39 research outputs found
Time orientations and emotion-rules in finance
No full textThis article explores how Anglo-American financial firms since the 1980s have operated and acted in an increasingly deregulated, risky, and uncertain arena. I look at these firms and their actions with a particular focus on “temporality” and requisite “emotion-rules,” where variations in emotion-rules correspond with organizational definitions of uncertainty. Firms impose specific emotion-rules, depending on national policies, official duties, and interpretations of each risk. In finance, caveat emptor (i.e., buyer or lender distrust) is an emotion-rule set in screening policies and data collection for credit risks and risks of fraud by personnel, and it gives rise to actual emotions. I argue that three time-orientations are significant in creating emotion-rules. If a past, present, or a long-term future is deployed to construct a future, that creates and frames an institution’s attempts to manage uncertainty. Looking exclusively at Anglo-American corporate finance policies and strategies (often deemed the international “one best way”), six modes of certainty constructions are presented. Each is assessed against the dispositions and emotional strategies required in highly-skilled careers, in specific organizational settings. The relative influence of individual perspectives, institutional rules and general typologies of social action is assessed and found to comprise one past view, three present views, and one future-oriented perspective towards the future. Implications are outlined for emotion-rules relevant to financial careers and office. This article was written before the full financial crisis unfolded, which the argument here substantially foreshadows.18 page(s
Book review : 'Central bank independence : cultural codes and symbolic performance'
No full textBook review of 'Central Bank Independence : Cultural Codes and Symbolic Performance' by Carlo Tognato (2014. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan; ISBN: 9781137268822.3 page(s
The Current crisis of capitalism : what sort of crisis?
No full textKeeping an open mind on the severity of the financial crisis and its implications for capitalism, this article focuses on the role of the state and financial institutions in monetary regulation. Questioning whether orthodox economic theorists and policy- makers share the same world view as professional and central bankers, it argues that the monetary system has in the past twenty years been stabilised through trust relations, rather than by markets. Furthermore, in this process, which was not sufficiently recognised by the practitioners, such trust relations were unable to cope with the impersonality of money. The nub of the question about a 'crisis of capitalism' is how nation-states can possibly control money - the most anarchic and global social relation in the world today. The article questions Keynesianism and economic liberalism alike, by asking if it is possible for states to force global banks to take the risks of lending for development. It argues that the real focus of attention needs to be the practices of complex international banking networks and the way 'banks march in step'.10 page(s
New perspectives on emotions in finance : the sociology of confidence, fear and betrayal
No full textThis interdisciplinary volume from a leading international group of scholars offers coherent sociological answers as to how and in what respects finance is 'emotional'. Chapters offer sophisticated approaches to the current financial crisis, and the antecedents in cultural variations in institutions and organisational forms. The financial crisis that started in 2007 is a concern for the world. Some countries are in depression and governments are desperately trying to find solutions. In the absence of thorough debate on the emotions of money, bitter disputes, hatred and 'moralizing' can be misunderstood. New Perspectives on Emotions in Finance carefully considers emotions often left unacknowledged, in order to explain the socially useful versus de-civilising, destructive, nature of money. This book offers an understanding of money that includes the possible civilising sentiments. This interdisciplinary volume examines what is seemingly an uncontrollable, fragile world of finance and explains the 'panics' of traders and 'immoral panics' in banking, 'confidence' of government and commercial decision makers, 'shame' or 'cynicism' of investors and asymmetries of 'impersonal trust' between finance corporations and their many publics. Money is shown to rely on this abstract trust or 'faith', but such motivations are in crisis with 'angry' conflicts over the 'power of disposition'. Restraining influences - on 'uncivilised emotions' and rule breaking - need democratic consensus, due to enduring national differences in economic 'sentiments' even in ostensibly similar countries. Promising ideas for global reform are assessed from these cautionary interpretations238 page(s
The Tobin tax revisited
No full textThe idea that governments necessarily have a critical role in economy and society is again plain since the global financial crisis. For 30 years, the democracies said that they were ineffectual in coordinating economic life, and markets were perfect for this political role. The report provides a corrective to the attendant policies based on these views, by using the Tobin tax, a proposal once again in the news, as an illustration. Through an interpretation of the ideal and less than ideal relations between governments and the financial sector, it assesses the Tobin tax. Criteria about its feasibility and desirability are drawn from this broader framework about the purposes of banks and their role in society. A Tobin tax on global financial transactions is a very modest reform, so modest that the vehement opposition by the financial sector could also be subject to interpretation
Uncertainty : the Curate's egg in financial economics
No full textEconomic theories of uncertainty are unpopular with financial experts. As sociologists, we rightly refuse predictions, but the uncertainties of money are constantly sifted and turned into semi-denial by a financial economics set on somehow beating the future. Picking out 'bits' of the future as 'risk' and 'parts' as 'information' is attractive but socially dangerous, I argue, because money's promises are always uncertain. New studies of uncertainty are reversing sociology's neglect of the unavoidable inability to know the forces that will shape the financial future. Adapted from the source document.25 page(s
