Abstract
How did large, multinational financial institutions fail? Why are governments continuing to bail out floundering corporations—what if we just let them fail? How is it that trusted money market managers lost retirement savings for hard-working citizens? Such questions continue to be debated even today among friends, family, and colleagues in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. These discussions also often lead into moralizing and patronizing accusations of ethical deterioration and imperialistic tendency levied indiscriminately against executives, corporations, and/or nations. When crisis erupts, no matter how many times we’ve been down this road and heard this story, we seek to make sense of the how, the why, the what. It is part of human nature to organize and process how the world works and our place as humans within it. We struggle for some meaning that will help make sense of the pain and struggle experienced. So, how do we make sense of the global financial crisis? Too often the story paints a portrait of a singular antagonist. But, as Nietzsche (1999) so aptly noted in The Birth of Tragedy, ‘the magic of these struggles is such, that he [sic] who sees them must also take part in them!’
The authors of the five books for this book review offer compelling ideas, data, and claims regarding the causes of the financial crisis. Yet, in attempting to fix explanatory variables, the simplified message for most of these texts comes down to blame. Corporate financial institutions tend to blame government policy intervention (Allison, 2013). Marxists blame capitalism (Foster and McChesney, 2012; Harman, 2009). Critical/cultural researchers blame tenets of neoliberalism (Castells et al., 2012; Milne, 2012) and, in the case of Milne, the concomitant capitalist-inspired imperialism of Western nations. But, most importantly (and, perhaps intuitively), we know that the Great Recession was not the singular result of independent financial rationalities railroading the economy (Allon and Redden, 2012). Perhaps it is time to accept that we are all to blame—each and every individual one of us. From citizen to consumer, from unemployed to golden parachutist, from country to country—if you purchase products and consume services, then your existence matters to this story because you are participating in a complex web of global transactions at some level. Regardless of whether or not we have credit card debt, home loans, or student loans, regardless of whether or not we play the stock market game, and regardless of whether or not we voted for such and such a politician, we are part and parcel of the current financial and economic milieu.
Is it even possible to fully understand the precursors and causes and relationships leading up to the housing crash and resulting aftermath within the financial markets? Exactly how much of the crisis can we attribute to an ideology of neoliberalism, or a corporate-inspired, economically driven alienation from human essence and ecological connectivity? As all of these dynamics are deeply interconnected, how can we sift through the networks of relationships, financial exchanges, cultural norms, and political aspirations that bridge together what it is we think we know about the current economic market and ‘aftermath’ of continued financial crashes characteristic of capitalism since the industrial revolution? As Bryan et al. (2012) remark, ‘knowledge limits, breakdown and failure are generally not theorized’ (p. 306).
As organizational scholars and practitioners (and, as humans more broadly), there is hardly ever an occasion in which we are offered incentive to mark the limits of our knowledge. But, if the world reflects a capacity for political, social, and discursive relations (power) and all that we think we know about the world through these constructions (knowledge), then following a Nietzschean/Foucauldian genealogy of morals, there would be no final truth that is not articulated from a web of strategically and politically determined relations. The implication of this perspective is that it then becomes increasingly difficult to cast blame. In Foucault’s (1994) critique of enlightenment, he argues that looking to others becomes an escape from the present moment. Therefore, if we are looking to understand the essence of this financial/economic crisis, then a critical ontology ‘must be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it must be conceived as an attitude, an ethos’ (Foucault, 1994: 319). Three tools can contribute to a reformulated Kantian attitude of enlightenment: an attitude of modernity, adopting a limit-attitude, and adopting an experimental attitude (pp. 309–316). Through methodological, theoretical, and practical coherence of inquiry (p. 319), these tools facilitate challenges to dominant discourses through an epistemological ethos characterized by actions and agency, rather than passivity and blame.
An attitude of modernity
An attitude of modernity is a ‘mode of relating to contemporary reality […] a voluntary choice’ (Foucault, 1994: 309). In this type of ethos, the value of the present moment is not undermined by attempts to reify the dominant narrative of the past or to divert attention with the potential of a transcendental future. It is recognition of our own active participation and belonging within the intricate webs of relations—including, in this particular case, the financial/economic crisis. These relations are taken up in Castells et al.’s (2012) compilation of essays. Although each author brings a different lens to understanding the crisis and ‘aftermath’ of the Great Recession, the overall effect is a greater appreciation for the complexities of the current situation and the interdependencies of relations. More specifically, the authors touch upon the economic, governmental, and financial variables influencing the crisis, but emphasize the intricacies of cultural and social relations. In making an argument for the discursively constructed nature of financial economies, the authors mark the contingent and fragile relationships that constitute these very markets and economies—thus leaving open the hope for more democratic collaboration to resolve both the crisis and resulting aftermath.
