Ecological Metaphors in Organizational Science: An Interdisciplinary Critique

Abstract: Metaphors are prominent across a wide range of research literatures, serving as imaginative sparks for innovative approaches to complex problems and provocative questions. Research metaphors are very often interdisciplinary in nature, with scholars drawing insight and inspiration from disciplines outside of their own. Yet, research metaphors are rarely developed through interdisciplinary collaborations between scholars in the disciplines in which content is sourced and those in the disciplines in which the content targets. Consequently, the meaning of research metaphors is often left under- developed or is fundamentally misaligned with the concepts and principles that are being drawn from source disciplines. Here, we as a social scientist and ecologist come together to review the ecological principles of hierarchy and interactions, and the application patterns of said principles within the organizational science literature. The review provides a case example of the conceptual complexities associated with research metaphor development and application. We illustrate divergences from and convergences with ecological sources, as well as inconsistencies in the ways in which organizational scientists define and apply the source content to the study of human organization phenomena. In doing so, we model the impact of interdisciplinary collaboration on the development and application of richer, more trustworthy research metaphors.