Metaphor, cultural imagery, andthe study of change in public

organizationsArthur J. Sementelli

Florida Atlantic University, Jupiter, Florida, USA, and

Charles F. AbelStephen F. Austin State University, Nacodgoches, Texas, USA

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how mechanistic and organic metaphorsmight be fused through the application of cultural imagery.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a theoretical examination of metaphor and itsapplication in public organizations. Specifically, this paper examines the possibility that images frompopular culture might offer some insights. Selected metaphors linked by elective methodologicalaffinities are examined in order to determine potential significance of the Robocop metaphor forguiding research in organizations.

Findings – The popular culture image Robocop from 1980s films can help us detect what is not beingincluded in most theoretical analyses of public organizations, while simultaneously helping us topurge the negative connotations of the Robocop image.

Research limitations/implications – The popular culture image can help us to understandchange in public organizations.

Originality/value – It is one of the few, if any, papers using popular culture images to bridgemetaphor and imagery in the study of organizational change.

Keywords Public sector organizations, Metaphors, Epistemology, Popular culture

Paper type Conceptual paper

IntroductionMetaphors are potent tools for reasoning and deliberation (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980).At the very least, metaphors are a “basic structural form of experience, through whichhuman beings engage, organize, and understand their world” (Morgan, 1983). Somescholars go so far as to suggest, “all knowledge is ultimately rooted in metaphorical oranalogical modes of perception and thought” (Leary, 1990). Additionally, still othersconsider analogical forms of metaphor as perhaps the most efficient of communicativedevices (Hesse, 1966; Sellars, 1963).

A significant body of literature argues that metaphor is important to action inmanagerial contexts. Lakoff and Johnson (1980), for example, argue that metaphorscharacterize such management practices as problem solving and budgeting time.Morgan (1986) identifies a series of metaphors ranging from: the organization asmachine to the organization as amoeba as common tools to acquire an understandingof organizational structure, character, and behavior. Many among us are familiar withtraditional metaphors such as those linking competitive organizational behaviors withplaying a game, fighting a war, or climbing a mountain.

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagementVol. 20 No. 5, 2007pp. 652-670q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814DOI 10.1108/09534810710779081

Much of this literature recognizes that metaphors map situations and behaviorallowing us to apprehend these concepts more easily reducing ambiguity (Lundin andSonderholm, 1995). What people can see, predict, understand depends on their mentalmodels, their metaphors. These models reflect logically integrated and mutuallyreinforcing systems of beliefs and values, while cognitive structures simultaneouslymanifest themselves in perceptual frameworks, expectations, worldviews, goals,myths, rituals, symbols, and even shared language (Nystrom and Starbuck, 1984).This property of metaphors suggests their importance to creative management(DeBono, 1970). Consequently, new metaphors can suggest new realities, new ways ofaccomplishing ends and new procedures within organizations.

For these reasons, metaphor is highly regarded in public organizations. Currently,the field employs a wide array of metaphors for different theoretical and practicalpurposes. Many classical and neoclassical normative theories of public organizations,for example, relies upon metaphor for developing key ideas such as legitimacy,authority, purpose, and identity (Diamond, 1993; Goodsell, 1994; Rohr, 1986; Terry,1995, 1997). Among the most vivid of these metaphors are the pyramid (Weber, 1947),the machine (Roth and Wittich, 1978), the balance wheel (Rohr, 1986), the ship at sea(Goodsell, 1994) and the theater metaphor (Terry, 1997).

Similarly, metaphor plays an important epistemological role in crafting positivetheory, suggesting theoretical categories and concepts for research and analysis(Bourgeouis and Pinder, 1983; Keeley, 1980; Manning, 1979; Morgan, 1980, 1983, 1986;Yanow, 1987). On a more mundane level, market-oriented metaphors such as thecustomer service model (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992) and the public enterprise owner(Schacter, 1995) are employed to capture the preferred dynamics of service andresource delivery. Both Senge (1990) and Holland (1995) employ metaphor to deal withpublic policy problems and organizational change, respectively, describing seeminglysmall changes in complex systems that may cascade to produce exponential change(a butterfly effect). The metaphor of fuzzy logic, is proving useful for administrativedecision analysis (Overman, 1996; Evans, 1996; Morcol, 1996), and many are familiarwith the numerous physical metaphors (e.g. critical mass of people, organizationalinertia) employed by public administrators on a daily basis (Behn, 1992, p. 412).

This paper proposes an inclusive metaphor that is true to the unusual ontologicalproperties of public organizations, built upon insights captured by metaphorscurrently employed and better able to cope with the limitations of many currentmetaphors identified in the literature. It suggests that the image of a cyborg generally,and the image of the popular culture character Robocop in particular, couldreasonably represent the fusion of an organic (biological) system of metaphors with amechanistic one. As a result, we gain the descriptive and proscriptive properties thatboth sets of imagery contain. When we look at the image of a cyborg more generally,we can encompass Terry’s (1997) modes of hero (Robocop), victim (The Six MillionDollar Man), and the villain (The Terminator) with some caveats. In addition, theattentionality and other directedness of the Robocop image represent many of thepractical characteristics of public organizations including public stewardship,service provision, and trustee. This fusion of the mechanistic and organic imageryallows us to better reconcile the conceptual terrain we as scholars face when trying tocope with complex, seemingly incommensurable ideas.

