Description
Book SynopsisExploring magic as a creative necessity in contemporary business, this book clarifies the differences between magic as an organizational resource and magic as fakery, pretence and manipulation. Using this lens, it highlights insights into the relationship between anthropology and business, and organizational studies.
The Magic of Organization looks at our economy and its dependence on magic, as success depends on innovation and creativity to produce the unexpected and amazing; but perhaps also the bogus and deceitful. Exposing the unpredictability of magic, the book reveals clear links between magic and uncontrollable and non-linear ways of organizing. Chapters discuss the double-edged sword of magic: while organizations, economies and finance depend on magical thought and actions for inspiration and surprise, they also fear them; what if the magic is real?
With its clarity on how the turn-to-ontology in anthropology is significant for organizational studies, this book will be an illuminating read for students of creativity and innovation.
Table of ContentsContents: List of contributors vii 1 Introduction 1 Hugo Letiche, Stephen A. Linstead and Jean-Luc Moriceau PART I MAGIC AND IMAGINATION 2 Introductory chapter to Part I – magic and imagination: taking strategy into the unknown 26 Per Olof Berg 3 The return of the Magi: image magic and the institutionalisation of kitsch therapeutic fantasy 59 James Fairhead 4 The persistence of magic: management and the new alchemy 82 Iain Munro 5 The intra-act of accounting 99 Ivo De Loo, Alan Lowe and Philip Smith 6 Risk management and the magical arts: rituals of risk calculation in the banking industry 125 Peter Case and Peter Pelzer 7 Markets and machines: the magic of predicting, obscuring and securing value 143 Geoff Lightfoot and Simon Lilley PART II MAGIC AND ITS TRANSGRESSIONS 8 Introductory chapter to Part II – magic being re-understood 160 Hugo Letiche 9 Grammarye, grammatization, grammatology: interviewing technique as a magic trick 190 Jean-Luc Moriceau 10 Artaud’s dissolute magic: some thoughts on ambivalent desires 207 Heather Höpfl 11 Magification as bunny(-fication) 224 Hugo Letiche 12 Magic or the presence of absence 239 Michael Lazarin 13 Schwung magic: aesthetic subversion of organization in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari 263 Pierre Guillet de Monthoux Afterword 275 Hugo Letiche, Stephen A. Linstead and Jean-Luc Moriceau
