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Símbolo y metáfora en la organización moderna: Estudio de un caso puertorriqueño
Abstract
In Chis article, I explore the relationship between symbols and human behavior in organizations. I suggcst that investigators can obtain a greater understanding of an organization's social dynamics if they analyze the symbolic contenta of its culture. The symbols of a multinacional company's subsidiary in Puerro Rico, are analyzed in order to illustrate the acope and potential of this analytic approach. This analysis explores che relationship between such symbolic phenomena as metaphors, anécdotas and rituals and the organization's social, and Imliticai processes. Through the analysis of the changes in its symbology, I illustrate how complex factors within an organization's internal and external environment determine the retevance of a particular organizational symbology. En este artículo exploro la relación entre lo simbólico y el comportamiento humano en las organizaciones. Propongo que el análisis de los contenidos simbólicos de una cultura organizacional, le permite al investigador o a la investigadora entender con mayor profundidad las dinámicas sociales que operan en ella. Para ilustrar el alcance de este tipo de acercamiento analítico, analizo la simbología de tina subsidiaria de una empresa multinacional ubicada en Puerto Rico. En dicho análisis destaco la relación entre las metáforas, anécdotas y rituales y los procesos sociales, económicos 'y políticos de la empresa. Además, utilizo el análisis de las transformaciones de los contenidos simbólicos de la organización para examinar el grado en que la vigencia de una simbología particular está sujeta a factores complejos que inciden sobre el ambiente laboral.
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Language use in general, and metaphors in particular, have the opportunity to influence competitive positioning, behaviour and strategy by an organization and its members. Common organizational metaphors such as being a machine or an organism, playing a game, fighting a war and climbing a mountain-where the landscape is presumed by the metaphor to be fixed-are contrasted to a world of continuous change, such as the biotech and Internet industries. New metaphors drawn from complexity science, related to change and processes, are introduced. The author argues that a useful distinction-between those portions of an organization where complexity metaphors can contribute and those where they cannot-can be drawn by measuring the degree to which that portion of the organization perceives that value-added investments are to be made in 1. the development of new knowledge or 2. infrastructure. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.