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The ontological properties and consequentmodalities of public organizationsFundamental realities of public organizations are typically conceptualized in terms ofauthority, legitimacy, purpose, choice, and decision, and they reflect human decisionsat the core. Citizens, administrators, congressional committees, and executives decidewhether, when and how to apportion power. They decide who the decision makers are,what decisions they can undertake, and what venues they have to comply or challengedecisions by superiors. In addition, these administrators must reconcile conflictingideas, goals, purposes, and behavior, while balancing the influences of both internaland external forces. This combination of synergy and conflict reifies organizationalstructures and allows for the continual adaptation reflected by an ever-changingbehavioral repertoire.

Of course, none of these choices occurs in a vacuum. Both, hard (mechanistic) and soft(organic) factors condition, constrain and enhance the ability to choose. Hard factorsinclude available technologies, black letter law, geography, and organizationalstructure. Soft factors include organizational and social cultures, fads, and publicopinion. However, as the hard as well as the soft factors can be manipulated, choice isstill the heart of change in public organizations and administration generally. Moreproblematic is the fact that bureaucratic rationality is often limited, and decisions arebased frequently on incomplete information. Goals, purposes and the meanings ofbehavior are often ambiguous, vague, shifting, and self-contradictory. Information isalways incomplete, subject to a number of equally convincing interpretations andusually spun. As a result, choices in public organizations are intuitively andheuristically premised and not likely to be well understood within the context of trulyrational behavior. Metaphors embodying simple regularities and law-like relationshipsamong ideas, actors, organizations, and the environment will not explain administrativeoutcomes very well. At most, they may elucidate some of the conditions affectingthose outcomes. What regularities appear are more akin to eddies, the outcomes of fluidprocesses and counter currents of greater or lesser viscosity depending upon theenvironmental temperature. Much of what else occurs is accidental, the result of moreor less coincidental conjunction. Nevertheless, in understanding public organizationswe must never strip away its purposive aspects. It does not flow mindlessly.

Consequently, public organizations have at least three modalities. First,administrative agencies are vital parts of the social order. They must maintain a highregard for constituted authority and maintain a scrupulous official fidelity to positivelaw. Second, they serve and help to check public power, moving beyond simplisticnotions of public administrators as vassals of those in power. Agencies are differentiatedinstitutions that must protect their own integrity. Any claims must be examined andpossibly vindicated through established channels. Change typically emerges fromproper process and not the singular exercise of discretion by agencies responding topartisan, political, or even private demands. Finally, public organizations must besensitive to the fact that they embody an order subject to controversy, challenge, andhistorically changing expectations. As an authoritative system it can best persevere andimprove if it is open to reconstruction in light of how the governed perceive their rightsand assess their moral commitments. Nevertheless, dangers lurk on both sides, raisingquestions about what sort of integrity we are discussing. Should agencies makeadministrative order paramount? If so, problems emerge when individuals implicitlyencourage evasion of the laws, rule, and regulations. Crises may even develop should

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channels for appeal, participation and change appear closed or beyond the ability of theregulated to employ. On the other hand, over-responsiveness may foster vacillationunder pressure and yield too much to activists groups and individuals. In brief, publicorganizations must maintain integrity, serve power, and facilitate meaningful responseto social needs and aspirations, simultaneously.

The requisites of a good metaphorThe implications of these dynamic complexities are that metaphors created to describe,explain, and explore public organizations must provide insights helping us to orderand make sense of these possibilities, choices and constraints. It must also affirm boththe worth of order and the value of change in light of reasonable alternatives to thecurrent order; and it must communicate the essentials of both those insights and thataffirmation to people unfamiliar, disinterested, and even disinclined to hear about it.Moreover, the metaphor must above all reflect the fact that public organizations andthe order implied by them do not occur naturally. It is a human artifact; an instrumentexpressing our meanings, values, goals and patterned interactions; and it embodiesthat everyday life artificially, in a ritualistic (programmed) domain of formaldefinitions, rules, regulations, and procedures.

Equally important is the fact that any image or metaphor employed for use in publicorganizations must express the integrative function of relating the government to thegoverned. That is, it must recognize that public agencies have political artifacts;instruments for getting, keeping and using power to perform legitimate governmentalfunctions, pursue public ends and secure public values. The metaphor must embodythe fact that in practical terms, public bureaucracies must have sufficient capacity torespond to a variety of potentially conflicting issues emerging unpredictably, becapable of securing support from unrelated or even hostile domains, balanceincommensurable positions, serve irreconcilable ends, satisfy contradictory needs, andcontain hostile pursuits of zero sum interests. In brief, the metaphor must reflect thefact that successful management in this context clearly requires a complex, responsive,creative, self-organizing, real-world practicality, prudence, and focus on making theright decision for the current circumstances.

Equally important is the fact that any image or metaphor employed in publicorganizations must express the integrative function of relating the government to thegoverned. That is, it must recognize that public agencies are political artifacts;instruments for getting, keeping and using power to perform legitimate governmentalfunctions, pursue public ends and secure public values. The metaphor must embodythe fact that in practical terms, public bureaucracies must have sufficient capacity torespond to a variety of potentially conflicting issues emerging unpredictably, becapable of securing support from unrelated or even hostile domains, balanceincommensurable positions, serve irreconcilable ends, satisfy contradictory needs, andcontain hostile pursuits of zero sum interests. In brief, the metaphor must reflect thefact that successful management in this context clearly requires a complex, responsive,creative, self-organizing, real-world practicality, prudence, and focus on making theright decision for the current circumstances.

