Language as a Coordinating Mechanism:
How Linguistic Memes Help Direct Appropriate Action
Chip Heath
Stanford University
Victor Seidel
University of Oxford
Contact information:
Chip Heath
Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
518 Memorial Way
Stanford, CA 94305
[email protected]
(650) 736-1754
Victor Seidel
Said Business School
University of Oxford
Oxford OX1 1HP United Kingdom
[email protected]
44 1865 288 912
v 4.2
Language as a Coordinating Mechanism:
How Linguistic Memes Help Direct Appropriate Action
ABSTRACT
We explore how linguistic memes, such as slogans, metaphors, and stories, can serve as
coordinating mechanisms in organizations. Drawing upon March’s (1994) logic of
appropriateness, we describe how linguistic memes may direct action, and we describe some
basic cognitive and emotional properties that may make them “self-propagating” (i.e., likely to
be spread spontaneously by individuals). We also address how linguistic memes arise and in
what instances they will be more effective as coordinating mechanisms.
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In organizations, individuals must coordinate their efforts and work together. Yet
coordination is a topic that has been largely neglected in recent years (Heath & Staudenmayer,
2000). In this paper, we explore how language can serve as a coordinating mechanism for
members of an organization. We argue that language can help coordination in the kind of
temporary, loosely-defined, or distributed organizations that have recently been a focus of
research interest (DeSanctis & Monge, 1999; Hinds & Kiesler, in press) as well as within
traditional bureaucratic structures, especially in times of organizational change.
Consider the difficulty of running a Presidential campaign, an ad hoc organization that
lasts for a few months, with nationwide scope and lots of volunteer labor. Attention could be
easily diverted by day-to-day demands for logistics, fundraising, or normal partisan combat.
How do you keep this ad hoc organization focused on a message? In the original Clinton
campaign in 1992, top campaign aids focused the efforts of field personnel scattered across the
country by constantly repeating a simple catchphrase, “It’s the economy, stupid” (Holbrook,
1994: 973). Or consider the film industry, where multiple groups are brought together to make a
major film. In this industry, a “high concept” is often used to crisply describe the idea behind a
movie (Parker, 1999), facilitating the coordination of various individual and group contributors.
For the making of Alien, one of the first major science-fiction thrillers, the high concept was
“Jaws on a spaceship” (Litwak, 1986: 73) a framing that could help the disparate groups
involved in the creation of this new film—such as set designers, costume designers, and actors—
to coordinate myriad individual decisions in harmony with a single vision.
In this paper, we focus on language in the form of “linguistic memes.” We define a
linguistic meme as a unit of language that encapsulates a core idea and that is transmitted,
largely intact, among individuals—examples include slogans, sayings, metaphors and stories.
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Our definition excludes language such as a speech or a presentation that is designed for a
specific audience but that does not travel beyond it—we are most interested in uses of language
that have the potential to coordinate the actions of larger numbers of individuals over longer
periods of time. We also exclude language which changes significantly through the process of
transmission or repeated re-telling. In addition, we use the term “meme” to highlight that ideas
can undergo selection in social systems just like genes undergo selection in a biological context
(Dawkins, 1976). The biological analogy is designed to emphasize that memes undergo a
process of variation and selection over time (Campbell, 1969; Baum & McKelvy, 1999). Table
1 describes how the the attributes of linguistic memes differ from other forms of language in
organizations.
-- Insert Table 1 about here -As in studies of linguistics (e.g., Traugott & Dasher, 2001), we will use accounts of
language-in-practice to illustrate the principles that we analyze through the theoretical literature
in secondary sources. We argue that linguistic memes are quite effective at communicating
ideas, so we would be remiss if we only analyzed linguistic memes without allowing them to
illustrate themselves.
In the next section we use a framework by March (1994) to show how linguistic memes
can help solve coordination problems by answering key questions of appropriate action.
However, if memes are to help people select appropriate actions, they must propagate widely; so
in the second section of our paper, we consider some cognitive and emotional principles that
determine which memes will propagate successfully and survive the selection and retention
process in organizations. While linguistic memes may be created by the managers at the top of
an organization, frequently they also percolate up from the bottom. In either case, we argue that
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the same principles guide which memes are selected in the process of selection and retention, so
understanding these principles may help managers design memes that are more likely to succeed
from the start. We close our paper by considering the organizational implications of linguistic
memes and how they arise and endure.
LINGUISTIC MEMES AND THE LOGIC OF APPROPRIATENESS
March (1994) has described two different logics of decision-making: consequence and
appropriateness. In standard rational models, people make choices based on a logic of
consequence: they generate alternatives, calculate the value of each alternative by considering
its consequences, and choose the alternative with the highest value. We assume, however, that
most coordination situations are better described by March’s second model which assumes
people make decisions based on a logic of appropriateness: they answer the questions, Who are
we? What situation is this? What do people like us do in this situation?
By considering how linguistic memes function within a logic of appropriateness, we
explore some of the psychological processes that provide the substrate of organizational culture
(Schein, 1990) and institutions (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). Recent theories of both culture and
institutions address the cultural and cognitive processes underlying collective action (Scott,
1998). Whenever individuals answer questions like “who are we?” with an answer that is prepackaged by their cultural context, the broader organizational culture inserts itself and influences
individual action. Linguistic memes, especially those that help individuals answer questions of
the logic of appropriateness, represent a key component of organizational culture.
