Trees As Organizations
In his book, Images of Organization, Gareth Morgan discusses many of the attributes common to organizations, and delineates many images that apply to organization. While reading and discussing this topic in class, I agreed readily with many of the images Morgan presented in his book, but when called upon by this assignment to conjure up my own metaphor, I ran into difficulties. This partially arose from the wealth of examples evident in the book; he seemed to have exhausted most of the available material. While crossing the quad after class one day, I was remarking to myself on the beauty of the changing leaves on the trees, and then it struck me. Organizations are like trees in many ways.
Similarities
The first obvious similarity between organizations and trees is that they are both a larger whole made up of many smaller, contributing parts. Each leaf contributes to the overall function of the tree as a whole, just as each worker in an organization does his part. Like organizations, trees both contribute to the environment in which they are situated, yet at the same time, depend on their environment for survival. Trees exchange carbon dioxide for
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