ABSTRACT
The Mandrake mode is passionately concerned with transformation and growth and focuses on creating value out of the not-yet-seen and not-yet-done. During the late 1990s, fortune-tellers and management gurus were openly relied on. The stakes were high, but glorious promises of a financial and informational gold rush lay ahead. Risk-taking became a virtue. Transformation is a very popular concept in New Age thinking. According to New Age-inspired management thinking, growth is stimulated by the transformation of taxonomies, dichotomies and categories, and by merging apparent contradictions. Motivation and innovation have become important assets in so-called 'intelligent production'. The social intensity of this romantic-economic pursuit seems analogous to the competitive fervour and ostentation of the Native American Potlatch, which also signified a hierarchical system of accumulation and reciprocity, and involved the sensational destruction of wealth. The so-called 'New Economy' thus seems to have several cultural antecedents worth considering.