This self-organizing management of built in contradictions is both a practical and amoral requisite. Some goals and values ought to be the subject of both continuing criticaldiscourse and continuing political power struggles. Certain collective goals (e.g. justice)

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are internally complex, valued achievements, embodying multiple, intrinsic dimensions(e.g. merit, equality, and need), that are differentially stressed by different groups as themost important dimensions. The meanings of these goals take on definite senses only aswe develop them in living out the discourses, practices and power struggles into whichthey are woven (Gallie, 1962; Wittgenstein, 1953). For example, to be sure that we aredoing justice we must continually discover its meaning now, in our current practice,whether the meaning is new or old. While it may seem that certain meanings in somecontexts are fixed and finalized, this is only so by human effort to make it so. This iswhere politics and power are at work. Embodying all of the dimensions and pursuingthem more or less simultaneously through an intentional ambiguity structured intopolitical institutions, insures a mutual awareness among adversaries of theachievement’s complexity; and the pressure of opposing interpretations insures thatall dimensions of the concept are secured. Most importantly, it is our only practical wayof attaining as much of what we can understand to be the desired achievementregardless of apparent self-contradictions in our usages of the terms and understandingsof exactly what it is we are trying to attain (e.g. justice as equality, justice as recognitionof merit, justice as fulfilling needs).

The desired metaphor must also encompass the three modalities of publicorganizations. That is, the device must express not only loyalty, independence, andresponsiveness, but certain entailed dualisms emergent in actual practice as well. On theone hand, for example, loyalty refers to a public organization’s role as an integral part ofthe social order, its high regard for positive law, and its power to both enforce andelaborate that law through rules and regulations. In practice, it includes the status quoorientation, its lack of imagination, and its sometimes dictatorial and apodictic behavior.Similarly, independence refers to the fact that the various public organizations aredifferentiated institutions protecting their own integrity and vindicating claims throughestablished channels and proper procedures; procedures insulated from political or privatepressure to decide issues according to any standard other than the public interest. Inpractice, this refers as well to their sometimes complex, slow, unimaginative and to someextent unaccountable operation, occasionally giving credence to charges of waste, fraud,and inefficiency. Along this same line, a good metaphor must embody not only the positiverole in solving pressing, complex, and persistent social, economic, and technical problems,but also the negative tendency to intervene, disrupt, and become overly politically active.

Finally, the metaphor must manifest the fact that public organizations function atdifferent times, and even at the same time regarding different parties or issues, both asan independent whole and as a part of larger wholes. Remember that while Rohr (1986)extolled the independence modality, Goodsell (1994) perceived it as largely a product ofenvironmental factors beyond its control. This ambiguity in its nature engenders manyinteresting puzzles. It creates, for example, its own dichotomies of independence versusintegration, individuation versus unity, competition versus cooperation and causeversus effect. However, neither extreme can by itself, successfully explain much aboutthe patterned human interactions in public organizations. Once we recognize that aspublic organizations function in all of its modalities simultaneously, we can say neitherthat it is separate and independent, nor that it is necessarily controlled by anything else.Consequently, the desired metaphor must juggle not only the built-in contradictions andthe dualities within each of its modalities, but the apparent self-contradiction of a publicorganization being both cause and effect, both part and whole.

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In sum, the desired epistemological device, the desired metaphor, must embracethe ontological dynamism of public organizations as well as its institutionalizedcontradictions, its self-organizing nature, its three modalities, its dualities and theapparent self-contradiction and overall complexity of its being both part of somethinglarger and a discrete organizational entity. Therefore, it must address this complexity byconveying how the many facets can be both accurately and differentially understood bydifferently interested parties. In addition, we want the image to take us past currentmodalities and foster reflective debate. We want it to interrupt the unconscious flow ofongoing activity in public organizations, focus attention on its nature, scope, and limits,and show us both other possibilities and the place of these public organizations within theorder of things. We want the metaphor to provide comparisons that suggest new ways oforienting ourselves given the scope, limits, and processes of public organizations.

Meeting the requisites: organic metaphors and machine metaphors

Our consciousness of the unity of the self in the middle of a vast complexity . . . is at least asuitable metaphor for the unity of an organization, department, discipline, or science(Boulding, 1956, p. 345).

In line with Boulding’s thinking, it has been argued that the person as metaphor isfundamental to American political discourse (Rohrer, 1991). That hypothesis is borneout empirically through research by Lakoff (1991). In fact, the person as metaphor isprevalent in most of the social sciences just because of its power to embody internal andexternal complexity, conflict, and contradiction. For example, Howe (1987) investigatedthe role of metaphor in the US Presidential Campaign of 1984 and found domestic policyprimarily conceptualized in sports metaphors. Read et al. (1990) found that humanmetaphors played an important role in the evaluation of arguments over domesticeconomic policy. Realist and neorealist international relations theorists describe statesas having desires, including the overarching desires to survive, to dominate, and to makeothers like one’s self. Mandelbaum (1988), for example, argues that the impulse forstrong states to expand is in part explained by the desire to “to extend the collective self,”“to spread its domestic characteristics throughout the international system. . . to makethe world like itself.” Osgood and Tucker (1967) note the “extension of self” as theperson-state’s purpose or mission and link it to a survival instinct.

Vernacular language employs the person metaphor extensively in dealings with thecomplexity of social and political reality as well. Consider, for example, everydayreferences to social ills and the health of society. The person metaphor is thusemployed to depict the body politic as diseased and as a patient requiring treatment.If a body politic is sick, its disease can spread, infecting other bodies and leading to thedeath of society. Nevertheless, disease may also be purged, and society might recover.Similarly, when the nation experiences economic difficulties it is depicted as in adepression. When things are going well, the nation, state or city is making greatstrides. Dangers are often depicted as cancers on society often emanating from itsbowels. Thus, the person metaphor serves as a coherent nexus, drawing together theontological properties and modalities of political, social and administrative excellence.

These considerations undoubtedly recommend Terry’s (1997) theater metaphor,Osborne and Gaeblers’ (1992) customer service metaphor, and Schacter’s (1995) ownermetaphor. However, person metaphors are simply not enough for public organizations.

