Rethinking the relationship between vulnerability and embodied knowing: Embodied metaphors in an organizational merger

This study explores the relationship between embodied metaphors, vulnerability and embodied knowing. Drawing on autoethnographic diary notes written by one of the authors during a multi-organizational merger, we explore how embodied metaphors surfaced as sensory and affective cues through which embodied knowing was experienced, resisted and reinterpreted. Rather than treating vulnerability as an individual deficit, we approach it as a relationally shaped precondition to embodied knowing. Based on our analysis, we identified three embodied metaphors: Bambi, Spider and Bat in a Glass Box, which captured the relational dynamics between vulnerability and embodied knowing. Methodologically, the study shows how embodied metaphors have the potential to work as emergent openings to voice lived experiences that would otherwise remain hidden. By foregrounding the embodied and relational shades of vulnerability, we contribute to more critically attuned understanding of vulnerability and its connection to knowledge building in organizations.