Keep Your Head in the Clouds and Your Feet on the Ground
141The example with eggs (Picture 1) appears to prove that conceptual
metaphors are highly pedagogical, explanatory and persuasive. Moreover,
they serve as a bridge between specialist knowledge and the general
public. Conceptual metaphors not only enable science to develop and
progress, but they also legitimize scientific knowledge by making it
transparent and empowering the audience to understand it (Knudsen 2015:
200).
In accounting and financial management of projects, costs are treated
as tokens that can be counted and manipulated. In order to be eligible, they
must be “identifiable and verifiable”.^4 The actions of ‘cutting costs and
maximizing profits can be also approached in the literal sense as
‘extracting’ and ‘multiplying’ physical objects, e.g. stones. In the same
way, i.e. as manipulated tokens, are perceived available resources. Hence,
in one of its possible conceptualizations, financial management is defined
as “making effective and efficient use of available resources”.^5
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT IS CREATIVITY
Financial managers also have to solve complex or global problems and
this means that creativity is increasingly becoming an important part of
financial management. This fact is well illustrated by the following
passage extracted from the Business Finance: Best Practices for Finance
Executives magazine:
Today, it's not just debits and credits that need balancing. Controllers also
have to weigh the best approach to solving people issues, they must
consider the most efficient way to grow a business, they must consult and
advise, and they must collaborate with other professionals who often are
not of the same black-and-white mind-set — all of which require some
measure of creative problem solving (http://businessfinancemag.com/hr/6-
steps-creative-problem-solving).The working of the conceptual metaphor FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
IS CREATIVITY is also well visible in activities performed by financial
managers that include “looking at the big picture”, “toying with ideas and
possibilities”, “stretching your imagination”, “thinking in more global and
abstract terms”.^6 Looking at financial management from this perspective,
one can observe that it involves “visioning a strategy which will be
(^4) https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/sites/eacea-site/files/culture-financial-mgt.swf
(^5) https://knowhownonprofit.org/organisation/operations/financial-management/management
(^6) http://businessfinancemag.com/hr/6-steps-creative-problem-solving