When people make decisions based on appropriateness, the first question they answer is
about identity: “Who are we?” (March, 1994). One of the most basic things that linguistic
memes can do is to label people and thus help constitute a group. Classic research in social
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psychology indicates that one way to resolve conflict is to create a superordinate identity (Sherif,
Harvey, White, Hood & Sherif, 1961). Indeed more recent research has shown that if people
have several salient identities they may respond differently depending on which identity is
evoked. Consider, for example, two people negotiating an agreement who are members of
feuding departments of a single organization. The two are less likely to resolve their differences
when they think of themselves as members of two separate departments rather than as members
of the same organization (Brewer & Kramer, 1986). In Kidder’s (1981) classic story of a
computer development team, the software engineers (“Microkids”) and hardware engineers
(“Hardy Boys”) adopted separate names, though the overall team adopted a name with positive
emotional associations (“the Eagle team”). By adopting and strengthening identity-labels at both
levels, this product development team may have coordinated more effectively both at the
functional level and the project level.
In the second part of the logic of appropriateness, people must classify their situation, and
linguistic memes may help people answer the question, “What situation is this?” For example,
stories may help people recognize and classify situations that are important and frequent (Orr,
1996). Defining situations is particularly important when people face tradeoffs among desirable
goals (March & Simon, 1958). Microsoft uses short vision statements to help team members
navigate a software development process that typically begins with a long wish list of potentially
conflicting features. In general, “deciding what functionality to leave out of a product is much
more difficult than deciding what functionality to put in” (Cusumano & Selby, 1995: 208) and
the vision statements help the team coordinate effort on the most important features. The vision
statement for Excel 3.0 stated that the product should be “the most analytical spreadsheet ever
created.” Later in the project, this vision helped the team decide not to spend time on otherwise
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attractive features such as three-dimensional graphs because these features didn’t help make the
spreadsheet more “analytical” (Cusumano & Selby, 1995: 210). Here the linguistic meme
helped the team to define its situation by focusing it on the key dimension of a multi-dimensional
product.
The literature on power suggests that hierarchical barriers may often prevent information
from flowing between lower and higher levels in the organization; powerful people often ignore
those at lower levels (Pfeffer, 1982). Thus, when assessing, “what situation is this?” powerful
people often assume it is a situation where subordinates should defer to their authority or
experience. At MTV this kind of situation definition would be disastrous because lower-level
employees are younger and more likely match the preferences and interests of MTV’s key
demographic audience. MTV uses a linguistic meme to breach this potential hierarchical barrier.
They call the young interns at MTV “Demos,” because they are in MTV’s key demographic, and
powerful top managers learn to defer to the younger “Demos” when they make decisions about
programming (Seabrook, 1994). In this instance, a linguistic meme helps remind powerful
managers to listen to representatives of a key external clientele.
The final question of the logic of appropriateness is that of appropriate action: “What do
people like us do in this situation?” Organizational cultures arise to solve fundamental questions
about coordination, but organizations face different environments and histories, so they may
evolve different answers to questions about how “people like us” should act in situations that
might, on the surface, look quite similar (Schein, 1990). For example, IBM employees tell a
story about a “90-pound” female security guard who was praised for confronting a superior
about a violation of the rules; in a similar story at Revlon, the employee who confronted the
superior was summarily fired (Martin, 1982; Camerer & Vepsalainen, 1988). These two firms
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have evolved two different answers to the question about how their employees should act in a
situation where there is a conflict between rules and authority, and the stories that circulate in
each culture remind employees how to act appropriately.
Linguistic memes can be very direct in framing appropriate actions. In the late 1990s,
Intel’s manufacturing organization was faced with increased pressure to achieve high yields on
new semiconductor products from the very first runs. Traditionally, engineers would experiment
with the manufacturing process at each new location. A team at Intel determined that by exactly
replicating the manufacturing parameters of the first manufacturing location—down to
idiosyncratic bends in equipment pipes—higher yields could be expected from new locations
from the start of production. Within Intel, this guiding principle was termed “Copy
EXACTLY!” and when this phrase was written, it always appeared with this specific
capitalization, underline, and punctuation (McDonald, 1998). Although Copy EXACTLY!
began as a means to maximize wafer fabrication yields, this meme has been used to facilitate the
coordination of work in many other contexts where scaling operations was important. For
example, Intel used Copy EXACTLY! as the guiding principle for a new web hosting service
with an alliance partner.
Thus, to summarize this section:
Proposition 1: Organizations will experience better coordination when they have more
effective linguistic memes to help people answer questions of (a) identity; (b) situationidentification; and (c) appropriate action.
Table 2 organizes a number of the linguistic memes we will discuss according to the part
they play in March’s logic of appropriate action.
-- Insert Table 2 about here -8
COGNITIVE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-PROPAGATING LINGUISTIC MEMES
In the next two sections we describe some basic cognitive and emotional features of
successful linguistic memes that might make them diffuse readily, a characteristic we term selfpropagating. In using this term, we understand that memes don’t propagate themselves, but we
seek to describe properties that will make memes sufficiently attractive that individual members
of an organization will propagate them spontaneously without strong external intervention in the
form of top management attention or resources. If memes are to help people choose appropriate
actions to coordinate with others, they must be remembered (cognitive principles) and
transmitted enthusiastically (emotional principles). Memes that fit these cognitive and emotional
principles will be more likely to survive the evolutionary process of social selection (i.e., they
will be self-propagating) and thus they are more likely to be available and usable when people
must decide on appropriate action.