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These processes involve establishing viable and stable relationships amonggovernment, people, technology, tasks, and a fluid organizational environment. It is acomplex of interdependent institutional, organizational, technological, human, andsocio-cultural forces acting collectively to produce behavior and outcome. These are theontological factors that originally recommended the metaphors of public organizationsas some sort of system or mechanism (e.g. a machine, a flywheel) in which people andinstitutions are units bearing structural relations to one another.

Ultimately, the problem with many of the metaphors currently employed is thatthey focus primarily on the regularities of administrative behavior and the regularitiesconstraining choice, thus missing the most distinctive aspect of public organizations.Practices in public organizations are most directly involved in adaptive, collective goalseeking processes. Given the limitations of law and law-making, public organizationsare often faced with the quandary of maintaining integrity, loyalty, and fidelity whilesufficiently escaping constraints in order to solve problems in dynamic contexts.Public organizations are thus constantly coping with change. Mechanistic images donot demonstrate this constant adaptation well. Entrepreneurial images demonstrateadaptation tactically, but at great costs. One might argue that a goal of such imagesmight be to increase discretion, flexibility, and creativity. In public-sector budgeting,for example, these entrepreneurial images fail to address the inherent conflict thatarises from goals of serving the public trust and risk aversion given thatentrepreneurial behavior by definition includes an assumption of risk. They oftenfail to address the nuances of strategic adaptation combined with shifting andcontradictory collective goals and social objectives common in public organizationswith their differing modes of oversight.

Neither person nor machine metaphors individually, then, manage to capture thenuances of public organizations in a holistic manner. Neither alone can depict quitesatisfactorily how adaptation, order, and intent unfold together. Administrative bodiesare certainly performing material devices. They are things (political artifacts) acting inthe material world. However, they are more. They are complexes of material andhuman agency. They are networks linking technical and non-technical elements inways that systematically blur the distinctions among the technical, the non-technical,and the human.

Nevertheless, both person and machine metaphors proliferate and endure justbecause they are very suggestive and do sharpen our understanding of publicorganizations. Morgan (1986), for example, points out that organizations are viewedregularly as machines, organisms, brains, cultures, populations in ecological systems,flux and transformation, instruments of domination, political systems and psychicprisons. When one reads closely the descriptions of each metaphor, they seem creativeextensions of the person or machine metaphors (with the possible exception of theorganism metaphor). For example, a mechanical organization is one that is designedand structured to achieve a predetermined end and is clearly an extension of themachine metaphor. On the other hand, a cultural organization (an extension ofthe person metaphor) is one that has its own distinctive values, rituals, ideologies andbeliefs. Similarly, Senge (1990) proposes a model of the organization as a complexnon-linear system (machine) directed by the vision of a charismatic leader (person)who can control the system by identifying leverage points at which key interventionscan be implemented.

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On the one hand, having no paucity of metaphors reduces the risk of any singlemetaphor exerting an undue influence on the way we see and think of an organization.However, coexisting metaphors of the organization can give rise to incongruence andconflict among different fields within the discipline and different public agenciesemploying divergent metaphors for self-understanding, orientation, and direction.Consequently, a unifying metaphor focusing on how the fields and agencies are similarbecomes highly desirable.

Toward providing a unifying metaphor or image, it is interesting to note that themetaphors seeking to describe public organizations as a whole may be understood asconverging on a single metaphorical perspective: the organization as metabeing. In thiscase, the term “meta” simply refers to a composite understanding crafted from the organicand the mechanistic perspectives. In essence, it identifies the fusion of organic andmechanistic ideas proposed in this piece. A meta being then is a person fused with both acollective consciousness and a culture (shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, andartifacts (technologies), transmitted intergenerationally, and employed by the members ofa society to cope with both each other and the world. Such a being has a compositeconsciousness constructed through the joint cognitions of the individuals who participatein it, and a composite capacity constructed through the energies, efforts, and abilities ofparticipating individuals. It also exists on a different time scale. A metabeing may haveshorter or longer lifespan than the individuals composing it. A unifying metaphor, then,might well focus on how in public organizations metabeings are alike. Early expressions ofthe metabeing might in fact be gleaned within the works of Selznick (1957), Blau and Scott(2003), and the work of other scholars of institutionalism.

RobocopAs the ontological properties and modalities of public organizations represent thefusion of the person and the machine, it might best be conceived of as a fundamentallyhuman actor to whom both hard factors and soft factors accrue. That is, it might bethought of as a metaperson akin to a bio-cyborg, an entity starting life as a humanbeing and subsequently enhanced with technologies and new networks of experience(human, technical, cultural, and physical). Like the Six Million Dollar Man and theBionic Woman of seventies television fame, the bio-cyborg “Robocop,” is a person withtechnological enhancements replacing body parts typically after some severe trauma.These enhancements resulted from decisions to invest funds in their construction andintegration with the person, the purpose being to benefit society through synergy withthe resultant socio-technical system.

Moreover, the cyborg imagery embodies not only the ontological properties andmodalities of public organizations, but the ambivalence and problematic nature of ourrelationship to our bureaucracies as well. On the one hand, it embodies the discipliningof the chaotic dimensions of free will by the state; since even though we as a societycherish the concept of free will, societal realities require us to forgo aspects of thisfreedom for the sake of order. It, in effect, reminds us of our ultimate dependence uponour institutions, their rules, and technologies. Just as bio-cyborgs require theirprosthetics to survive, we can together adapt and thrive at the price of some autonomy;apart we are significantly diminished. This quandary is especially poignant given thatcyborgs have a dark side, where they might foster the sort of prosecutorial statediscussed by Fox (2003). They may become something akin to a techno-cyborg, where

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a mechanism with a computer brain and metal skeleton has biological elements such asflesh, hair, and teeth appears human. This reflects the villain element of Terry’s workand how operating as governmentally transformed or established mechanisms canwork against society or the common good. The concern becomes that human elementsmay be sunk into the machine, organized around it, disciplined by it and used to itsown rather than the society’s ends. The image thus cautions about the futures that adehumanized administrative state may produce.

