"Invitation to the Journey": the Consolations of Organisational Excess

"Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge" according to William Wordsworth. This article uses poetry as a lens through which to examine an organisational phenomenon: the opulent decoration of a company's headquarters. As an alternative to more conventional research methods, the aesthetic qualities of poetry are particularly helpful in understanding the deep emotions of shame, guilt and remorse that the article centres on. The article works with two case examples: a large hierarchical organisation recovering from a traumatic period in its history, and a love poem by the nineteenth-century French poet, Charles Baudelaire.