Cacophony or Polyphony? Concluding Thoughts

Abstract

This book is based on the proposition that metaphor and dialectic are patterns of thinking that help us to structure our thoughts and that these patterns are particularly powerful in shaping our thinking about how we perceive similarity and difference. Thinking, as Lawrence writes, ‘is a defining characteristic of the life and work of the people in an organ­isation’ (Lawrence 2000: 3). Our thoughts drive our actions, even if much of this happens at an unconscious level. The options available to us for taking action in organisations are determined by the limits we set our­selves in our thinking. Armstrong suggests that these limits are, in part, mediated through the ways in which we imagine ourselves in role: ‘the idea or conception in the mind through which a person manages himself [sic] so as to further its aim or purpose’ (Armstrong 1988: 5).

…it’s all about the stuff that is nothing which is something…