The image of Robocop, then, captures all of the ontological properties, modalities,dualities, contradictions, and perceptual inexactitudes of public organizations.Robocop is a special sort of contrivance. It is at once machine and person, createdfrom the fusion of an “other oriented” civil servant (police officer) with moderntechnology. On the one hand, it is tool, instrument, device, and mechanism. On theother, it is a living person. It acts independently upon information received (input)through interaction with both (other) people and its general environment. Itsresponsiveness depend upon what it has been taught (its programming, lifeexperiences and values), and what it does seems reasonable in terms of our culturalexpectations (another artifact of its programming, experience and values). It is goaloriented (it has purposes), but it will not cross certain boundaries in pursuit of thegiven goals (its programming embodies a value system which includes loyalty). Itbehaves, in brief, not only in each of the three modalities captured separately by Rohr(1986), Goodsell (1994), and Terry (1995, 1997), but as we would expect the peoplewithin the machine to behave. Moreover, and it behaves consistently within Weber’sintended conception of an ideal type, as the embodiment of human reason writ large. Atthe same time, such a bio-cyborg is self-organizing. It is involved in adaptive change inlight of reasonable alternatives to the current order, a real-world practicality, prudence,and focus on making the right decision in the right way at the right time, and achanging of basic structures as a function of experience and environment.

Consequently, Robocop even though an artifact is nevertheless “other-and-self-aware.”Unlike pyramids, flywheels, ships at sea and dramas, Robocop retains it is humanity andcan make practical, real world choices about how to make life good or bad, better or worsefor human beings. He has the capacity for attending to the situation and the pleasure, fear,satisfaction, awe, happiness, pain, dissatisfaction, and anguish experienced within it byhuman beings. He can therefore comprehend normative obligations, as Rohr wouldsuggest is fundamental to public organizations, and attend to the nuance of the situation tobe sure it is getting things right.

Robocop and purely mechanistic imagesRobocop appears superior to the more simplistic machine metaphors since theytend not to capture the ontological properties of humanity or self-awareness inorganizations. According to these mechanistic conceptions: policy, goal, and valueissues were decided by elected officials and implemented, accurately, efficiently andobediently, by politically neutral, expert professional appointees accountable to theelected heads of an organization. The immediate goals were policy implementation andservice. The ultimate goal was to provide a rational order facilitating the pursuit ofhappiness and the security of life, liberty, and property ownership. Consistent with thisway of thinking, goal-oriented organizations are designed to efficiently attain goals setby public officials according to rational principles, required hierarchical order, with

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information flowing up the chain of command and directives flowing down (Weber,1947; Fayol, 1949; Gulick and Urwick, 1937; Taylor, 1967; Roth and Wittich, 1978).Operations were mechanized through impersonal rules explicitly stating duties,responsibilities, standardized procedures, and the appropriate conduct of officeholders. Such mechanical conceptions were thought directly responsive to change asboth their structure and functioning rendered them capable of advancing ineluctablyaccording to a rational, deductive, means-ends approach. Once launched and directed,the organization would analyze the facts, determine the problems existed, master theobstacles and optimally (within the limits of their discretion) achieve whatever goals,implement whatever policies, and secure whatever values they were set upon (it is inthis sense that they were all purpose).

Evolving thought and practice challenged both this conceptualization and itsmetaphorical expression (Weber, 1947; Roth and Wittich, 1978). Not that scalar pyramidsor all-purpose machines were unilluminating. Both are still useful introductions to thefield, conveying many fundamental concepts and goals. The scalar pyramid, for example,probably best captures the first modality of public organizations: its high regard forconstituted authority and its fidelity to positive law. As the field matured so did both itsself-concept and its search for a better metaphor. Generally, organizations were less oftenthought of as rational actors writ large. Political organizations like bureaus were known toembody and pursue inherently ambiguous, vague, and indeterminate public goals andvalues (e.g. liberty and equality, rights and duties, responsiveness and integrity,conservatism and liberalism, punishment and rehabilitation, nonconformity andlaw-abidingness). More importantly, a singular goal of many organizations was notonly to solve defined problems but also to relieve any stresses caused by pressuresoperating outside of or overwhelming the capacity of normal channels. The machine’spreferred method turns out not to be a systematic evaluation of means and ends producingan optimum response, but rather a trial-and-error fumbling through standard operatingprocedures to secure some satisfying response (March and Simon, 1993; Lindblom, 1959).

