Metonymy and Management: Owning One's Work

Revision as of 21:14, 22 March 2022

Metonymy and Management: Owning One's Work

by Stella Boswell

Abstract

An organization is nothing without its workforce. Despite the ideals held by its leaders, a company’s goals are ultimately carried out and portrayed to the public by its volunteers or employees who hold the least amount of responsibility. While leadership sets the tone for the work being done, if a vision is not shared among employees it will never be achieved. For this reason, it is crucial for employees to feel connected to the company and motivated to work in accordance with its mission. Ensuring that this feeling of connection is established within workers is where use of the rhetorical device metonymy becomes relevant. Metonymy is the replacement of an object with something that represents it as a way of referral. For example, we may refer to “a business professional” as “a suit.” . A suit is the traditional uniform for a business professional, a part of his/her identity as a business professional, but is not a term that encompasses all that it means to be one. The same device is used when, in response to a customer asking for tea, a waiter replies “I’m sorry, I do not have any.” In this situation the waiter, by phrasing his response as if he himself is the sole provider of the food and drinks in the restaurant, is using metonymy. He, as an employee, is representative of the entire dining establishment, including what they have in stock, in this example. This use of a personal pronoun can help to make the employee feel more connected to the enterprise and by extension, its success or failure. By establishing this connection, the employee feels a deeper sense of responsibility to the concerted effort of the company and will work and participate accordingly.

Big Idea

What is Metonymy?

Metonymy is a rhetorical device that is characterized by referring to something using an aspect of it instead of using its traditional name. The origin of this device can be attributed to Rhetorica ad Herennium, an ancient Greek text of which the author is unknown, where it is defined as "a trope that takes its expression from near and close things by which we can comprehend a word that is not denominated by its proper word" (140). This definition highlights the way that meaning can be discerned by a listener even when a word is replaced by another that is related to it. For example, ‘redcoats’ is a metonym for British occupational forces in colonial America. While the soldiers do wear red coats, that is but an element of their identity. This way of referencing could be used to emphasize the striking nature of seeing a red coat as a colonist under British attack, thereby bringing more attention to the imagery of the war. Metonymy can be considered a form of personification when the term used to refer to something is a person. This type of metonymy can be seen when a barista replies, “Sorry, I am out of decaf,” to an inquiring customer. In this situation, the barista is using the personal pronoun “I” in order to refer to the establishment at which they work. The concept and use of this personifying form of metonymy, which will be referred to as personal metonymy, will be discussed further here. In her article The Use of Metonymy in Business Linguistic Culture, Mihaela Vasiloaia writes that the word used as a referent and the thing being referred to are “linked by conceptual contiguity” (185). With the use of personal metonymy, the employee can begin to see themselves as contiguous with their place of work and the tasks at hand. Utilizing the effect of this rhetorical device in speech and ultimately thought can have profound effects on one’s mindset and how they view themselves in relation to a group.

Alienation

In order to lay the grounds for the utility of Personal Metonymy, I will first discuss the concept of alienation in the workplace: a phenomenon which can be assuaged by the use of metonymic language. Alienation, a term first coined by Karl Marx in his 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, describes the process by which a person becomes estranged to the products of their labor. Marx states that complex division of labor often prevents a worker from seeing their effort come to fruition. Due to this, the worker begins to primarily view the task as a means of survival (earning a living wage) instead of laboring in order to create. Without the result of their labor being readily apparent, the worker can begin to feel a loss of individuality and connection to their employment. The use of personal metonymy in a work setting could help to thwart these feelings of disconnection by serving as a linguistic reminder for a worker of their role and contribution to their organization.

Relation to Projects, Programs, and Portfolios

Implementing personal metonymy in language regarding a project can increase awareness of responsibility on an individual level which can combat feelings of disconnection and alienation. These feelings are especially common in the employees serving in positions given the least amount of responsibility and decision-making power within the company. When an employee is not in a position to direct or manage elements of the organization, it is easier for them to slip into a more passive state of mind when working. The employee does not feel as though they are united with the enterprise. Rather, they feel isolated while completing their tasks and disconnected from the company mission. By first implementing personal metonymy into their language while interacting with customers or clients, a sense of responsibility for the success of the company can be restored. After creating the habit of using personally metonymic language, the sentiment of ownership and responsibility will be more easily implanted into an employee's thoughts. The employee can begin to reshape their image of the position they hold within their company as one that is important for the organization's success. When the secretary of a law firm says to a client, “I have time for you to meet with your lawyer on this day,” there comes with that statement a reminder of the purpose and importance of the secretary’s job. It reinforces to the secretary that they are responsible for scheduling the meetings for clients in order to provide them with the legal advice that they are in need of. With a less personal statement such as “Your defender cannot meet with you on that day”, the secretary is taken out of the process completely. This statement could lead the secretary to feel that the scheduling process could happen in spite of them and could decrease the responsibility that they feel to the firm. With the emphasis on their role highlighted by personal metonymy, a team member will become more aware of the significance of their position as an essential gear in the machine of the organization. When working, people benefit immensely from feeling that they are needed and consequently will typically step up to meet the task in front of them. Specifics regarding implementation will be discussed further in the following sections. Asking that employees use language that directly ties them and their role to the success of the company or organization will significantly increase not only morale, but work ethic.