The edited book paints a portrait of the global financial crisis that is multidimensional. For example, Conill, Castells, Cardenas, and Servon explore alternative social networks and economic practices in Catalonia. Through focus group debates, observations, documentary filming, interviews, and surveys, the authors illustrate the existence of everyday attitudes and activities that are intended to ‘construct a different future out of the dynamic of a succession of meaningful presents’ (p. 226). The result is a contextualized rupture in time and space that indicates an alternative field of possibilities for thinking about banking, housing, production, consumption, and work. Importantly, the authors note that these spheres of alternative practices and relations existed and operated within Catalonia prior to the 2008 crisis—thus negating a linear, causal relationship with the economic crash.
Himanen identifies an interesting thematic root of the crisis: ‘systematic debt-taking’ (p. 159). This concept morphs into various forms (e.g. economic debt, social debt, and ecological debt). Debt-taking also has time and space implications that can open up avenues of further research for organizational scholars—at the individual, organizational, occupational, and/or institutional level. Some of the solutions to ‘systematic debt-taking’ (pp. 159–61) include creating conditions for growth, funding public investments, and creating new identities (although this claim would benefit from further explication). What ecological debt is taken as corporations expand operations? What transactions of social debt operate in the crafting of professional identities? Who makes decisions regarding economic debt and how are those strategic relations impacted by time, space, and context? What institutional logics engender debt-taking?
In a discussion of corporate branding, Banet-Weiser makes the claim that the rhetoric of American branding contributes to a Foucauldian mandate to care for the self, as a neoliberal, entrepreneurial subject (p. 108). The use of cultural contradictions in corporate advertising, it is argued, is ‘part of the brand’ (p. 125). For me, this suggests that corporations have become floating signifiers—capable of agilely picking up and mobilizing affective registers based on political, historical, and popular culture triggers. In many contemporary corporations, branding is the lifeblood and dominant decision-making motor through which all other corporate operational decisions are filtered. As such, it is not surprising to find the corporations of Banet-Weiser’s analysis mobilizing financial crisis discourse strategically in order to encourage consumerism. An extension of branding analysis might consider the ways in which the securitization of debt has been rebranded as a monetary asset. In what ways has this rebranding shaped a new consumer product line and reshaped the meaning of money?
Adopting a limit-attitude
Adopting a limit-attitude involves questioning the conditions of possibility and the relations (political, social, discursive) influencing what we think we know and how we know it. It includes challenging the taken-for-granted assumptions about how things work. Foucault (1994) explains that criticism is no longer going to be practiced in the search for formal structures with universal value but, rather, as a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying. (p. 315)
For Harman (2009) and Foster and McChesney (2012), the financial crisis is best understood as a historical marker of the detrimental effects of capitalism’s contradictions and attendant neoliberal ideology, which, for Foster and McChesney, serves as the ‘political-policy counterpart to monopoly-finance capital’ (p. 44).
Both texts offer reader-friendly explications of foundational Marxist principles—Harman (2009) even includes a glossary of key terms. Harman is explicit that the cause of our current economic crisis is the way in which ‘value expresses itself in prices’ (p. 61). The cause is not crony capitalists or government interference. This is key because capitalism is based upon the ‘self-expansion of the values embodied in capital’ (p. 75). From an organizational studies perspective, it is interesting to note the tension identified here between the manifestation of ideology into material forms of capital, while experiencing a ‘de-materialization’ (Castells et al., 2012, p. 47) in which managerial/corporate decision making, securitization product innovation, and computerized programming obscure the essence and materiality of capitalist enterprise.
A crucial claim to Harman’s argument is that the state is not separate from capital. ‘Capitalists have always tried to boost their competitive positions by establishing alliances with each other and with ambitious political figures—alliances cemented by money but also by intermarriage, old boy networks and mutual socializing’ (Harman, 2009: 109). He also argues that public investment has become the site of struggle in a way not seen before. A prime example of this is Allison’s (2013) suggestion that liberal arts programs are unproductive and public university expenditure should be tied to productive and technical training for the benefit of the economy.
