Gears mechanism; metaphor of supply chain management

Metaphors are powerful cognitive instruments that help us in making sense of the world around us. We start using them already as very small children and they accompany us throughout our lives. Metaphors of organization rely on a set of assumptions about organizational reality. This is an effort to identify the one new metaphor employed in this literature. A comparison of dominant concepts of Supply Chain and Gear knowledge in an organization shows that the preference of scientists and practitioners for certain metaphors of organization is visual monitoring determined. The history of organization science in research and practice determines the emergence of preferred metaphors. This metaphor, on the whole, facilitates systematic and comprehensive analyses of problem situations, characterization of organizational issues, and disclosure and prioritization of concealed organizational problems in a structured.