Self-propagating Linguistic Memes Will Be Simple
Perhaps the most basic principle of a self-propagating linguistic meme is that it should
not exceed the available space of an individual’s working memory. Cognitive psychologists
have noted that people can mentally juggle at most “seven plus or minus two” independent
pieces of information concurrently (Miller, 1956). Anthropologists have noted that, across
cultures, classification schemes tend to have fewer than six or so independent dimensions
(Wallace, 1964; see D’Andrade, 1995). We suggest that it is no accident that cultural products
like classification schemes evolve to fit their “environment,” which is composed of individuals
who have similarly limited cognitive abilities.
Given that working memory is constrained, it is not surprising that self-propagating
linguistic memes tend to be simple enough to fit these constraints. The Federal Reserve Bank of
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New York uses a simple schema to evaluate the health of banks: CAMEL, an acronym for
Capital adequacy, Asset quality, Management, Earnings, and Liquidity (Heath, Larrick, &
Klayman, 1998). This simple schema ensures that bank examiners answer March’s situationidentification question by collecting a broad range of relevant data, and it allows them to
coordinate in making an overall decision about a particular bank. Eisenhardt and Sull (2001)
argue that within complex environments good strategies are composed of “simple rules,” and
they argue that the right number of rules is “usually somewhere between two and seven,” an
upper-bound that should sound familiar given Miller’s (1956) suggestion.
Self-propagating Linguistic Memes Will Involve Multiple Memory Cues
In order to be used, memes must be remembered. Thus memes will be more likely to
self-propagate when they can be recalled based on multiple, redundant cues (e.g., see Anderson,
1995). For example, emergency room personnel learn that when a patient first enters the
emergency room, they should follow the “ABCs”: first establish Airway, then Breathing, then
Circulation. This is an extremely compact schema that allows multiple emergency room
personnel to coordinate on appropriate actions in a critical circumstance (Heath et al., 1998).
Without this simple rule for behavior, it might be easy for personnel to be distracted by a vivid
injury (e.g., a bloody laceration) that is not life-threatening while missing one that is (e.g., a
breathing problem in an unconscious patient). This schema is simple, so it meets the first
criterion above for self-propagating cognitive memes, but it also involves well-known existing
set of cues (the ABCs) that make it easy for people to learn and remember. Below we consider
other ways that memes might involve multiple cues.
Alliteration. People remember linguistic memes better when they have multiple sound
cues (e.g., alliteration) to keep them intact (Rubin, 1995: ch. 4). Certain children’s counting
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rhymes (e.g., Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo…) have persisted for over a century based largely on
the strength of clever alliteration (Rubin, 1995: ch. 10). A somewhat extreme example of
alliteration, in that it repeats a word, is Cisco’s oldest rule for how to recognize a good
acquisition--“75 people, 75% engineers” (Eisenhardt & Sull, 2001--which recommends
acquiring small companies (less than 75 people) that are focused on technology (75% engineers).
This alliterative rule is likely to help distributed individuals and groups within Cisco coordinate
on how to decide appropriately among the many acquisition opportunities that Cisco faces, it is
more likely to self-propagate because the alliteration helps make it memorable.
Sensory language. People have parallel systems for remembering various kinds of
sensory input, so linguistic memes that evoke more sensory cues are likely to be more
memorable (Rubin, 1995, ch. 3). One of the authors studied an automotive product development
team that at an early design stage conceptualized a new vehicle as “a Camaro and a Blazer in a
blender”—referring to the mix of sports car (Camaro) and utility vehicle (Blazer) that they were
seeking to achieve in the new vehicle. This linguistic meme is memorable because it involves
both visual and sound cues, and because it was memorable it helped designers and planners at
early program stages coordinate on a particular blend of functionality they desired.
Concrete. People also remember things better when they are concrete rather than
abstract (Rubin, 1995: ch. 3; Anderson, 1995). In 1961, John F. Kennedy didn’t promise that the
U.S. would “win the space race,” he promised to “put a man on the moon within the decade.”
For parsimony and concreteness, this statement is hard to improve, and it served as an effective
coordinating device across multiple government agencies—Congress for funding, Defense
Department for technology, and NASA for implementation.
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A large literature in goal setting has demonstrated that goals are more motivational when
they are specific (Locke & Latham, 1990). Typically in the goal literature, the specific goals are
also concrete by accident because laboratory experimenters tend to use simple concrete tasks.
But organizations may have to work to make their goals concrete. When Boeing was designing
the 727 aircraft, engineers were given a very concrete challenge: seat 131 passengers, fly
nonstop from Miami to New York City, and land on runway 4-22 at LaGuardia (which was only
4860 feet long, much too short for any existing passenger jet) (Collins & Porras, 1994: 93).
Boeing could have met the standard recommendations of the goal-setting literature by merely
making these goals specific—“travel X miles nonstop and stop in Y feet”—but, by also making
these goals concrete, they become more memorable, reproducible, and meaningful and thus more
likely to help a bureaucratically dispersed set of engineers decide on appropriate action.