These and other qualms about the classic metaphors shifted focus from agencystructure and functioning toward the dynamics of agency interaction with variousinternal and external stakeholders (publics and individuals perceiving their interests tobe affected by agency decisions). As decision-making by public administrators in eachsphere affected entire groups of people and required more time and expertise than mostindividuals could muster, agencies grappled with the perplexity of maintainingstructural and functional integrity while maximizing sensitivity and responsiveness tothe variously affected publics. Ideally, all decisions had to be made in the mostaccurate, effective and fair way possible under obviously complex, uncertaincircumstances. Consequently, many began thinking of public organizations in terms oftheir active processes rather than as set structures and procedures. The most obviousattribute of this process was of course, the accretion of increasingly appropriatebehaviors within an evolving course of trial and error. Public organizations, then, cameto be understood primarily as an evolving complex adaptive system similar tolanguage, religion, and learning systems like science, law, and medicine. That is to say,it had its own internal information gathering and preservation mechanisms, its ownactive and pertinacious maintenance and adaptive dynamics, and its own purposiveand self-directing elaboration techniques. In brief, bureaus and agencies wereunderstood less as machines and more as emergent forms of human interaction whose

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configurations, goals, values, and purposes ramified and multiplied synergisticallywith those of its internal and external legal, economic, political, and socialenvironments. Such self-organizing systems change their basic structures as a functionof their experience and environment. More accurately, both the system and theenvironment reconstitute together (Von Foerster, 1984). That is, the organization andits environment together constitute a self-organizing network.

Many of these misgivings are quieted by the Robocop embodiment ofself-organization and multiplicity. Robocop is a socio-technical system capable ofreorganizing itself to adapt to a variety of environments. Its symbiotic combinationof human, machine and the concomitant networks of both, results in a reflection ofproblem identification and problem-solving capability that is previously uncaptured.Such an information-processing system is capable of achieving a progressivelyimproving capacity for self-organization. This capability allows for a spontaneousemergence of the structures of order in the course of spontaneous processes, somethingnot allowed by the machine or pyramid metaphors. This human/machine symbioticintelligence also reflects the greatly increased potential for both success and harm bymodern Public agencies as they set about achieving goals, utilizing resources andpreparing for the future. For the human society as a whole, the metaphor better reflectshow public organizations can improve or worsen our quality of life.

Moreover, Robocop has identity maintaining control techniques that are subject tochange. Not only may Robocop learn in non-mechanistic ways, he may change his veryidentity over time, deconstructing and reconstructing himself according to hisdeveloping capacity and in response to both internal and external environmentalchange. Thus, we may have military cyborgs, liberal cyborgs and charitable cyborgsas easily as we may have cyborgs undermining such categories. Still, the entirestructure of his complex, living and technical systems could collapse with but a fewwrong decisions by himself or by the government for which he works. Human social,economic, and political formations, including democratic structures and processes, arefragile. By employing Robocop for conceptualizing those structures, we achieve a moreeconomical and more efficient way of understanding public organizations as integral,albeit unique, actors in the seemingly infinite social, economic and political universe.

Robocop and the balance wheelIn To Run a Constitution (1986), Rohr created a metaphor incorporating the image of aself-organizing system and extolling the activist nature of public organizations, whilenonetheless retaining the machine metaphor. Rohr conceived of public organizationsand their internal and external mechanisms, dynamics and techniques as part of agovernmental check-and-balance system. Properly employed, its purpose was to shiftthe balance of power among the three branches in order to secure individual rights.(p. 181). Emphasizing this normative, active role for bureaucracies, Rohr fabricated theimage of a balance wheel to express how a complex, adaptive machine should behavewhile remaining subordinate to the three branches of government. The image is one of ahubcap lying on its side. It has a downward flared center with public organizationssupporting a higher, spinning rim representing the circular, check-and-balanceinteraction of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Alternatively, it might beimagined as being similar to a sort of spinning top (a common childhood toy), orflywheel, with bureaucracies constituting the grounding point (a relatively stable body)

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around which the entire governmental apparatus (which includes the elected officials)spins.

This conception successfully captures the field’s second modality. Publicorganizations are clearly depicted as differentiated institutional cogs in the wheel,protecting interests and vindicating claims through proper process, even in the face ofpressure from political, economic, and private interests. Even though the image is bothdynamic and interactive it fails to be self-directing, and it distorts greatly the shiftingroles in society. First, the conception miscalculates the role of public organizations ingovernance. Bureaus are not separate but a little less equal mechanisms ofgovernment, duty bound to independently strike a just balance of power among theexecutive, legislative and judicial branches on behalf of the citizenry. Rather, publicadministrators often organize and manage service oriented and regulatory processesdesigned to fulfill mandates worked out among the legislative, executive, and judicialbranches.

Second, any sort of hubcap, top, or flywheel has a set motion once launched. Unlikethe Robocop image, the flywheel acts only according to a single pattern, sequence, ororder of choices invariably made. Robocop is capable of shifting closer and fartherfrom specific constitutional masters, while constantly changing the direction of itsmovement at the same time. Unlike Robocop, no hubcap, top, or flywheel can graspsomething new in terms of something familiar since it lacks attentionality. It cannotprovide an analogy, heuristic, or other device to bridge the normal context of a wordand the context of into which it is introduced; and it cannot juxtapose two frames ofreference, highlighting similarities and differences.

Robocop and ships at seaGoodsell (1994) furthers Rohr’s pursuit of a metaphor expressing the nature andidentity of active public organizations with purposive internal mechanisms in The Casefor Bureaucracy. Goodsell’s primary concern is to counter systematically negativeconceptions and images of American public organizations by arguing that therecurring disparagement of bureaucracies is often merely a convenient political ployfor explaining why governmental policies do not achieve widespread, desired results.In the process, Goodsell conceives of public organizations as the victimized branch anddepicts it as a ship at sea.

To some extent, this image captures the third modality: an order subject to constantchallenge and historically changing expectations. However, it too misjudges the roleand capacity of public organizations in the governing process. It portrays bureaus asentirely responsive, desperately holding things together under constant assault fromthe environment and ultimately doomed. Administrators collectively make up thehapless crews damned to an endless buffeting at the whim of elemental forces. Publicadministrators are forlorn, lost, bewildered, without bearings.

