Investigating the intricacy of the organization, this work argues that it is necessary to gather local information about organizational life and subject it to abstract and metaphorical interpretation. Using a narrative approach, the author employs literary devices to uncover the workings of organizations. She applys cultural metaphors to public administration in Sweden to demonstrate, for example, how the dynamics of a screenplay can illuminate the budget disputes of an organization. She shows how the interpretive description of organizational worlds works as a distinct genre of social analysis, and her study discloses the paradoxical nature of organizational life: we follow routine in order to change, and decentralize in order to control.