Linguistic memes produce more effective coordination when they are concrete and they
may fail if they are too abstract. For example, at Xerox, the idea of creating an “architecture of
information” failed to encourage coordination (despite the advances in information technology at
Xerox PARC), because many employees didn’t understand it: “Thousands of Xerox
employees—from factory workers to salespeople to executives—had, at most, a vague notion
about the need for, or content of, an ‘architecture of information.’” (Smith & Alexander, 1988:
134).
Surprise. People also tend to remember things better when they are surprising (Fiske &
Taylor, 1994). In the early 1950s radios were console-sized pieces of furniture, and transistor
technology was only available in defense applications where money was no object (Collins &
Porras, 1994: 98). In 1952, Sony set the seemingly impossible goal of making a “pocketable”
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transistor radio. This goal was memorable because it was concrete, but also because it was
surprising.
Self-propagating Linguistic Memes Will Have Pervasive Habitats
One way of assessing whether a linguistic meme will spread is to consider the number of
situations where it is cued by the external environment—what we will call its “habitat.” Memes
that have more pervasive habitats (i.e., that are cued more often by the environment) are more
likely to survive (Berger & Heath, 2002). To illustrate, consider the rallying cry for an effort to
turn around a vast, heavily bureaucratic organization—the NYC Subway system. In the early
1980s, the Subway system was in a “shambles,” and many New Yorkers assumed it was beyond
control. The simple phrase, “no graffiti” became the battle cry for the change effort
(Katzenbach, 1995: 70). We suspect that this meme was effective because it had a pervasive
habitat. Every time a subway employee saw a piece of graffiti, they were reminded of the
change effort. Other potential phrases, like “six-sigma quality” or “total quality management”
would not be as likely to be cued by the environment, and thus, might not be as successful at
coordinating the efforts of employees spaced through a large citywide bureaucracy.
In general, abstract strategies benefit from having a meme that is cued by appropriate
situations. 3M may talk about the “importance of innovation,” but they also have a more
specific rule that backs up this general message: “Thou shalt not kill a new product idea”
(Collins & Porras, 1994: 88). This meme has a useful habitat because it will likely be recalled in
any situation where an innovation is about to be quashed, so its habitat overlaps perfectly with
the situations where it needs to be invoked to support the overall company goal of innovation.
At GE, employees talk about “boundarylessness,” an important phrase that refers to
removing all kinds of barriers that inhibit coordination--from functional (barriers among
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engineering, manufacturing, marketing and sales) to geographic (domestic versus foreign) to
hierarchical (management versus salary versus hourly) (Tichy & Sherman, 1993: 203). Much
research has suggested that such boundaries do indeed decrease coordination (Dougherty, 1992;
Bechky, 1999), so the term “boundarylessness” has a key habitat because it may be cued every
time some employee experiences some social or organizational boundary. Note however, that
based on the principle of concreteness, this meme may be less likely to self-propagate than “no
graffiti” because it is cued by metaphorical “boundaries” rather than concrete physical “graffiti.”
To summarize this section on cognitive principles, we propose that:
Proposition 2: Linguistic memes are more likely to self-propagate if they are (a) simple,
(b) with multiple memory cues, and (c) pervasive habitats.
EMOTIONAL PRINCIPLES OF SELF-PROPAGATING LINGUISTIC MEMES
Self-propagating Linguistic Memes Will Take Advantage of Emotional Associations
Linguistic memes often evoke emotion through association. One of the most basic
principles of emotion and learning is that neutral stimuli inherit the emotional reactions of things
they are associated with (Cialdini, 1993, Ch. 5). For example, research on social identity
assumes that individuals associate themselves with a particular identity because it represents
higher status (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), and college football fans use language to align with or
distance themselves from their team depending on how it performed the previous weekend—in
one study, 41% of students used the pronoun “we” to describe their team’s performance after a
win, while only 17% used “we” after a defeat (Cialdini et al., 1976). Likewise, linguistic memes
have the power to create status by associating identities with positive attributes and distancing
them from negative attributes.
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Organization members may strive harder to choose appropriate actions when doing so
allows them to inherit an emotionally desirable identity. Mobil’s exploration division adopted
the slogan of being “the one others copy” (Katzenbach, 1995: 69). This meme creates a positive
identity and it also suggests how people can earn it through appropriate action--by being at the
forefront of innovation and technology. At various times, other versions of this slogan circulated
but eventually failed (e.g., “the one the others imitate,” “the company that competitors envy,”
and “the one that the rest all follow”). Note that all the failed versions are longer, and are
therefore less likely to self-propagate from the standpoint of cognitive simplicity, but all share a
common emotional association by allowing employees to picture their company at the top of a
status order.
Linguistic memes may also succeed by giving people a way of distancing themselves
from negative associations. A change team at Texas Commerce Bank was able to rally around
the slogan of “Eliminating what annoys our bankers and our customers” (Katzenbach, 1995: 68).
Interestingly, this meme succeeded after other linguistic memes, which had less emotional
resonance, failed to help people coordinate on the change effort—failed slogans included “$50
million in cost reductions” or “reengineering” (Katzenbach, 1995: 69).
An interesting combination of attaching to positive associations and distancing from
negative ones has occurred with practices that used to propagate under the label of “total quality
management (TQM).” As TQM was attacked in some companies, other companies like
Motorola (Katzenbach, 1995) and GE (Tichy & Sherman, 1993) started using similar practices
under a different label, six-sigma quality. These companies often omit the term “quality”, and
talk exclusively about “six-sigma” a term that has an obvious scientific and engineering
resonance as opposed to the “fluffier-sounding” term “quality.” Researchers have argued that
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when fads are emerging, people may adopt the rhetoric of the practice without the underlying
reality (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999; Zbaracki, 1998). Similarly, on the downswing, people
may continue to use the real practices but distance themselves from previous rhetoric by
switching to a linguistic meme that retains credibility because of its positive associations.