Unlike Robocop, such an image provides no insight into how public agenciesintelligently employ authority or act responsibly. It also underestimates the realities ofthe political process in public organizations, raised carefully by Lowi (1979).Additionally, it conceptually undermines the eventual goal for active publicorganizations proposed by Rohr (1986) and Terry (1995). From the ship at sea, wesimply find victims, not participants waiting to be sacrificed to the whim of politics.

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Robocop and the theaterBuilding on both Rohr’s and Goodsell’s work, Terry (1997) proposed a significantly morecomplex image of public organizations. Briefly, he depicted personnel in publicorganizations as actors playing many parts in an ongoing political drama. Bureaus canplay heroes, villains, and victims depending on the circumstances of the moment and thestory being told. Public organizations are vilified primarily when politicians castthemselves as heroes delivering the public from the callous abuses of mindlessfunctionaries or the authoritarian overreach of power-crazed bureaucrats. Beyond theseinstances, bureaucracies can act like an evil empire governed by villains who threatenthe American way of life when they abuse discretionary power. Personnel in publicorganizations play the hero in emergencies (wildfires ablaze across the forests inCalifornia, floods crashing through small communities along the Mississippi), and whenit quietly yet persistently protects us from certain complex, technical and sophisticateddangers (the multifarious lurking corruption of the security and exchange markets, theever potential pollution of the food supply). Finally, personnel in public organizationsplay the innocent victim when it is in fact not in control of the situation for political,economic, social, or legal reasons. Reminiscent of the ship at sea image proposed byGoodsell (1994), this victim role again portrays administrators as meek individualswithout control of their destiny. This makes it less necessary to examine the specifics ofsuch an image since innocent victims tend to share the same fate of sailor’s on a ship atsea during a storm, with a similar but equally unpleasant set of implications and implicitoutcomes.

Terry adds to the debate through the realization that unlike Robocop, eachimage individually provides an incomplete, somewhat distorted representation ofpublic organizations. For example, he points out how the image of personnel in publicorganizations acting as the great man or savior solving all complex problems, is not thebest choice as heroes are often harsh, violent, and reckless. Additionally, publicagencies may turn into techno-cyborgs like the original Terminator under the Robocopmetaphor, raising concerns about administrative actions similar to those discussed byFox (2003). Moreover, in reality, heroic action by an administrator would often beconsidered overfeasance (Finer, 1941) and thus warrant some sort of interventionby either the Judicial or Congressional branches of government. To cure theseproblems and mollify the impact of these misleading connotations, Terry links thethree together and positions them in a larger political, economic, and social contextthrough the image of a drama.

Undoubtedly, evoking the image of actors in a drama is a powerful metaphor.It succeeds in incorporating all three modalities of public organizations into a single image.Public organizations are simultaneously loyal, independent, and responsive. It alsoincorporates the human dimension and the notions of public scrutiny, symbolic acting,and the ambiguous connections among ideology, reality, hope, and practicality. All of thismakes the theater metaphor interesting for an analysis of present-day publicorganizations. In fact, the use of such a metaphor has distinguished history in the socialsciences for just these reasons (Edelman, 1964, 1988; Anton, 1967; Merelman, 1969;Petersson, 1987). Lyman and Scott (1975) trace the use of the theatre metaphor in thesocial sciences to Freud, Mead, and Goffman. The idea of impression management arisingfrom the theatrical metaphor of the role strongly affected not only the social sciences ingeneral but the management context in particular (Giacalone and Rosenfeld (1991).

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However, such uses of the theatrical metaphor involve both certain vagueness and acertain notion of a true self-concealed behind the role, i.e. the impression management).More specifically, the metaphor involves a triad of concepts: patterned behaviors, rolesor assumed identities and scripts or expectations for behavior that are understood byall and adhered to by performers. Now, in applying this metaphor, how are these rolesto be understood? Are they to be understood in terms of the characteristic behaviors ofthose playing the parts? Alternatively, are they to be understood as social parts (roles)?Perhaps, they should be understood as scripts for social conduct? Similarly, whatexactly are the scripts? Are they social norms? Organizational norms? Beliefs?Preferences? Personalities? In a strict sense, the theater metaphor connotes certainrigidity by the concepts of role and script, both in the sense of actors reciting fixed linesand in the sense of fixed responses to specified situations. This ambiguity and thisconnoted rigidity each make the metaphor less attractive.

Moreover, within such a metaphor, administrators become cast members playing toaudiences rather than trained skilled professional practicing their craft as integralparts of a community by responding to citizen needs and pursuing collective goals.In fact, the closest the metaphor allows us to any idea of community is a ratherone-sided communication of an actor before an audience. If we take the metaphor asincluding some sort of participatory theater, things only get worse. People then relateto public administrators as if it were real. Environments in public organizations canbecome a “hyperreality” divorced from the reality existing outside the perimeter of thestage and dealing with that reality only abstractly, at best.

Given the strengths and limitations of the Rohr, Goodsell and Terry metaphors,may be best built upon by employing an entirely different epistemological device.We may arrive at such a device by remaining cognizant of the three modalitiesof public organizations, evoking the latent implications of these images taken together,and recognizing that the fundamental problem so far has been that the metaphorsthemselves have specific features. They are simultaneously physical images(machines, organisms) and limited abstractions. In addition, they are by their naturesimplifying heuristics and communicative devices. Public organizations andorganizations generally are complex, not simple, making it difficult if not impossiblefor existing metaphors to function well even as a heuristic.

