Metaphorising knowledge management: “ALICE in Wonderland”

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to carry journey metaphor addressed in literature very often, which identifies the search for knowledge with self-development, into a specific example from literature, the fairy tale “Alice in Wonderland”. There is a lot of research on the choice of metaphor to reason about and to define knowledge and knowledge management, however, there is a void in conceptualising them. This paper is an attempt to bridge that void exploring the possibility of combining journey metaphor with a well-known fairy tale to make the concept more vivid and thus memorisable believing that it is undeniable that stories or myths are more indelible and effective on minds and memories.

Being aware of the role metaphors play in conceptualisation and their great impact on and power over knowledge management increases the need to do research to prevent it from becoming just a management fad.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge
• knowledge management
• metaphor
• journey metaphor
• learning organisation

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• M10
• M19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.