Sacred Heart: a comment on the heart of management

The literary and artistic image of the Sacred Heart is well known within Roman Catholic iconography and more generally. It is the object of a special devotion and symbolizes love and compassion. In the context of the special issue, this article is concerned with some aspects of the imagery of the heart. It briefly traces the history of the symbolism of the heart from ancient times and then gives specific attention to the imagery of the Sacred Heart. It looks at the ways in which this image has been used in both religious and secular art and to the political uses of the symbol. In particular, the study gives attention to the iconography of the Sacred Heart in contemporary imagery including representations of Elvis Presley, tributes to Princess Diana and the way that the image has been employed by the Australian political artist Deborah Kelly, who on Good Friday 2002, produced an image of Jesus with barbed wire around his heart as a complex symbol of Jesus’s status as a refugee from Herod. This article considers the appeal of the image of the heart and its significance, both political and psychological. It considers the way that the heart has been used as a symbol in management, its significance in terms of emotional labour and, by recursion to the Sacred Heart, its role in the restoration of the body to the management text

Objects in exile: the intimate structures of resistance and consolation

Purpose – This paper looks at small spaces. In particular, it aims to focus on small gestures of resistance and the objects which accompany them. It takes its inspiration from Goffman's “secondary adjustments”, in other words, from reactions to organizational socialization, but draws most of its theoretical support from the literature of exile and architectural concepts of structure. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is located in the interpretative paradigm and draws on Goffman's observations, photographic approaches, and artistic and literary works on exile. It does not work with psycho-analytic approaches to object-relations and has merely an affinity with science and technology studies. Findings – The primary findings concern the relationship between work and its other. At a time when work has extended to define all areas of life, the paper considers the relationship between exile and homeland, between memories and aides memoires. The paper examines the intimate relationship between the prevailing conditions of exile and the miniscule gestures which might help to give consolation, offer compensation and serve as resistance to the relentless demands of work. Practical implications – The paper outlines some of the conceptual concerns. An empirically based study will follow. Its practical relevance lies in its questioning the blurring of boundaries between home and work and raises issues about the importance of personal belongings in the workspace. Originality/value – The paper's originality lies in the emphasis it gives to the small spaces of resistance which it characterises

Settlers, vagrants and mutual indifference: unintended consequences of hot-desking

The purpose of this paper is to provide a sociological analysis of emergent sociospatial structures in a hot-desking office environment, where space is used exchangeably. It considers hot-desking as part of broader societal shifts in the ownership of space. This analysis is based on an ethnographically-oriented investigation, in which data collection methods used were participant-observation and interviewing. The analysis uses Lefebvre's conceptualisation of the social production of space and draws on the urban sociology literature

Accounting for the Bhopal disaster: footnotes and photographs

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to find the relationship between the purely representational aspects of the statements of account and the everyday lived experiences of those who were directly affected by the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in India in 1984. The paper seeks to consider the rhetorical force of photography in capturing the tragic and to compare this with the position adopted by Union Carbide in accounting for the catastrophe. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and draws on the works of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Julia Kristeva to examine the relationship between photographic representation and statements of account. Findings – The rhetorical character of the ways in which the tragedy has been represented and the impact of the photographic image when set against the statement of account is considered. The photographic image is an attempt to restore the body to the text, to bear in mind that, in the face of inevitable abstract, it is important to remember the body, albeit with the caveat that the image too succumbs to the force of rhetoric. Nonetheless, the image reminds one that one is dealing not only with figures and statements but also with life and death. Originality/value – The paper contributes to discussions about the need for a dialogic approach to accounting. Frequently, in disaster analysis, the co-existence of multiple perspectives and fragmented stories i.e. a dialogic approach, is paramount to gaining an insight into the complexity of the system which has failed. The paper demonstrates how images can complement cosy, coherent, monologic statements of accounts and help to retain the human character of disaster.Accounting, India, Man-made disasters, Narratives, Photographs, Visual media