Self-propagating Linguistic Memes May Evoke Complex Emotions
Not only can linguistic memes create feelings by forming simple associations with
positive or negative stimuli, they can also create more complex emotions by evoking emotional
scripts. Research on urban legends, for example, has shown that they often evolve to evoke
strong emotions like anger, fear, or disgust. Furthermore, controlling for informational content,
the stories that evoke stronger emotions propagate more widely in the social environment
(Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001).
Many linguistic memes provoke more complex emotions. For example, Mariott
employees think of themselves “making people away from home feel that they’re among
friends” (Collins & Porras, 1994: 88). Note that role-description immediately provokes empathy
by focusing on the fact that customers are “away from home” and lacking “friends.” Other
legitimate descriptions might not encourage employees to take appropriate action out of
empathy: e.g., “business-people trying to do their jobs in a strange city.”
Emotional memes may be particularly important when people face crisis and must
respond quickly and in a coordinated fashion. Johnson & Johnson won plaudits because it
handled the Tylenol contamination scare so effectively and people within the organization cited
the importance of the Johnson & Johnson mission statement, the “credo,” in helping the
organization respond quickly to this crisis. According to the credo, Johnson & Johnson
employees “believe that our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, hospitals, mothers, and
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all others who use our products” (Collins & Porras, 1994: 59). This credo effectively creates
empathy with people who are engaged in the noble task of treating the sick, and it creates a
compelling answer to March’s appropriate action question, “What do people like us do in this
situation?”: “We come to the aid of doctors and mothers.” In contrast, the makers of Excedrin
did not mobilize as quickly when they faced a parallel situation (Collins & Porras, 1994: 80)
perhaps because they did not have the same kind of emotional credo to guide appropriate action.
Both the Marriott slogan and the Johnson & Johnson credo may be more likely to self-propagate
because they are linguistic memes that provoke complex emotions, helping employees feel that
their jobs are important and noble.
In general, the psychological foundations of complex emotions, particularly positive
emotions are incompletely understood at present (Frederickson, 1998), but the research that is
currently emerging has promising applications for understanding the success of linguistic
memes. Consider a complex emotion like awe. Psychologists have argued that people feel awe
when they encounter perceived vastness (e.g., contemplating a scientific theory which ties
together a vast range of phenomena) together with a need for accommodation (e.g., the mental
change needed to understand the theory) (Keltner & Haidt, in press). Linguistic memes may also
create these conditions for awe whenever they cause people to perceive a vast stimulus and
accommodate to it. On Navy aircraft carriers, senior crewmen tell younger ones that “most
positions on this deck were bought in blood” (Weick & Roberts, 1993: 367). This forces
crewmen to reappraise job duties that may have previously seemed boring or mundane
(accommodation) and also puts them in touch with how their job has evolved within a larger
institution that has changed over history at high cost (perceived vastness). This feeling of awe
may contribute to the “heedful interrelating” that is necessary for crewmen to coordinate in the
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complex carrier environment (Weick & Roberts, 1993), and the meme that evokes this emotion
is more likely to be self-propagating because it lends awe-inspiring seriousness to job duties that
might otherwise seem mundane.
Proposition 3: Linguistic memes will be more likely to self-propagate when they evoke
emotion by (a) drawing on existing associations or (b) evoking the scripts for complex emotions
like empathy or awe.
MORE COMPLEX LINGUISTIC MEMES
In this section, we describe two slightly more complex versions of linguistic memes:
stories and metaphors. Research has shown that stories and metaphors are important in
educating newcomers and promoting ongoing coordination—for example, consider how stories
help people coordinate within particle physics laboratories (Traweek, 1988) and engineering
firms (Bucciarelli, 1994) or how metaphors help coordination in a variety of social contexts
(Crocker, 1977) including corporate teams (Gibson & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2001). Self-propagating
stories and metaphors will satisfy all the basic cognitive and emotional properties we discussed
above, but they may also have additional attributes—for example, self-propagating stories not
only be concrete and provoke emotion, they must also have a coherent plot and strong
characters.
Characteristics of Self-propagating Stories
Self-propagating stories allow people to identify with the main character. Good
stories have a main character with whom listeners can identify. One of the most basic principles
of influence is that we like those who are similar to us (Cialdini, 1993), so stories may be more
effective when they feature a main character who is similar to the listener as in Orr’s (1996)
studies of the stories exchanged by copier repair technicians. Other times, effective main
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characters may be people who dissimilar to the listener in that they are relatively disadvantaged,
the contrast leading the listener to think that if “they can do it, so can I”—as in the story at IBM
about the “90 pound” female security guard who upheld the rules that required plant visitors to
have proper identification, even when she had to confront the CEO of IBM (Martin, 1982).
Effective main characters may differ across cultures—in individualistic Western societies, main
characters may be individuals, while in more collectivistic cultures, main characters may be
teams or larger social units (Morris, Menon, & Ames, 2001). In any culture, stories are more
likely to be self-propagating among an audience that can identify with the main character.
