A second order cybernetics approach to the deconstruction of risk in the domain of anti money laundering

This research examines the application of the risk-based approach (RBA) in the context of anti-money laundering (AML) and explores how it drives risk interpretation and deconstruction within relevant AML stakeholders.Review of existing literature indicates that the majority of studies deliver descriptive and typological assessments of existing AML frameworks. The belief that the RBA supports institutions in their risk management is unquestioned throughout the industry. Yet the interpretation and application of the RBA impacts the way risk is perceived, represented and handled, resulting in a misalignment between stakeholders. In addition, there is no assessment of whether the RBA generates additional ML risk.To address the above, a cross-case study was conducted within two FIUs with data collection carried out primarily through semistructured interviews of key AML experts within both organisations and through reviewing relevant documentation and data. In addition, complementary semistructured interviews were conducted with risk practitioners within the banking and regulatory industries.This interpretive research is grounded in Luhmann’s systems theoretical treatise on risk (Luhmann, 1993) and can be positioned in the tradition of second-order cybernetics. The theory also informs data collection. The research identifies that AML practitioners interpret ML risk as an entity that can be contained, largely unaware that ML risk is interdependent on risk, essentially self-referential and autopoietic. Furthermore, this research shows that the RBA fails to capture the complex phenomena of feedback and irritation across systems that result in de-risking, which, in turn, leads to re-risking. Such phenomena are inevitable and should be facilitated to enable systems to minimise their own complexity. On this basis, this research proposes a new ML risk communication framework that is informed by Luhmann’s risk model and enhanced by the concepts of risk bearer and translation code introduced in this research

A Phenomenon-driven Exploration of Regulatory Sandboxes in FinTech Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Paper I is not published yet.Research on incubation models has indicated that business incubators and accelerators, among others, are crucial catalysts for the development of new ventures in numerous industries. To facilitate testing and validation of new financial technology (FinTech) providers, and protect financial markets against systemic risks, a new incubation model called the ‘regulatory sandbox’ has been established or announced by regulatory authorities in more than 50 countries. Sandboxes are virtual trial-and-error instruments that grant financial market participants temporary licensing relief and thus provide the opportunity to test novel solutions in a controlled, real-world environment and engage with regulators who offer guidance and supervision. Despite the potential benefits of sandboxes for innovation and financial market stability, the management literature on the phenomenon is scarce, limiting our understanding of how regulatory sandboxes operate, how they differ from other incubation models and how regulator-regulatee interactions enable innovation and regulation practices. This doctoral dissertation addresses these gaps. In addition to the empirical exploration of regulatory sandboxes, an ecosystem perspective to entrepreneurship is adopted to understand how interactions among ecosystem actors contribute to new ventures in the FinTech context that hosts sandboxes. Conceptually, this study also reviews the literature on innovation facilitators and offers a research agenda. Grounded in a critical realist paradigm, the key methodological choices feature a qualitative research design driven by an exploratory-abductive approach and the Gioia methodology. With regard to data, 35 semi-structured interviews have been conducted, 39 archival documents from 5 leading regulatory sandboxes analysed and 46 research articles content analysed. The key contribution of this research is to the incubation literature by extending our knowledge of a unique incubation model and establishing a knowledge-based foundation for future research. Additionally, important contributions are made to the emerging fields of entrepreneurial ecosystems and FinTech research by conducting an empirical exploration and suggesting theoretical propositions to motivate future research.publishedVersio

Eliciting People’s Conceptual Models of Activities and Systems

People using computer systems are required to work with the concepts implemented by system developers. If there is a poor fit between system concepts and users’ pre-existing conceptualisation of domain and task, this places a high workload on the user as they translate between their own conceptualisation and that imposed by the system. The focus of this paper is on how to identify users’ conceptualisations of a domain – ideally, prior to system implementation. For this, it is necessary to gather verbal data from people that allows them to articulate their conceptual models in ways that are not overly constrained by existing devices but allows them to articulate taken-for-granted knowledge. Possible study types include semi-structured interviews, contextual inquiry interviews and think-aloud protocols. The authors discuss how to design a study, covering choosing between different kinds of study, detailed planning of questions and tasks, data gathering, and preliminary data analysis

Developing a compositional ontology alignment framework for unifying business and engineering domains

In the context of the Semantic Web, ontologies refer to the consensual and formal description of shared concepts in a domain. Ontologies are said to be a way to aid communication between humans and machines and also between machines for agent communication. The importance of ontologies for providing a shared understanding of common domains, and as a means for data exchange at the syntactic and semantic level has increased considerably in the last years. Therefore, ontology management becomes a significant task to make distributed and heterogeneous knowledge bases available to the end users. Ontology alignment is the process where ontology from different domains can be matched and processed further together, hence sharing a common understanding of the structure of information among different people. This research starts from a comprehensive review of the current development of ontology, the concepts of ontology alignments and relevant approaches. The first motivation of this work is trying to summarise the common features of ontology alignment and identify underdevelopment areas of ontology alignment. It then works on how complex businesses can be designed and managed by semantic modelling which can help define the data and the relationships between these entities, which provides the ability to abstract different kinds of data and provides an understanding of how the data elements relate. The main contributions of this work is to develop a framework of handling an important category of ontology alignment based on the logical composition of classes, especially under a case that one class from a certain domain becomes a logic prerequisites (assumption) of another class from a different domain (commitment) which only happens if the class from the first domain becomes valid. Under this logic, previously un-alignable classes or miss-aligned classes can be aligned in a significantly improved manner. A well-known rely/guarantee method has been adopted to clearly express such relationships between newly-alignable classes. The proposed methodology has be implemented and evaluated on a realistic case study.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Alternative financial spaces: a case study of credit unions in Scotland