Application

Program Management

Though alienation typically occurs in those who have less authority in the decision making process, alienation is nonetheless a phenomenon worthy of consideration on the program level. When embarking on a program of grand scale with many moving parts and projects involved, managers of the individual projects become those that carry out the wishes of the program managers. In meetings with program managers, project managers are no longer the highest authority as they are in the sphere of their projects. The project managers must hear what is told to them about the program and adapt their projects accordingly. It is entirely possible that a project manager can feel plugged in and passionate about their individual project whilst feeling completely alienated from the main goal of the program. For this reason, it is important to incorporate personal metonymy in each level of an enterprise to encourage feelings of inclusion coming from both above and below an employee. Programs have an intrinsically wide scope, and there are bound to be changes and sacrifices that must be made in individual projects in order to benefit the greater cause and mission. Without a connection to that mission, it is possible that project managers may feel that their work is regarded as unimportant because it is subject to so much change that is often out of their control. With the implementation of personal metonymic language when discussing the inner workings of a project, project managers may feel more in tune with the larger purpose that their project is serving. By encouraging this connection to the mission of the program, the project managers will feel more aligned with the program and ultimately the stakeholders.

Project Management

Participating in a project while not being in a position to make important decisions can lead to alienation in a similar way. This alienation can be even more intense due to the fact that an employee working within a project may feel alienated from both the project they are participating in as well as the overarching program. Those responsible for carrying out the tasks requiring the least thought and reflection on the project are at the highest risk of feeling alienated from the enterprise. According to Kai Erikson in On Work and Well-Being, alienation becomes possible when “the work of the hand is separated from the work of the brain.” He also goes on to say there is a high risk of alienation when the tasks are “choreographed by a planner in some distant office” (2). The distance from the baseline of employees carrying out specific parts of an ongoing project and the managers of the program that the project is included in leaves ample room for alienation from the program to occur. This phenomenon can be seen in the example of the relationship between global health officials tasked with coordinating a response to the Covid-19 pandemic and a sanitation worker in Texas who is responsible for disinfecting chairs and tables between vaccinations. The sanitation worker repeats this crucial sanitation task day in and day out, and as the pandemic continues, the worker may lose the sense and perspective they once had of being an integral part of the global Covid response. If when asked about the processes of the vaccination center the sanitation worker replies, “The tables and chairs are disinfected between vaccinations,” the worker is not reflecting any notion of personal responsibility in their language. They will not feel the sense of responsibility that they would if they said “I disinfect the area between uses.” While it is true that the sanitation worker is not the sole employee responsible for the sanitation task, by using personal metonymy, “I” is referent of the entire sanitation staff. The worker is immediately reminded of their role and can feel pride and connection to their work, thus avoiding feelings of alienation towards their job. This sentiment also allows them to more accurately place themselves among the global health officials whose primary concern is managing the overall effort with whom they share a goal. With the objective put more clearly in view for the sanitation worker through their language choice, the program managers and the sanitation worker can more easily relate to each other as they both recognize their shared mission.

Portfolio management

Portfolio management is the first area in beginning a program where implementing personal metonymy can be considered. While it is true that the management of the portfolio of an organization does not typically involve working directly with clients or with all employees of a company, the choice of taking on one project versus another should include deliberation regarding the congruence of the project and the goal of Personal Metonymy to emphasize feelings of connection in employees to their work. When conducting a risk analysis for a project, it is in typical fashion to construct a matrix diagram weighing the likelihood of certain risks and their severity if they were to occur. Likelihood of alienation in employees is a risk that must be considered. According to David Coburn in his piece titled Job Alienation and Well-Being, after the Industrial Revolution and rise of more division of labor, “monotonous and repetitive work has been claimed to have undesirable consequences for the worker, ranging from lowered job satisfaction and unhappiness to higher felt powerlessness and lower mental and physical health” (42). These criteria, such as repetitiveness and monotony can be helpful in calculating the likelihood of alienation to occur. Projects that would involve high specification of labor and little interaction with fellow employees or clients are more likely to induce sentiments of alienation in the participants. It is somewhat difficult to gauge the severity of a situation in which employees feel alienated, however there is possible risk regarding both monetary and humanitarian aspects of a program. There is the severity of the loss of interest and consequent lack of effort invested into the project. This will more than likely result in a poor product being delivered which will affect the stakeholders and incur all of the monetary and corporate consequences that follow. The second area of risk is the severity of the effect of the project on the well-being of the employees. This can be seen in deterioration of the spirit of employees and will incur consequences of a more humanitarian nature. Shortcomings in either category can result in severe damage to a company or organization and should be highly valued when considering a potential project or program. In terms of avoiding these risks, it is necessary to consider how conducive to Personal Metonymy the project is. We must ask if it is possible to envision situations in the duration of the project where employees can personally implement metonymic language. Are there opportunities for employees to feel as though they are representative of the project as a whole or its mission? Is there room for employees to complete tasks of a different nature throughout the project and see their contributions come to fruition? All of these questions are more easily answered when a business or organization has set in place a standard of encouraging employees to use personally metonymic language. With employees reminding themselves of their role through the use of personal metonymy, it will become easier for them to identify when they begin to feel less pride or the onset of alienation. Emphasizing the importance of feeling in this way can act as a preventative element for sentiments of disconnection and encourage employees to reflect if they do feel disconnected. The specifics of applying this will be discussed further in the next section.