Self-propagating stories have plots that link situations with appropriate actions.
Stories also differ from the other linguistic memes in that they have a plot that unfolds over time.
In some ways, the plot provides a kind of verbal flight-simulator that allows listeners to consider
a set of unfolding events and to imagine how they would have reacted at each stage. Sometimes,
the plot may help people consider appropriate actions. Orr (1996) describes how photocopier
technicians use stories to remind each other of appropriate actions; through stories “experience
becomes reproducible and reusable” (p. 126). Because listeners experience how the story
unfolds, later on when they confront a similar situation they are more likely to recognize
appropriate cues in the environment (habitats) and take action appropriately.
At other times, the plot of the story may help people understand and anticipate their own
emotional reaction to a crisis--for example, stories may help people maintain equanimity when
they experience a crisis because they have previously engaged in the mental simulation.
Firefighters seem to gain this kind of advantage from telling stories after a fire. Moreover stories
help firefighters construct a bigger mental picture that allows them to understand how the fire
unfolded and how other firefighters responded to it (Klein, 1998), so exchanging stories may
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help them coordinate more effectively during the next fire. Stories that have plots that link
situational cues with appropriate actions are more likely to be self-propagating because
individuals are more likely to remember them and pass them along.
Self-propagating stories often contain plot twists. Theories of drama assume that
reversals of expectations are at the heart of drama (McKee, 1997), and self-propagating stories
often contain some unexpected plot element. Collins and Porras (1994) describe the “dozens” of
stories told at Nordstrom about “heroic” customer service: “The Nordie who ironed a newbought shirt for a customer who needed it for a meeting that afternoon; the Nordie who
cheerfully gift wrapped products a customer bought at Macy’s; the Nordie who warmed
customers’ cars in winter while the customers finished shopping; the Nordie who made a lastminute delivery of party clothes to a frantic hostess; and even the Nordie who refunded money
for a set of tire chains--although Nordstrom doesn’t sell tire chains” (p. 118). These stories
provide numerous reversals of expectations--in every case, they describe an actor who violates
the traditional role of the sales clerk whose job is limited to ringing up a customer’s purchases.
These linguistic memes are particularly important at Nordstrom because its strategy requires
employees to overcome a pre-packaged cultural script for sales clerks that employees have
learned over a lifetime of sales transactions in other stores. Thus it is important that the stories
be memorable, and, consistent with our discussion of surprise above, these stories may provide
an especially memorable surprise through a plot twist that describes some heroic action.
Proposition 4: In addition to the cognitive and emotional properties in Propositions 2
and 3, self-propagating stories will: (a) allow people to identify with the main character; (b)
contain plots that link situations with appropriate action; and (c) will often contain plot twists
that make them more memorable.
20
Characteristics of Self-propagating Metaphors and Analogies
Self-propagating metaphors use common ground. Much of human thought is defined
by metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) because metaphors simplify cognitive operations. By
creating a single cognitive link between an unfamiliar domain and a known target domain,
metaphors can give people quick access to a wealth of information that helps them take
appropriate action. For example, the auction website firm eBay has found it easier to agree on
major strategic decisions because they use the analogy of a “community” to describe their
business. They have sacrificed money by not taking product ads from outsiders because
outsiders might compete with community members, and they invest a great deal of resources in
developing mechanisms to make transactions more safe and predictable, because “a community
needs to feel safe” (Eisenhart & Sull, 2001). Here, the metaphor is also likely to be selfpropagating because it is quite simple to learn and transmit.
Metaphors can also help relax role-requirements, especially social-role requirements, that
may prevent people from exchanging frank information that may allow them to coordinate on an
important decision. GE’s 30 highest-ranking managers meet quarterly in a small, tiered
classroom known as “The Cave.” Coats, ties and formal reports “are taboo… openness and
candor are the rule” (Tichy & Sherman, 1993: 159). The linguistic meme “The Cave” allows for
a kind of brutal straightforwardness that might not occur in the “boardroom.” Analogous
language is used for similar forums at Disneyland, which holds “The Gong Show” for employees
to pitch new ideas to a group of senior executives (Heath et al., 1998). These labels allow
participants to coordinate on giving and receiving a kind of frank feedback that they might
otherwise avoid because of norms of politeness.
21
Self-propagating metaphors highlight conceptual relationships. Metaphors can frame
decisions by directing people’s attention to relationships that they might not otherwise consider
(Schon, 1993). For example, Schon (1963, 1993) described how a multidisciplinary
development team was struggling to design a paintbrush with synthetic bristles that could apply
paint as evenly as a brush with natural bristles (synthetic bristles tended to apply paint in a
“gloppy” manner). Initially, the team focused on understanding how synthetic bristles differed
from natural bristles, for example noting that synthetic bristles do not have the split ends of
natural ones, but ongoing experiments with bristle design did not eliminate gloppiness. But then
someone observed that “a paintbrush is a kind of pump” that delivers paint to the surface to be
painted. Based on the pump metaphor, the team quickly refocused from the bristles themselves
to the properties of the gaps between the bristles, and this shift in attention allowed them to
create successful new designs. The pump metaphor was “generative” because it “generated new
perceptions, explanations, inventions” (Schon, 1993: 142). By defining the situation in a new
way, it helped the team coordinate and apply its skills in a way that was not initially apparent.
