Italo Calvino and the organizational imagination
Reading social organization through urban metaphors
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12721104 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Case (0000-0003-1214-8371, University of the West of England, corresponding author), Hugo Gaggiotti (0000-0002-7892-1649, University of the West of England) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 178-198 |
| Publication date | 2014-04-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Culture and Organization (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1475-9551 • E-ISSN: 1477-2760 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14759551.2014.901325 |
| OpenAlex | W2046353322 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 35 |
This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities; being, at one and the same time, a discursive textual product of culture and, reciprocally, a provider of artefacts and architecture that produces culture and meaning. The city can be interpreted as a trope that operates bidirectionally in cultural terms. It is a sign that can be worked to serve the principles of both metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymical or reductive form, the city has the propensity to become weighty and deadening. The work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy is invoked to illustrate this effect. In the guise of synecdoche, on the other hand, the city offers imaginative potential. Drawing inspiration from the literary works of Italo Calvino (in particular, his novel Invisible Cities), the article attempts to reveal the fecundity of the city for interpreting technologically mediated organizational life. Calvino's emphasis on the principle of ‘lightness’ provides a link to the social theoretical writing of Boltanski and Chiapello on the ‘projective city’. A synthesis of these two stylistically different literatures yields a novel way of critically approaching and understanding the reticular form and emerging ethics of contemporary human organization
Aesthetics · Epistemology · Linguistics · Metaphor · Metonymy · Reading (process · Semiotics · Sign (mathematics · Sociology · Synecdoche · Italian Literature and Culture · Management and Organizational Studies · Management, Economics, and Public Policy · Philosophy
Risk Society
The Competitive Advantage of Nations
Metaphors We Live By
Competitive Advantage of Nations
Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination
Competitive Strategy
“Just be yourself!”
The city as text
Economies of Signs and Space
Astrology, Alchemy and Retro-Organization Theory
The Sage Handbook of Organization Studies
Modernity and Self-Identity
A Treatise on Efficacy
Risk Society
Trust in Numbers
A Grammar of Motives
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
Metaphorical images of organization
The City as Text
The condition of postmodernity
A thousand plateaus
Dissolutions of the Social
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.7 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2021 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |