Information and communication technologies and the integration of financial marketplaces: The development of the Euroclear single platform for cross-border securities settlement.

While cross-border financial activity continues to grow, facilitated by the adoption of electronic information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the multi-jurisdictional presence of large financial corporations, securities marketplaces have remained locally organised. Why has marketplace integration in this area lagged when ICTs have made possible the linking of geographically remote transacting parties and enhanced their calculative capabilities. This question raises issues regarding distinctions between markets and marketplaces and the implication of ICTs in the constitution of financial marketplaces that this research seeks to address through a study of an initiative to use ICTs to integrate the securities marketplaces of the UK and Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, and Brussels-based international central securities depository Euroclear Bank. Adopting an approach informed by the social studies of finance that emphasise the importance of technologies, systematic knowledge, and material practices in the functioning of financial markets, the central empirical focus of the research is to trace the articulation of human and non-human entities involved in the development of the Euroclear cross-marketplace securities settlement platform. The study shows that integrating securities marketplaces is far from being a neat technical process requiring the integration of ICT systems. Instead, a meticulous sociotechnical re-articulation of the exchange architectures that format the encounters between transacting parties and transacting parties and objects of exchange is required. Furthermore, as the new arrangements take shape, they become a concrete interrogation of the world - both conceptual and material - surrounding them; technical issues become part of wider controversies, with points of interface between the emerging system and other sociotechnical networks it comes into contact with becoming nodes of actions, questions, and reactions from agencies required to respond to the demands of the new platform from the world around it. In the process, competing inscriptions of assumptions about the world are rendered explicit and contestable as the experiment of ICT-inspired marketplace integration becomes embroiled in a trial of rival conceptions of politico-economic integration

Developing a Relational View of the Organizing Role of Objects: A study of the innovation process in computer games

Innovation processes create distinctive challenges for coordination. Objects are seen as supporting coordination in such settings by enabling the emergent action needed to deal with a dynamic and uncertain process. Thus, previous work has highlighted the role of different types of objects in coordinating the collaborative tasks undertaken by expert groups, either by motivating the creation of new knowledge or through the translation of understanding. Through an empirical study of innovation processes in the computer games sector, our paper adds to this previous work by finding that the relations between objects, and not the objects alone, help to orchestrate multiple collaborative tasks towards a final outcome within temporal and resource constraints. The relational view which emerges from this study shows how such a ‘system of objects’ is able to stabilize coordination of the process while preserving the emergence and autonomy of games developer practices needed to achieve innovation

Entanglements of creative agency and digital technology : a sociomaterial study of computer game development

Digital technology, with its distinctive characteristics that result from the fundamental process of digitalization that underpins it, is seen as fundamentally altering processes of creativity. However, we currently have limited understanding of creativity in relation to the development of digital technology. Computer game development, with its combination of esthetic, affective and cultural use features and highly sophisticated digital technologies, is a valuable setting for investigating these issues. In this paper, we explore how computer games are shaped through the interplay between the creative intentions of developers and the digital technologies involved in their production and playing. Drawing on in-depth studies conducted at three leading computer game development studios and a leading producer of the software system used in game development, this paper shows how the game developers' creative ideas for imagined novel game-playing experiences relate to a) the development of relevant digital technologies, and b) the emergence of new game development practices. The article goes on to propose a view of creativity as an on-going flow that, following an initial ‘creative impulse’, ripples through the sociomaterial entanglements of a particular setting, reconfiguring them in the process and spreading out in time and space in often unexpected ways

The material production of virtuality: trials of explication in the design and development of computer games

Abstract: This article seeks to contribute to the development of a relationship between digital game studies and science and technology studies by studying the design and development of computer games at three leading UK studios in the light of what MacKenzie refers to "the material production of virtuality" (MacKenzie 2007). The article examines the common ground in treatment of 'the virtual' and 'virtuality' in science and technology studies and studies of material culture and the importance placed in the relationship between 'virtuality' and 'materiality' as "a dialectical process of imagination followed by its realisation&quot

Applying Standardised, Interoperable and Innovative Automated Solutions: Corporate Treasuries and the Development of Globally Connected Financial Services