The inventor of the popular Palm Pilot personal digital assistants (PDAs), Jeff Hawkins,
told members of the Palm V design team that he wanted the product to have the elegant, stylish
look of the top-of-the-line Motorola StarTac mobile phone, saying “I want to do the StarTac of
PDAs” (Sutton 2001: 191). This analogy directed the team to focus on features that would
produce this elegant and stylish look, such as a satin-finish case, and away from technology
features not in line with this vision (e.g. a microphone to match a competitive product). This
analogy helped engineers coordinate the myriad design tradeoffs required to complete the final
product. In both cases above, the metaphors may be self-propagating because they highlight
relationships in a way that is cognitively simple but surprising.
22
Self-propagating metaphors have complex targets. Generative metaphors tell you
what to do next, and generativity is likely to increase as the target is more complex. This is an
extreme version of simplicity—when people make one additional mental link between the new
domain and a known target of the metaphor, they can then fill in all the implications of the
target. When a paintbrush is likened to a pump, then a whole discipline of hydrodynamics
becomes usable. Similarly, when Disney calls its employees “cast members” (van Maanen,
1990), this allows them to use their knowledge of performances to draw lots of inferences about
appropriate action. Employees who consider this metaphor may see their work as “performing”
or “entertaining,” and may focus on performative aspects of their job that they would otherwise
neglect—indeed, Disneyland is the only place we have seen street sweepers skip. Metaphors
with complex targets are more likely to be self-propagating because the complexity of the target
ensures that people will always be discovering new opportunities to use and rehearse the
metaphor.
Proposition 5: In addition to the cognitive and emotional properties in Propositions 2
and 3, self-propagating metaphors will: (a) take advantage of common ground; (b) highlight key
relationships; and (c) will take advantage of complex targets.
Table 3 summarizes the characteristics of effective self-propagating memes in
Propositions 2-5.
-- Table 3 about here -WHERE DO LINGUISTIC MEMES ORIGINATE?
One key question about successful linguistic memes is how they originate. Do they come
from the top of the organization as managers consciously use language to provoke coordination
or from the bottom of the organization as individuals learn to solve their coordination problems
23
through trial-and-error? This question mirrors the debate in the strategy literature about whether
effective strategies are deliberately planned (Porter, 1985) or emergent (Mintzberg & McHugh,
1985; Quinn, 1980). Clearly, managers do attempt to wield symbols to communicate with their
organizations and to encourage employees to coordinate their efforts (Pfeffer, 1982), and
sometimes they manage to create cultural practices, including linguistic memes, that survive
effectively (Schein, 1983). But successful memes frequently arise bottom-up as well. The
linguistic memes “no graffiti” and “eliminating what annoys” arose from within the organization
after managers had failed at suggesting other coordinating devices that took less advantage of the
cognitive and emotional principles we have described (Katzenbach, 1995: 68-70, 82).
Eisenhardt and Sull (2001) show how “simple rules” for effective strategies often emerge
bottom-up, especially after failure.
When linguistic memes arise bottom-up, the population of memes is likely to include
substantial variation, and as long as the population of memes is varied, effective self-propagating
memes are likely to emerge through a process of selection. But if linguistic memes are designed
top-down, then natural variation will be smaller, so to ensure effective memes managers need to
be particularly aware of the principles we discussed above. By applying sustained attention and
effort, managers may be able to propagate even clumsy memes, but the cognitive and emotional
factors we discussed above represent design principles that determine whether memes will be
self-propagating.
Proposition 6: Self-propagating memes may arise from the bottom or top of the
organization, but in both cases, they will be more likely to survive the social selection process
when they adhere to the principles that we have described in Propositions 2-5.
24
WHEN DO LINGUISTIC MEMES MATTER MORE?
Organizations have many mechanisms to help them coordinate, e.g., they can use
standard operating procedures or organizational structures, so when will linguistic memes matter
most? In general, informal mechanisms like memes will be more important when other
coordination mechanisms are less available, for example when organizations are ad hoc. The
different contractors and organizations that come together to produce a movie need effective
guidelines for appropriate action. “Jaws on a spaceship” may tell set designers, music
composers, and special effects artists what kind of feel to strive for. Linguistic memes will be
particularly important whenever people must coordinate with others who are dispersed (Hinds &
Kiesler, in press).
Linguistic memes will also be important when organizations must change and existing
coordination mechanisms are not designed to keep pace with the speed of change. Most theories
of culture present it as an accretion of history (e.g., Schein, 1990), but at least some component
of culture is forward looking (Camerer & Vepsalainen, 1988). Linguistic memes may serve as a
kind of “quick culture” that alerts people that change is needed and provides them with some
cues about how to take appropriate action in the new environment. One factor that reduces
coordination in change situations is that people don’t want to feel they are the only ones who are
trying to change (Weber, Camerer, Rottenstreich, & Knez, 2001). For New York City subway
workers, the rallying cry, “no grafitti” may have been especially effective because it was so
transparent. Everyone in the organization could appreciate the memorably specific goal, and the
pervasive habitat provided many cues for people to coordinate with others (Katzenbach, 1995:
71). When old views of appropriateness are entrenched, then linguistic memes may need to be
25
particularly salient and motivational in order to act as a coordinating device—consider “no
graffiti” and “eliminating what annoys” versus “reengineering,” “cost-cutting” or “TQM.”
