Big Hat, No Cattle: Using Animal Metaphors to Frame Strategic Human Resource Management

What is in a metaphor? This chapter explores interpretations of the metaphor ‘big hat, no cattle’ and what potential implications these interpretations have on practices within a scientific field of study; in this case, strategic human resource management (SHRM). The chapter opens a discussion to the limitation of research within human management fields and calls for the vital importance of more open-minded, inductive, and inclusive approaches to research that involves, or at least acknowledges, all the species within the context of study. This requires researchers to be held accountable for the stories they tell and to be critical of the limitations to human-centric storytelling.