Technological Resistance: A Metaphor Analysis of Enron E-Mail Messages

Abstract

This project provides an example of employees “talking back,” or resisting dominant management rhetoric, via e-mail at the now defunct Enron Corporation. Situated within the study of organizational rhetoric, this article examines metaphors in e-mail messages at Enron, and how those metaphors supported certain discursive value systems that helped create and maintain the company's oppressive internal culture, but also how the use of different metaphors supported alternative discourses that could have possibly led to a different kind of organization. As Morgan (2006 Morgan , G. ( 2006 ). Images of organization . Thousand Oaks , CA : Sage .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) argued, metaphors offer new ways of thinking and seeing. And, as Burke (1945 Burke , K. ( 1945 ). A grammar of motives . Berkeley , CA : University of California Press . [Google Scholar]) suggested, metaphors have the power to transform dominant discursive systems.