The idea of conquering a challenge has become an industry cliche but corporations are still determined to cling to the moral high ground, writes Louise Jolly.
In Caspar David Friedrich's painting of 1818, The Traveller Above the Sea of Clouds, the poet is depicted standing on the mountaintop, feeling his soul thrill and his creativity awaken as he marvels at the immensity around him. Little could Friedrich have guessed that, 200 years on, his image would provide the prototype for countless recruitment ads to help companies fill all kinds of vacancy, from telecommunications engineers to human resources managers.
Companies have a thing about mountains. The recruitment pages of many business publications contain view after view of climbers negotiating precipices and heroes who, having reached the summit, gaze like Friedrich out to the infinite horizon.
Images like these have become a cliche in the recruitment industry. But sometimes images become cliches because they strike a deep chord; and the parallel between getting to the top of a mountain and winning in challenging business situations features among the most cherished icons of the corporate imagination.
In business, mountains have become a metaphor for professional, moral and personal improvement - a metaphor that goes back to the 19th century. In Germany and Austria, the term Wandervogel came to refer to a long group hike in the Alps, which set out consciously to foster team spirit. The Victorians also redefined mountaineering as a moralising pursuit. The bracing peaks of the Alps would, they were sure, separate the men from the boys and elicit the noble, manly courage on which the empire depended.
The macho symbolism continues in the recruitment advertising of recent years, with its rugged climbers grappling with the rock face, "pursuing their goals" and "striving for the top". The Victorian climber George Leigh-Mallory would have understood these sentiments well; he proclaimed more than 100 years ago that "one must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end".
However, as Friedrich's early-19th-century painting shows, the obsession with mountains as a symbol of power and freedom goes further back. From the 18th century into the 19th, mountains fascinated Romantic poets and artists. In 1739, Thomas Gray, the poet, wrote of the Alps that "not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry". Mountains were seen not just as beautiful but as sublime, their sheer size giving poets and artists a glimpse of infinity.
These days it is not poets but managers who retreat to the mountains to "awaken natural resources, creativity and vision", to quote Purple Mountain, a corporate training provider that offers executive retreats in the Wicklow mountains near Dublin. Yet the question remains as to why companies are attracted to symbols so grandiose and quasi-religious that, in terms of art and culture, they are long past their sell-by date.
The mountain imagery of Romanticism could be reproduced by contemporary poets and artists only with a strong dose of postmodern self-consciousness. But it is precisely the grandiloquence of these images that appeals to many businesses, which themselves want to be as grand, monumental and enduring as mountains. To describe a business success in terms of conquering a mountain is to transpose it into the register of myth and, as we have seen, the mountain is a myth laden with poetic and philosophical resonance.
This is all part of a process in which businesses are no longer content to be just businesses. Since the early 1990s there has been a shift in the corporate sector's understanding of itself: from being primarily about profit, it has redefined itself as a purveyor of philosophy and ideas. Thinking, creativity and imagination now take pride of place on the corporate agenda, so it is not surprising that companies are, more than ever, finding literary and philosophical ways to describe and promote themselves.
Nevertheless, the problem with reaching so high is that there is further to fall. And mountains tell stories of overreaching and catastrophe, such as the loss of 34,000 Carthaginian soldiers during Hannibal's legendary crossing of the Alps in 218 BC. In 1812, Turner painted Hannibal as a tiny figure on a minuscule elephant, disappearing into the swirling, freezing mountain mists.
Of course, this kind of image is unlikely to be re-cycled in corporate literature - although its theme is timely indeed.
- (Financial Times Service)
