I typically dispose of books once I've read them. (To little free libraries or used bookstores, not the trash.) I'm not a rereader, so books become pure clutter. The rare exceptions are books that I either find personally meaningful or books that have impressed me enough to become reference materials. Images of Organization is both.

Metaphors are tools - of communication and cognition. Gareth Morgan agrees, and has assembled a survey of metaphors for organizations. His approach is refreshing in it aggressive refusal to declare how one "should" think about organizations, or even present the metaphors as conflicting; it is simply a library of tools. Alongside his description of each metaphor is a discussion of its strengths, weaknesses, and relationship to the other metaphors in the library. Reading the book is immensely empowering because of Morgan's dogged focus on providing the reader with whatever information and knowledge she needs to make the decisions that she wants to make, rather than prescribing any particular mindset or course of action.

The book works because Morgan's writing is so damn good. Each organizational metaphor is a clear, detailed, useful, well-cited synthesis of an entire field of research. It is difficult to translate and summarize scientific writing into content for a general audience, let alone useful such content, but Morgan has mastered the art.

What's also refreshing about the book is that the metaphors aren't designed solely to help readers make organizations do what they want. The book starts out that way - the first three metaphors are of organizations as machines, organisms, and brains, respectively - but Morgan later moves into a discussion of organizations as "psychic prisons," political arenas, and instruments of social domination. These aren't the kind of metaphors that a manager could use to maximize worker productivity, but they're still useful and important. Morgan's courageous engagement with them enriches the entire project.

This one is staying on my bookshelf. Maybe someday I'll refer back to one of its ideas or another, but even if I don't, I want to keep to such a comprehensive, detailed survey of such a broad and important topic. It's the kind of thinking and writing I aspire to myself.