutual interests, which of the following metaphors might be appropriate to use?

In a technocracy, managers are chosen based on:

The Psychic Prison metaphor would encourage which interpretation of IBM’s failure to capture a dominant role in personal computer hardware and software during the 1980’s despite having invented the IBM PC?