On War and Metaphor in Organizational Communication

From:  "A quest for Cinergy: The war metaphor and the construction of identity" by Boyd, Josh. Communication Studies, 2003, Vol.54(3), p.249-264

"in an organizational crisis involving multiple stakeholders, metaphor can provide consistency to organizational messages directed both internally and externally, offering one answer to Cheney and Christensen's (2001) question about how organizational messages can be integrated to communicate consistently with various audiences... defining a situation as war provides opportunities for corporations and other non-political rhetors to use the war metaphor as a productive and even unifying argumentative strategy to build identity with their multiple stakeholders. Rhetorical critics need to continue looking for sites where metaphors and other rhetorical strategies, such as strategic ambiguity, can allow organizational messages to maintain consistency, unifying both internal and external stakeholders behind a single identity."