“Remote work is not the same for financial traders — here’s why”
Link: Remote working is not the same for financial traders – here’s why
Trading floors and Covid-19 in The Conversation
“Improving Bank Culture”, published in FS Focus Magazine of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales
“Enforcing norms of prudence and restraint in a manner that is perceived as fair should be done by a manager – not by a model”
Faced with the limits of the financial reforms introduced since 2010, central bankers and regulators have recently turned to bank culture. This is not entirely unexpected, for reforms such as separating proprietary trading from commercial banking were structural. Durable organisational change requires a cultural approach too.
“People watching offers bankers a fresh approach to cultural change”
“In February, a group of bank employees spread out across the London School of Economics’ campus to quietly observe the behaviour of students and academics. They watched them in the park, library and coffee shops as an exercise in ethnography, a practice usually associated with studying the behaviour and customs of remote tribes.
Continue reading ““People watching offers bankers a fresh approach to cultural change””
“Researcher Argues for Preserving Floor Trading”
“Daniel Beunza has spent the last 13 years scrutinizing the arcane language, rites of passage and rituals of an insular tribe imperiled by advances of the modern world. His conclusion: Save the floor traders.”
Read the full article by Bradley Hope on the Wall Street Journal website.
“Can Ethnography Improve the Culture of Finance?”
Whether it is the link between millionaire bonuses and reckless trades or between financial models and gigantic losses, the role of financial culture in wrecking the U.S. economy in 2008 has become widely established. Social scientists have been on the frontlines, researching and making this conclusion plain: see, for instance, Mitchel Abolafia’s studies of bond traders, or anthropologist Karen Ho’s vivid descriptions of Goldman Sachs’s recruitment at Princeton.
Continue reading ““Can Ethnography Improve the Culture of Finance?””
“Habermas in the boardroom? Evidence from shareholder engagement”
Can dialogue be established between civil society and corporations on social and environmental questions such as climate change? Our study of shareholder engagement at Ford and General Motors suggests that dialogue is possible and socially-conscious shareholders might be able to drive positive change in corporations on climate change.
Continue reading ““Habermas in the boardroom? Evidence from shareholder engagement””
“Enter the Economic Sociologists”
“Like out-of-control Godzillas, financial markets have become monsters that eat everything. Why do they do this, and how can they be controlled? Sociologists want to know.
Most analyses of the current economic morass start and end with finance. Maybe it was unruly lending to home borrowers, or maybe it was new financial instruments that we didn’t understand but now must love — just like Dr. Strangelove and the bomb. Many now believe that capitalism has undergone a “Copernican revolution” in which financial markets are now the core of our economic system — giving the boot to the centrality of corporations.