Customers, Boardrooms and Gossip: Theme Repetition and Metapatterns in the Texture of Organizing
结合认知科学、精神分析和小群体心理学，探讨组织中的主题重复现象，提出元模式概念，分析其对组织文化形成与变革的影响，对研究者和咨询顾问有启示。
This article draws together theoretical strands from cognitive science, psychoanalysis, and small-group psychology in order to discuss theme repetition in organizations. It suggests that attending to the possibility of theme repetition, even in apparently inconsequential interactions and small talk, can bring to light previously unnoticed connotations of policy or strategy. This discussion leads on to a re-examination and expansion of the notion of metapatterns. These are tacit, emergent patterns of theme repetition in the meanings of organizational contexts. Metapatterns may contribute to enculturation, culture formation and the establishment of organizational stories, histories and artefacts. They may also form a critical obstruction to organizational learning and change. Consequences for researchers and consultants are investigated and it is proposed that, if metapatterns are to alter, recognition of a change agent’s own involvement in metapattern themes is required.