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We provide a general overview of previous work which has explored the use of metaphors in organizational research. Differences in focus and form of research on metaphors are noted. Work in organization theory (OT) and organizational communication (OC) generally features prescriptive metaphors that aid the practice of theorizing and research; research in organizational development (OD) tends to use metaphors for intervention in individual and group decision-making; while studies of organizational behaviour (OB) emphasize the metaphors-in-use within individuals' sensemaking accounts of critical events within their organization. Alongside these differences in focus, the form of metaphor analysis also differs across these contexts, ranging from text- and discourse-based analysis to the analysis of non-linguistic modalities such as pictorial signs, gestures and artefacts. Based on our overview of previous work, we call for greater attention to methodological issues around metaphor identification and analysis and outline a number of directions for further research.

One symptom of individualism in liquid modernity is the search for `identity'. Using the five theoretically discrete articles in this special issue as both a `rich' discursive resource and a point of departure, we develop a supplementary reading of the narratives which appear to inform identity research. We suggest that, while social agents in pursuit of `identity' draw on a cacophony of discursive sources, it is the varieties of `self—other' talk which emerge as the critical ingredient in processes of identity formation. The dualities that all such self—other talk articulate can be seen as discursive reflections of the more fundamental relationship between the individual and sociality. In turn, this is seen to refract one of the persistent problems of organizational analysis: the agency—structure issue. In addition, while we argue that deploying a discursive perspective to analyze identity work offers distinctive insights, such an approach carries with it an epistemological consequence. For what the articles also indicate is that in any attempt to delineate the `identity of identities', researchers need to be aware of not only the reflexivity displayed by social actors constructing `identity' but also of their own role in `re-authoring' such scripts. We briefly explore the implications of this for identity theory and organizational analysis more generally.