This paper discusses the metaphor "organizations as organisms" as conceived of by Garith Morgan in the books Images of Organization and Images of Organization: The Executive Edition. It applies the metaphor to adult and in particular distance education management and organizations in an attempt to conceptualize the incredibly complex reality of management and organizational life. Based on ideas infused by the metaphor as well as scholarly literature, the paper provides a checklist of phenomena characteristic of "living" systems within adult distance education and a list of guiding questions intended to stimulate thought regarding the health, or alternatively the non-health, of adult and distance education management and organizations.
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