What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Normal accidents. Living with high-risk technologies

https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3130669.pdf

Material markets: how economic agents are constructed

This article contributes to a pragmatist analysis of pricing and valuation through an account of the production of closing prices at the Paris Bourse. The Paris Bourse is an electronic stock exchange and the actors in charge of its technological configuration often need to face concerns about the quality of the prices that the configuration produces. Closing prices are particularly important because they constitute references that circulate widely. The author analyses how a problem of representativeness of closing prices was raised in the late 1990s and how several techniques aimed at solving it. In order to deal with this problem of representativeness, the author proposes the consideration of prices as signs in a pragmatist manner. Adapting Charles S. Peirce's theory of the sign to the study of prices, the author concentrates attention on the material display of prices, on their capacity to stand as traces of some event, and on the way they may suit a set of calculative conventions.

Market technologies and the pragmatics of prices

A common theme in social science studies of algorithms is that they are profoundly opaque and function as “black boxes.” Scholars have developed several methodological approaches in order to address algorithmic opacity. Here I argue that we can explicitly enroll algorithms in ethnographic research, which can shed light on unexpected aspects of algorithmic systems—including their opacity. I delineate three meso-level strategies for algorithmic ethnography. The first, algorithmic refraction, examines the reconfigurations that take place when computational software, people, and institutions interact. The second strategy, algorithmic comparison, relies on a similarity-and-difference approach to identify the instruments’ unique features. The third strategy, algorithmic triangulation, enrolls algorithms to help gather rich qualitative data. I conclude by discussing the implications of this toolkit for the study of algorithms and future of ethnographic fieldwork.

The ethnographer and the algorithm: beyond the black box

In this article, we make sense of financial algorithms as new objects of concern for organizational ethnography. We conceive of algorithms as ‘objects of ignorance’ jeopardizing traditional ethnogr...

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On Studying Algorithms Ethnographically: Making Sense of Objects of Ignorance

Using a variety of theoretical frameworks drawn from the social sciences, the contributions in this edited collection offer a critical perspective on the dominant paradigms used in contemporary financial activities. Through a detailed study of the organisation and functioning of financial intermediaries and institutions, the contributors to this volume analyse ‘finance in the making’, by shedding light on the structuring of banking and financial systems, on their capacity to prescribe action and control, on their modes of regulation and, more generally, on the process of financialisation. Contributions presented in this volume have been written by authors working within the ‘social studies of finance’ tradition, a research programme that emerged twenty years ago, with the aim of addressing a diversity of financial fieldworks and related theoretical questions. This book, therefore, sheds light on different areas that are representative of contemporary financial realities. Specifically, it first studies the work of financial employees: traders, salespeople, investment managers, financial analysts, investment consultants, etc. but also provides an analysis of a range of financial instruments: financial schemes and contracts, financial derivatives, socially responsible investment funds, as well as market rules and regulations. Finally, it puts into perspective the organisations contributing to this financial reality: those developing and selling financial services (retail banks, brokerage houses, asset management firms, private equity firms, etc.), and also those contributing to the regulation of such activities (banking regulators, financial market authorities, credit rating agencies, the State, to name a few).
Each text can be read without any specific knowledge of finance; the book is thus addressed to anyone willing to better understand the intricacies of contemporary financial realities.

The Making of Finance : Perspectives from the Social Sciences

Digital technologies are often described as posing unique challenges for public regulators worldwide. Their fast-pace and technical nature are viewed as being incompatible with the relatively slow and territorially bounded public regulatory processes. In this paper, we argue that not all digital technologies pose the same challenges for public regulators. We more precisely maintain that the digital technologies' label can be quite misleading as it actually represents a wide variety of technical artifacts. Based on two dimensions, the level of centralization and (im)material nature, we provide a typology of digital technologies that importantly highlights how different technical artifacts affect differently local, national, regional and global distributions of power. While some empower transnational businesses, others can notably reinforce states' power. By emphasizing this, our typology contributes to ongoing discussions about the global regulation of a digital economy and helps us identify the various challenges that it might present for public regulators globally. At the same time, it allows us to reinforce previous claims that these are importantly, not all new and that they often require us to solve traditional cooperation problems.

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Global Regulations for a Digital Economy: Between New and Old Challenges

Cet article propose une etude des evolutions subies par la fonction deontologie au sein des etablissements de credit et des entreprises d’investissement entre 2003 et 2006. Partant d’une approche qualitative associant observation-participante et analyse de donnees secondaires, nous mettons en evidence la coexistence de deux conceptions du controle interne : l’une trouvant ses racines dans la deontologie financiere (intervenant ex ante), l’autre dans le controle effectue a posteriori (intervenant ex post). Sur le plan theorique, l’analyse se fonde sur les travaux consacres par Paul Ricœur a l’articulation des notions d’ethique et de morale, et entend contribuer a la litterature en controle interne dans le secteur bancaire et financier. Nous montrons ainsi comment l’introduction de la notion de risque de non-conformite dans les textes reglementaires en 2005 a modifie la fonction deontologie. Cette analyse permet enfin de mettre en perspective les consequences de cette evolution, qui consacre la conformation demonstrative a la norme aux depens de la capacite a reconnaitre en pratique dans les normes une pretention legitime a regler les conduites.

The Rise and Fall of the Compliance Function. A Perspective on Internal Control in Banking and Finance

This article puts into perspective the practice of financial regulation in contemporary financial markets, while a new normative order has emerged. This order, heralded by algorithmic technologies, changes the conditions for the exercise of regulation: to date, it has not yet been fully acknowledged nor understood by regulatory bodies. Computer code, replacing speech and writing, induces a changeover from one normative order to another in contemporary markets: the norm, previously explicated with recourse to interpretation, is now replaced by an order characterized by calculation. Such paradigm change is identified based on a discussion of works by Gilles Deleuze. In so doing, it contributes to the developing research programme in the cultures of high-frequency trading (Lange et al. 2016) and also points at broader issues for conceptualising financial regulation.

Marc Lenglet

Papers

On Studying Algorithms Ethnographically: Making Sense of Objects of Ignorance

The Making of Finance : Perspectives from the Social Sciences

Global Regulations for a Digital Economy: Between New and Old Challenges

The Rise and Fall of the Compliance Function. A Perspective on Internal Control in Banking and Finance

Algorithmic Finance, Its Regulation, and Deleuzean Jurisprudence: A Few Remarks on a Necessary Paradigm Shift