TY - JOUR
T1 - Theorizing through metaphorical transfer in OM/SCM research
T2 - Divorce as a metaphor for strategic buyer-supplier relationship dissolution
AU - Chen, Yi Su
AU - Rungtusanatham, M. Johnny
AU - Goldstein, Susan Meyer
AU - Koerner, Ascan F.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Operations Management and Supply Chain Management (OM/SCM), as a discipline, can benefit from proper theorizing to address persistent urgings for better and new theories. This paper hopes to inspire more theorizing engagements through the formal process of metaphorical transfer. Metaphorical transfer transforms casually-invoked metaphors in everyday language into theory-constitutive metaphors. This transformation process first mandates theorizing to ensure equivalence between the domain of the metaphor and that of a target phenomenon or research problem of interest. Second, theorizing during metaphorical transfer occurs when abstracted insights intended to govern both the metaphor and target phenomenon materialize. Finally, metaphorical transfer supports borrowing of theories from outside of OM/SCM for testing within OM/SCM by safeguarding against common mistakes. This paper demonstrates metaphorical transfer via the example of divorce and strategic buyer-supplier relationship dissolution and concludes by highlighting other metaphors that may be invoked for a number of exemplary supply chain relationship phenomena.
AB - Operations Management and Supply Chain Management (OM/SCM), as a discipline, can benefit from proper theorizing to address persistent urgings for better and new theories. This paper hopes to inspire more theorizing engagements through the formal process of metaphorical transfer. Metaphorical transfer transforms casually-invoked metaphors in everyday language into theory-constitutive metaphors. This transformation process first mandates theorizing to ensure equivalence between the domain of the metaphor and that of a target phenomenon or research problem of interest. Second, theorizing during metaphorical transfer occurs when abstracted insights intended to govern both the metaphor and target phenomenon materialize. Finally, metaphorical transfer supports borrowing of theories from outside of OM/SCM for testing within OM/SCM by safeguarding against common mistakes. This paper demonstrates metaphorical transfer via the example of divorce and strategic buyer-supplier relationship dissolution and concludes by highlighting other metaphors that may be invoked for a number of exemplary supply chain relationship phenomena.
KW - Divorce
KW - Metaphor
KW - Metaphorical transfer
KW - Strategic buyer-supplier relationship dissolution
KW - Theorizing
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jom.2013.06.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jom.2013.06.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84888294433
SN - 0272-6963
VL - 31
SP - 579
EP - 586
JO - Journal of Operations Management
JF - Journal of Operations Management
IS - 7-8
ER -