Large multinational corporations operate in a wide variety of countries with a range of risks associated with their size, infrastructures and operational practices. Increasingly ubiquitous and powerful ICTs have enabled the centralisation of many support functions from local operations to the corporate headquarters. This, in turn, has led to a concentration of contracting for financial services with global and strong regional banks, primarily in Western countries by corporate treasuries. In this context, the development and adoption of standardisation in informational linkages can become a crucial component in remote and centralised decision-making by providing a mechanism for re-engaging financial service providers in emerging markets in the execution of financial services with limited intermediation from global or regional banks. Prime broker services, for example, combined with an efficient processing of transactions, can facilitate enhanced international market access for local financial institutions by providing the necessary credit intermediation between multinational corporations and local financial institutions. This paper seeks to show how the corporate treasury of a large multinational corporation, through the use of ICT-enabled transactional process innovations, is developing effective and efficient mechanisms for the management of the credit, concentration, and operational risks involved in contracting with local financial services firms. It also demonstrates how interoperability based on ICT standards is an essential component of such an arrangement if the risks of operating in a volatile and heterogeneous global financial environment are to be mitigated rather than just displaced or obscured. The paper also illustrates how over the past five years, significant progress has been made in constructing the infrastructures and establishing the services that will be needed to enable financial services institutions in emerging markets to benefit from enhanced access to global markets. It further shows how the pro-active engagement of these local financial services firms and their regulators with such arrangements is an indispensable part to any strategy to reversed, or at least mitigate, the current trend of financial services provisions migrating from local institutions to regional and global banks. Such a pro-active engagement should involve a focused seeking-out of new ways to deliver financing, liquidity management, FX and related services to international multinational firms. This, as will be show, entails a high degree of standardisation, automated supporting of transaction services, active contracting with prime broker services and engagement with regulators in order to ensure automation of reporting requirements and rapid authorisation processes for cross-border transactions

Organised detachment: clearinghouse mechanisms in financial markets

Bringing transactions to an end constitutes a crucial stage of market activity: the detachment between the counterparties engaged in a trade must be guaranteed. In financial markets, this operation relies on organisational technologies, such as clearinghouses, that can reach a high degree of sophistication. In this paper, we use financial clearinghouse mechanisms to explore how such detachment technologies are constructed. Based on several historical examples, our review shows that clearinghouse mechanisms developed on the basis of an increasingly IT-enabled organisational separation between the trading and clearing stages of market activity were a crucial factor that enabled clearinghouses to calculate the mutual obligations of the counterparties and perform the consequential steps. Our analysis goes on to reveal a paradoxical thread in the evolution of clearing: increasing informational and calculative capacity have lead clearing mechanisms to breach the separation on which their ability to operate was dependent – the boundary between trading activity and clearing processes. These findings shed a new light on the reflexive nature of IT-enabled market innovations and emphasise their role in re-introducing new forms of disorganisation back into contemporary financial markets

Identification as infrastructure: the challenges of establishing the Legal Entity Identifier data standard for financial markets

[First paragraph] This paper seeks to explore the central concern of the sub-theme to explore the notion of infrastructure as resource and tool in order to rethink organizations and processes of organizing. It does this through the presentation of a research-in-progress study of an initiative to establish a de facto as well as de jure identification infrastructure for financial markets around the development and adoption of a common global digital identifier for market participants to be used in the conclusion and reporting of financial transactions

Developing a Relational View of the Organizing Role of Objects: A study of the innovation process in computer games

Innovation processes create distinctive challenges for coordination. Objects are seen as supporting coordination in such settings by enabling the emergent action needed to deal with a dynamic and uncertain process. Thus, previous work has highlighted the role of different types of objects in coordinating the collaborative tasks undertaken by expert groups, either by motivating the creation of new knowledge or through the translation of understanding. Through an empirical study of innovation processes in the computer games sector, our paper adds to this previous work by finding that the relations between objects, and not the objects alone, help to orchestrate multiple collaborative tasks towards a final outcome within temporal and resource constraints. The relational view which emerges from this study shows how such a ‘system of objects’ is able to stabilize coordination of the process while preserving the emergence and autonomy of games developer practices needed to achieve innovation

From knowing it to "getting it" : envisioning practices in computer games development

The development of information systems and software applications increasingly needs to deliver culturally rich and affective experiences for user groups. In this paper, we explore how the collaborative practices across different expert groups can enable this experiential dimension of use to be integrated into the development of a software product. In an empirical study of computer games development—an arena in which the novelty and richness of the user experience is central to competitive success—we identify the challenges of conceptualizing and realizing a desired user experience when it cannot be readily specified in an initial design template, nor represented within the expertise of existing groups. Our study develops a theoretical framework to address these challenges. Through this framework, we are able to show how achieving a desired user experience requires developer groups to not only work across the boundaries that arise from specialized expertise, but also across wider fields centred on cultural production and software development, respectively. We find that their ability to do this is supported by distinctive “envisioning practices” that sustain an emerging shared “vision” for each game. The key research contributions that we then make are (a) grounding envisioning practices as a means of theorizing the collaborative practices centred on conceptualizing the user experience; (b) identifying how these practices are interwoven with the “producing practices” of software development, thus enabling collaboration to span expert groups and disparate fields; and (c) theorizing the role of vision as an emerging conceptual boundary object in these practices