Robocop as a unifying metaphorRobocop certainly fulfills the minimum requirements for an improved metaphor tostudy change in public organizations. It opens a window of understanding upon notonly its built-in contradictions, but also the three modalities portrayed by Rohr (1986),Goodsell (1994), and Terry (1997), the dualities within each of its modalities, theapparent self-contradiction of public organizations being both part and whole, andthe field’s many images. As an integral part of the social order (the good soldier),the cyborg has the power to coerce, prioritize and subordinate certain interests toothers. This includes the danger of its being repressive because of historicallycontingent factors such as the distribution of social, economic, or political power, andthe resulting patterns of consciousness of the administrators underlying the omissionor even removal of certain individuals and groups from the dialogical context. Yet, asan independent entity, Robocop also embodies regularity in process and procedure,fidelity to law, constancy in following rules, stability and a degree of autonomous

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action as it functions on its own, insulated from direct, hands on manipulation by bothsocial, political and economic interests and the other branches of government. Finally,Robocop’s intentionality provides it with the capacity for the responsible, discriminateadaptation essential to its integrity as it takes account of new forces in its environment.This intentionality allows it to experience social, economic, and political pressures assources of knowledge and opportunities for self-correction and reconstruction.

In addition, Robocop encompasses what classical models of public organizationsbest captured about the field. These classical models embodied the notion that politicsand administrative organizations were two conceptually distinct and practicallyseparable activities. Politics entailed value judgments and involved responding to andaccommodating society’s demands through the articulation of policy. Publicorganizations are instrumental in processes of implementing those policies.Generally, it is understood that maintaining such a neat theoretical distinction isneither accurate nor meaningful. Despite this knowledge, dichotomy remains an aspectof study in public organizations. It remains a viable way of orienting students,scholars, and practitioners initially toward a coherent set of positions across three keyareas of institutional performance and responsibility: the division and power incontrolling administrative decision-making, the scope of objectivity in administrativedecision making and the role administrative procedures should play in assuringaccurate, efficient, fair and responsible decision making.

Robocop also reflects what the traditional model does not capture: the fact thatagencies proceed on a case-by-case basis, exercising discretion, using the rulemakingprocess and making as well as executing policy. As it does so, it raises all of the field’scomplex problems of legitimacy and all of its questions about how administrativediscretion should be structured and controlled. It suggests, for example, how decisionscould result from a whirlpool of conflicting interests and actors and how thebureaucracy may serve as an access point for these contending interests and actors.It illustrates why there may easily be calls for increased oversight, less delegation anda fidelity to what the traditional model promotes.

The metaphor captures the interplay of public organizations and the other branchesof government as well. The chief executive (president, governor, mayor, and citymanager) may be analogized as a governmental representative in charge of a Robocop.This executive has the institutional authority and programmatic incentives tocoordinate the complex, sometimes ambiguous and conflictual activities of thebio-cyborgs and to sift among the demands made upon them. Nevertheless, thereremains that certain disconnect between the executive and Robocop that raises thosebothersome issues of legitimacy and control. Legislatively, rules and regulations maybe written and programmed into Robocop in order to decrease the scope of his discretion,hone him to desired procedures, reconnect him to legitimate authority, and enhance thequality of agency decision making. Consequently, all of the issues concerningrepresentativeness, responsibility, accountability, suboptimization, and total impact onsociety are raised and addressed by the metaphor. Once this is done, of course, the courtshave an obvious role in overseeing and influencing the implementation of legislativeacts, and the personhood of Robocop clearly lends itself to explicating this relationship.

Beyond this minimum, the image takes us past current modalities. A good metaphormust both describe and prescribe. We want it to interrupt the unconscious flow ofongoing activity in public organizations, focus attention on its nature, scope and limits,

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and show us both other possibilities and the place of public organizations within theorder of things by providing comparisons that suggest new ways of orientingourselves given the scope, limits and processes of these public organizations. A such itis capable of real-world-problem solving, inspired, self-critical, self-organizing entitywith open cognitive patterns, remove defensive, focus on these quirks, irregularitiesand eccentricities creative, pragmatic, complex, responsive, creative, self-organizing,real-world practicality, prudence and focus on making the right decision for the currentcircumstances. Robocop accomplishes these ends in the same manner as every theoryof valuation. It presents a substantive vision of an actor possessed of wants, needs,appetites, and potentialities. Over and above this, though, it includes what visions donot. The elements of valuation change as Robocop learns through both experience andprogramming. The number of decision makers involved in his programming andevaluation expand and contract over time, as does the compatibility of goals hepursues, the degrees of rationality he employs and the perfection of the informationhe is capable of employing.

ConclusionBriefly, Robocop embodies the notion of a fully cognizant though not fully coherentsystem attaining, through constraint and response, a range of postures (hero, victim,villain, fool, and machine) in a range of scenarios across which it pursues a range ofoften-conflicting goals and values. Robocop embodies those functions identifyingpotentials for change in a range of situations and enabling public bureaucracies to bothexpand their competencies and deal accurately, efficiently, fairly and humanly,moment to moment, with real-world uncertainty.

We believe that suggested interplay of creativity and constraint captured by themetaphor of Robocop is fundamental to understand the forms of life in publicorganizations. At the heart of its creativity lies constraint. Constraints andunpredictability, familiarity and surprise, are in these patterned interactions, twosides of the same coin. Robocop, a programmed, artificial, cybernetic, yetother-and-self-aware device, mindless at its worst but at its best driven by controlleddialogic analysis, criticism, synthesis, compromise and even a certain kind of poeticproficiency is a useful metaphor for understanding change in public organizations.

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Burke, K. (1945), A Grammar of Motives, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

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Schon, D. (1979), “Generative metaphor: a perspective on problem-setting in social policy”,in Ortony, A. (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.

Corresponding authorArthur J. Sementelli can be contacted at: sementel@fau.edu

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