Identification of organizational metaphors in Brazilian companies using fuzzy clustering

All theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors. The aim of this work was to identify the presence of images in a sample of 61 Brazilian companies which operate in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. For this purpose the results of a questionnaire answered by 198 employees of companies in the sample were analyzed using fuzzy data mining techniques. The results show that it is difficult to find a clear image in most organizations. In most cases characteristics of different images or metaphors are observed, so soft computing techniques are particularly appropriate for this type of analysis.