Gareth Morgan (born 22 December 1943) is a British/Canadian organizational theorist, management consultant and Distinguished Research Professor at York University in Toronto.
He is known as creator of the "organisational metaphor" concept and writer of the 1979 book Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis with Gibson Burrell and the 1986 best-seller Images of Organization.
Throughout his career Morgan has sought to integrate theory and practice, writing for both academic and practitioner audiences, and has been a strong advocate of action learning as a strategy for generating effective research.
The common theme uniting his work is that of challenging assumptions – to help develop new ways of thinking in social research, organisation and management theory and practice, and, by implication, in everyday life.
Building on Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigm, it explores the hidden assumptions of social and organizational theory, offering a map-like representation of dozens of different schools of thought.
Published in 1983, this book builds on the framework offered in Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis, contrasting the assumptions and approaches of fourteen different research methodologies.
After illustrating the methods e.g. positivist, interpretive, critical, transformational, radical and class-based, Morgan explores their similarities, differences and contradictory nature.