Zoekresultaten

On the metaphorical nature of intellectual capital: A textual analysis

Metaphors are at the basis of our understanding of reality. Using the theory of metaphor developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999) this paper analyses common metaphors used in the intellectual capital and knowledge management literatures. An analysis of key works by Davenport & Prusak (2000), Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995), and Stewart (1991) suggests that at least 95 percent of all statements about either knowledge or intellectual capital are based on metaphors. The paper analyses the two metaphors that form the basis for the concept of intellectual capital: ‘Knowledge as a Resource’ and ‘Knowledge as Capital’, both of which derive their foundations from the industrial age. The paper goes into some of the implications of these findings for the theory and practice of intellectual capital. Common metaphors used in conceptualising abstract phenomena in traditional management practices unconsciously reinforce the established social order. The paper concludes by asking whether we need new metaphors to better understand the mechanisms of the knowledge economy, hence allowing us to potentially change some of the more negative structural features of contemporary society.

Metaphor Analysis as an Approach for Exploring Theoretical Concepts: The Case of Social Capital

In many fields within management and organizational literature there is considerable debate and controversy about key theoretical concepts and their definitions and meanings. Systematic metaphor analysis can be a useful approach to study the underlying conceptualizations that give rise to these controversies and putting them in perspective. It can help identify the different ways a theoretical concept is structured and given meaning, provide insight into the way these different conceptualizations relate to each other, and show how these conceptualizations impact further theorization about the concept. This article describes the procedure for a systematic analysis of the metaphors used to conceptualize key theoretical concepts. To examine its usefulness, the authors apply the approach to the field of social capital, and in particular to the concept of ‘relationships’ in organizations. In the metaphor analysis of three seminal articles on social capital, the authors identify seven metaphoric concepts for relationships. The metaphors are illuminated as important for providing imagery that adds specific meaning in the process of authors theorizing about social capital like ‘tie’, ‘path’ and ‘bridge’. They add dynamics and controllability to the concepts by attributing an array of verbs like ‘to move between’ or ‘to use’ relationships. In addition, the metaphors allow for the attribution of specific characteristics to the concept of relationships that can be used as variables in theory construction, such as the strength of a relationship or the ‘distance’ between people. These insights are useful in exploring and reconciling differences in social capital definitions.

Designing and Testing an OD Intervention; Reporting Intellectual Capital to Develop Organizations

This paper presents a design-based research study on the reporting of intellectual capital in firms. It combines the designing of an organizational development (OD) intervention with the testing of the intervention using an action research methodology. A growing gap between theory-based research and practice has been identified as one of the reasons for a lack of renewal in the field of OD. Design-based research (DBR) has been proposed as a methodology that can help bridge the gap between research and practice. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate what a comprehensive methodology for design-based research can look like and to demonstrate the type of OD knowledge this research can produce. The design approach is used to design and test a tool for the reporting of intellectual capital within firms as an OD intervention into the individual and collective sensemaking of managers.

The Gray Zones Of Creativity & Capital

About this publication: What is the correlation among the creative industries, creative industry policies, new media paradigms and capitalism as colonial relations of dominance? What is the role of these industries in the prioritization of the interests of capital at the expense of those of society and how can these paradigms be criticized in the context of the actual, neoliberal, flexible regime of reproduction of capital? To what measure is this regime ‘flexible’ and to what measure it is just an extension of rigid, feudal and racial logics that underline (post)modern representational discourses? To what measure do the concepts of creativity, transparency, openness and flexibility conceal the hegemonic nature of modern hierarchies of exploitation?This publication brings together six essays that offer a critique of the relationship between the creative industries and capital. It treats ‘the networked world’ — its democracies, cognitivities, its attention and its paradigmatic cultural discourses — as one of the domains wherein and by which capitalism and its colonial relations of dominance are being reproduced, reorganized, perpetuated and ‘modernized’.The Gray Zones of Creativity and Capital (eds. Gordana Nikolić and Šefik Tatlić) consists of works from a diverse range of authors from around the globe: Jonathan Beller, Josephine Berry Slater, Marc James Léger, Ana Vilenica, Sandi Abram & Irmgard Emmelheinz. The book first appeared in Serbian in 2015.

Identity conflict

Organisations of land managers in landscape management face the challenge of combining the need to foster bonding social capital within their member groups with the need to develop bridging social capital with other stakeholders and linking social capital with public authorities. This paper compares the concepts of self-governing groups, boundary organisations and quangos, to analyse how agri-environmental collectives in the Netherlands navigate their identity in interactions with public authorities and manage potential trade-offs between different forms of social capital. It shows the paradoxical situation that these self-governing collectives have to adopt characteristics of public agencies, in order to meet the demands of the Dutch government and EU legislation, required to gain the trust of the authorities for more room for self-governance. The resulting ‘professionalization’ and enlargement of agri-environmental collectives is likely to reduce bonding social capital, which in turn is an important asset for effective landscape management. In order to prevent this counterproductive incentive of expecting self-governing groups to behave like public agencies, we recommend to nourish and protect the in-between identity of agri-environmental collectives, to acknowledge their variety, and to allow them to be self-governing groups as well as boundary organisations.

Bridging the gap between technology and progressive politics in Europe