“Taking the Floor: Models, Morals and Management in a Wall Street Trading Room”.
The OCE Research center is very pleased to welcome Daniel BEUNZA (prof. at Cass Business School, UK) Thursday, December 17th (15:00-17:00) for an exciting open talk entitled: “Taking the Floor: Models, Morals and Management in a Wall Street Trading Room”.
The presentation will be given on Zoom. I sent you an outlook invitation with the link for the conference. Just in case, please also find it here:
https://em-lyon.zoom.us/j/98975867456
Meeting ID : 989 7586 7456
Note that his presentation will also be the opportunity for a more focused discussion on ethnography, methods and constraints on publication. I think this would be of high interest to many of us J
Please find his abstract & bio below:
Abstract: The limited effectiveness of the financial reforms enacted after the global financial crisis of 2008 in the US and UK have prompted a shift in regulatory attention to the culture and morality of Wall Street banks. However, moral intervention on markets that are mediated by economic models calls for a better understanding of how such models, morals and markets are related. Indeed, sociological studies of morality in markets have focused on discourse and culture at the expense of models, while material studies of models have examined the performative role of formulae at the expense of morality. « Taking the Floor” addresses this gap by examining the case of a Wall Street manager in the late 1990s who sought to address the ethical shortcomings he encountered in his sector by reorganizing his own trading floor. The study revisits that manager and his floor in 2008, following the global financial crisis. Based on my analysis, I propose the concept of model-based moral disengagement to designate the ways in which economic models contribute to systemic risk, and outline an organization of trading that may address such disengagement.
Bio: Daniel Beunza is an Associate Professor of Management at Cass Business School and live in London. He obtained his PhD from New York University, and has previously taught at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, among others. He is Research Associate at the LSE’s Systemic Risk Centre, and collaborates with the UK Banking Standards Board. His research explores the ways in which social relations and technology shape financial value. His award-winning study of a derivatives trading room on a Wall Street bank traces the roots of extraordinary returns to the use of space and internal organization. His research has been published in Organization Science, Organization Studies and Economy and Society. For more on his academic work, see his page at Google Scholar.