This thesis explores the changing values and practices of the credit union sector in Scotland as a case study for alternative financial spaces in the wake of the 2008-9 financial crisis. Credit unions have emerged as part of a global movement, adapting to local contexts to provide access to finance for the economically marginalised. Using an evolutionary perspective, the thesis charts the trajectory of the credit union movement, focusing in on the key influences and their impact on viability and values in the post financial crisis political and economic landscape in Scotland. The financial crisis had a profound effect on the financial sector, including on alternatives such as credit unions. The thesis explores whether the credit union sector’s traditional commitment to alternative social values has been sustained despite pressures in the post-crisis political economic environment. It is contended that a new phase of neoliberalism emerged from the financial crisis, creating new challenges for credit unions as a result of austerity and a changed regulatory framework. At the same time, neoliberal ideals and financialisation processes are serving to crowd out the alternative values that underpin the movement, with potential repercussions for the role of credit unions within the economy. A qualitative research design is employed to explore these issues through a multi-method study of the Scottish credit union sector

Age discrimination in financial services. A comparative study between Italy, UK and Austria

This thesis considers age discrimination in financial services, focusing on a comparative analysis between Italy, Austria and United Kingdom. It does this by first examining Directive 2000/78/EC which is the first and the only European legislation existing on age discrimination in the employment field. Additionally, relevant case law is analysed to create a theoretical framework. By this approach, it is possible to see that, although equality is a fundamental principle of European law, both direct and indirect age discrimination can be justified. Therefore, this analysis focuses on Article 6 of the Directive as it allows the Member States to objectively justify age discrimination for the benefit of public economic interests. This conflict between economic interest and equality is evident also in the financial services field, where a European legislation does not exist yet. In this way, in each country, the assessment of risk is strongly linked to domestic law and financial stability. The study focuses on the implication of age justifications on the economy and its relation to population ageing

Relative roles of genetic and epigenetic variation on the ecology and evolution of mangrove killifishes (Kryptolebias spp.)

The field of ecological epigenetics aims to understand the implications of epigenetic modifications in adaptation, inheritance and ultimately, evolution. Many questions remain open within ecological epigenetics, in particular, how epigenetic variation is influenced by genetic background, the extent of environmentally-induced epigenetic variants, as well as its degree of heritability. This thesis used the unique diversity of mating systems present in the killifish genus Kryptolebias to investigate how genetic and environmental variation shape epigenetic variation in animals. Genetic and epigenetic structure was investigated in natural populations of K. hermaphroditus in northeast Brazil, with the species being confirmed as the second example of mixed-mating system in vertebrates. Cytosine methylation was largely influenced by genetic background. However, within-populations, when individuals were more genetically similar, DNA methylation was mostly affected by parasites. Kryptolebias ocellatus, here confirmed as an outcrossing-only androdioecious species, showed deep genetic structure in southeast Brazil. Hybridisation between K. ocellatus and the predominantly selfing K. hermaphroditus was uncovered, representing the first example of hybridisation between species with different mating systems in vertebrates. Hybrids had intermediate patterns of cytosine methylation relatively to the parental species, with important biological processes being potentially misregulated. Environmental enrichment was shown to affect brain cytosine methylation patterns in two inbred strains of K. marmoratus, however genetic background had a stronger effect than environmental variation. Commonly-affected epialleles between genotypes predominantly showed a genotype-by-environment reaction norm, suggesting that exclusively environmentally-induced epialleles may be rare. Intergenerationally, parental activity affected offspring activity, and a limited number of putative intergenerational epialleles were identified. This is the first example of behavioural parental effects induced by environmental enrichment in fish. These findings show that genetic background has a prominent effect and must be take into account when evaluating the evolutionary potential of cytosine methylation variation. In addition, inheritance of environmentally-induced cytosine methylation epialleles may be limited, with other epigenetic mechanisms, such as microRNAs, being more likely to escape epigenetic reprogramming and transmit epigenetically-induced parental effects

The equity analyst rating decision:a strong structuration analysis

Sell-side analysts represent something of an enigma; the literature suggests they are optimistic and conflicted in their stock recommendations, yet these same stock recommendations impact share prices and so are clearly important for capital markets. To unlock and explore this conundrum, this study conceptualises stock recommendation decisions as primarily social in nature. Consequently, this situates the research outside of the predominantly neo-classical economic model reflected in the mainstream analyst literature. Giving voice to the sell-side analyst participants was central to the study. It explored their experiences of making decisions in the midst of a complex, changing social environment.Based on a field study, the empirical evidence was collected from focus groups and semistructured interviews with sell-side analysts. Semi-structured interviews were extended into the analysts’ network to include internal clients, external investment managers and corporate officials. Strong structuration theory was drawn upon extensively through every stage of the research as a revealing lens to sensitise the researcher to the structural and agential aspects of analyst practices, with a specific focus on rating decisions. The findings suggest that regulatory tightening over the last decade has created an independent causal external structure that materially constrains and transforms the practices of sell-side analysts. Power dynamics, the levying of sanctions, a diverse analyst habitus and the exercise of resistance all remain integral to understanding company-analyst relations and action. Fieldwork evidence reveals that the sales force, largely ignored in the mainstream literature, represents a powerful agent cluster in close time-space proximity to analysts. By viewing the conduct of analysts as the outcome of cycles of structuration, further light can be shed on the low level of sell recommendations in the market, the use of calculative routines to legitimise ratings and the capitulation point, whereby an analyst abandons a poorly performing stock call