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) argued, metaphors offer new ways of thinking and seeing. And, as Burke (1945) suggested, metaphors have the power to transform dominant discursive systems.

Keywords:

• E-Mail
• Metaphor
• Organizational Communication

Acknowledgments

This manuscript is based on the author's dissertation. The author would like to thank Deanna Dannels, Victoria Gallagher, Joann Keyton, Carolyn Miller and Dennis Mumby for their thoughtful guidance and helpful suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Turnage

Anna Turnage (Ph.D., North Carolina State University, 2010) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.