Exploring 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.

Contents: 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