Proposition 7: Self-propagating linguistic memes will play a more important role in
producing coordination when other coordination devices are unavailable—e.g., in organizations
that are (a) ad hoc, (b) distributed or (c) which have to change their historical practices.
WHEN ARE LINGUISTIC MEMES A HINDRANCE?
Linguistic memes may be helpful at solving coordination problems, but they can also be a
hindrance. Linguistic memes may propagate because of their cognitive simplicity and emotional
punch, but both features may sometimes lead memes to propagate when perhaps they should not.
For example, attractive metaphors can be misleading (Astley, 1985). The phrase, “First-mover
advantage,” may lead it to over-propagate because it evokes an emotional association to being
“first” (Bolton & Heath, 2004). Being a “fast follower” may be an effective tactic in dynamic
strategy (Saloner, Sheppard, & Podolny, 2001), but it is unlikely to have the emotional resonance
of being a “first mover,” “leader,” or “pioneer.” How can leaders seize the emotional and moral
high ground if they are attempting to rally the troops to be “followers,” no matter how fast?
It’s possible that stories about heroic individuals may over-propagate in organizations.
Research on attribution errors (Fiske & Taylor, 1991) and the romance of leadership (Meindl,
Erlich, & Dukerich, 1985) suggests that people may be so drawn to stories about heroic
individuals that they may neglect to develop the systems and procedures that also aid
coordination. Furthermore, linguistic memes in the form of simple rules, although effectively
propagated, may lead to the wrong actions for a particular situation (Gioia & Poole, 1984). In
summary, any property that leads a linguistic meme to be self-propagating may end up harming
26
coordination whenever the content of the meme is not consistent with the identity, situationidentification, or appropriate actions of a particular organization.
Proposition 8: Linguistic memes may hinder coordination when memes have the selfpropagating features in Propositions 2 through 5, but when their content conflicts with the types
of actions appropriate for coordination in a particular organization’s environment.
CONCLUSION
We have described how linguistic memes may form an important component of how
individuals take appropriate actions to coordinate with others in their organizations. Successful
linguistic memes will not be created solely in manager’s offices; they will arise, be transmitted,
discarded, and reused throughout an organization. By understanding what may make a linguistic
meme self-propagating, and by understanding how such memes can answer questions of
appropriate action, we hope to have linked the micro-level processes of individual sensemaking
and behavior and the macro-level processes of coordination and culture within organizations.
27
Table 1: Characteristic of linguistic memes
versus other language in organizations
Linguistic memes
Transmission
Duration
Propagation
Types
Largely Intact
Non-memetic language in
organizations
Changing
Enduring
Non-enduring
“Self-propagating”
Can be in the form of:
ƒ Slogans, Sayings, and
Expressions
ƒ Metaphors and
Analogies
ƒ Stories
Requires continued
intervention to ensure
propagation
Can be in the form of:
ƒ One-time presentations
(e.g. an “All-Hands”
meeting with
employees)
ƒ One-on-one meetings
(e.g. a “pitch” to a
potential investor)
28
Table 2: How linguistic memes aid people in answering the questions
of a logic of appropriateness (March 1994)
Questions within a
logic of
appropriateness:
Who are we?
What situation is this?
What do people like us do in
this situation?
How linguistic
memes aid
coordination
Provides readily-available
identity for individuals who are
taking action
Provides shared classification of
situation and/or goals
Provides “appropriate” rules by
which to act
• “Eagle Team” computer
software team
• “The most analytical
spreadsheet ever created,” goal
for Excel 3.0
Examples of
linguistic memes
• “Project Lightening” at
Ingersoll-Rand
• “Black belt” in “six sigma
quality”
• “Pocketable” radio at Sony
• “Every position on this deck
was bought in blood” Navy
aircraft carrier
• “No grafitti!” goal at NYC
subway system
• “The Cave” meeting room for
GE top 30 meetings
• Boeing 727: seat 131
passengers, fly nonstop from
Miami to New York City, and
land on runway 4-22 at
LaGuardia
29
• Intel: “Copy EXACTLY!” rule
for new facilities
• Emergency room ABCs
(airway, breathing, circulation)
• Cisco: “75 people, 75%
engineers” rule for acquisitions
• 3M: “Thou shalt not kill a new
product idea”
Table 3: Overview of characteristics of effectiveness
for different types of linguistic memes
Linguistic memes:
Slogans, sayings, and
expressions
Characteristics of
effective linguistic
memes
ƒ
Simple
ƒ
Simple
ƒ
Simple
ƒ
Involve multiple
memory cues
ƒ
Involve multiple
memory cues
ƒ
Involve multiple
memory cues
ƒ
Have pervasive
habitats
ƒ
Have pervasive
habitats
ƒ
Have pervasive
habitats
ƒ
Have emotional
associations
ƒ
Have emotional
associations
ƒ
Have emotional
associations
ƒ
Evoke complex
emotions
ƒ
Evoke complex
emotions
ƒ
Evoke complex
emotions
ƒ
Involve common
ground
ƒ
Identification with
main character
ƒ
Highlight
relationships
ƒ
ƒ
Have complex
targets
Link situations
with appropriate
actions
ƒ
Contain plot twists
Examples
“No graffiti!”
(Katzenbach, 1995)
Metaphors and
analogies
“A paintbrush is a kind
of pump” used to
develop new synthetic
bristles (Schon, 1963)
30
Stories
The story of the IBM
CEO and the security
guard (Martin, 1982)
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