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In analysing the beancounter image's trajectory, from its birth to its persistence, in European French language comics between 1945 and 2016, this paper explores why artists continue beancounter image usage in popular culture.

Beancounter characters have been studied in an application of Iconology (Panofsky, 1955) in order to unravel how individuals make sense of cultural artefacts and how, in turn, the visuals shape cultural belief systems at a given time.

This study reveals that comics artists usage of the beancounter image results from their critical reactions to management and capitalism whilst at other times the usage is an indication of authenticity. Motivation for the usage is not constant over time nor is the impact of the beancounter image. Both appear dependant of the level of artistic freedom experienced by the artist.

Based on a single media (comics) with a unique characters (European French language) this study deepens exploration of the ways in which accounting becomes entwined with the everyday and implies that further research is needed.

Extends the work of Smith and Jacobs (2011) and Jacobs and Evans (2012) by focusing on a genre of popular culture over a long period, and by adopting a critical viewpoint. Also expands the possible applications of Panofsky's (1955) Iconology in accounting studies.

This study aims to investigate whether frontline retail banking employees’ proactive personality helps in ameliorating customer engagement. This study further aims to investigate the mediational role of work engagement and service recovery performance in the employee proactivity – customer engagement relationship.

This study used a triadic approach for the collection of primary data. Each triad consisted of a customer, a frontline employee and an immediate colleague of the frontline employee. Structured questionnaires were used to solicit data from the respondents. Specifically, customers were asked to report their level of engagement with the bank and the recovery performance of the employee who redressed their grievances. Frontline employees responded to their level of work engagement while their colleagues reported about the proactive disposition of frontline employees at the workplace.

Empirical findings revealed under service scenario, Indian retail banking employees’ proactive disposition nurtures customer engagement. It was further observed that this relationship is sequentially mediated by work engagement and service recovery performance.

The role of frontline employees in enriching customer engagement has to date remained under-researched among marketing scholars. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the maiden attempt to relate frontline employee proactivity with customer engagement. Also, this study is one of the early research to investigate customer engagement under a service recovery context, thereby, opening pathways for further exploration.