Foster and McChesney (2012) argue corporations have become ‘financialized entities’ (p. 20) that spend money on speculative financial investments rather than on fixed productive expansion—an exemplar of our ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman, 2000). The authors offer an interpretation of the historical emergence of capitalism from mercantilism to competitive capitalism to monopoly/corporate capitalism. This leads to their claim that the past three decades have not actually been about economic competition—it has been about economic concentration. The authors identify four trends that mimic competition, but are monopolistic in tendency: economic stagnation, growth of multinational corporations, financialization, and technology innovation (p. 72). Accumulation increases the overall economic output of goods and services, whereas the appreciation of financial assets (Sweezy’s financialization of accumulation) increases perceived wealth, but does not increase actual output (p. 49). Although Foster and McChesney’s analysis describes limits of the liquid, financialized corporation, are there productive possibilities afforded by such a franchissement (Foucault, 1994: 315)?
Adopting an experimental attitude
Foucault (1994) encourages us to ‘turn away from all projects that claim to be global or radical’ (p. 316). In doing so, an ethos of enlightenment radically contextualizes the self within historical critiques and puts ‘itself to the test of reality’ (p. 316) in such a way as to bridge that long-standing tension between theory and praxis. Milne’s (2012) organized collection of columns previously written for the Guardian attempt to capture and test the limits of dominant narratives characterizing the global political, economic, and social landscape during the first decade of the 21st century. His text brings to light localized, subjugated knowledge, which serves to counter the taken-for-granted truths of various events.
Milne (2012) examines the political, social, and popular culture forces behind international crises dating from the events of 11 September. For Milne, the cause of these events stems from the West’s ‘political and corporate elites’ who insist ‘that only the elixir of deregulated markets, privatization, free trade and low taxes on the wealthy—the catechism of the Washington Consensus—could now deliver growth and prosperity’ (p. xiii). His writings suggest that is it not surprising that such imperialism, human degradation, and economic disparity go unchecked, given the US and UK political policy and capitalist expansion. Through his critiques of major world events from 1997 through 2012, Milne presents themes of corporate power, neoliberal ideology, and social uprisings to radically contextualize historical events within a particular (and historically consistent) regime of power/knowledge. As Milne’s participation as a cultural critic is woven into the story, readers are given a reflexive and timely (if not depressing) analysis for making sense of where we are today.
Allison (2013), however, misses an opportunity to reflect more critically upon his own participation within the webs of power/knowledge in his insider tell-all book as former BB&T CEO. While quick to point out the ways in which government policy intervention adversely impacted financial services institutions operating processes and policies, he is reluctant to address the role of BB&T as a leading institution within the industry. Acharya and Richardson (2009) have pointed out the various methods through which banks ‘evaded regulatory capital requirements’ (p. 195), yet allison (2013) focuses only on such practices within those institutions that collapsed. For Allison (2013), the root of the financial crisis stems from government intervention and, to an extent, elite universities. From his perspective, the government owns the monetary system, and therefore, the buck stops there (i.e. only the sovereign head is accountable for its failures). While Harman (2009) and Foster and McChesney (2012) operate under the assumption of monopolistic capitalism, Allison claims pure capitalism is possible without government intervention.
In an experimental attitude that recognizes one’s own positioning within a particular epochal field of power/knowledge, more analysis is needed to explore the ways in which BB&T performs as a regime of power/knowledge in the financial services industry in order to form a more holistic account. That is to say, as a key industry player, what responsibility can BB&T take for the ways in which they participated in, perpetuated, and challenged the financial crisis milieu beyond their role as a state-disciplined subjectivity, as Allison claims, without agency? As BB&T entered into new regional markets, what competitive possibilities existed for incumbents within extant governmental regulations, which may have contributed to speculative practices/product offerings?
Concluding remarks
Bryan et al. (2012) argue that academics need to resist the impulse to stay out of global financial crisis discussions due to established research programs/identities and encourage us to forge interdisciplinary inroads. With titles ranging from Zombie Capitalism to the Revenge of History to the Endless Crisis, it is no wonder scholars outside of economics are reluctant to touch these issues with a 10-foot pole. As such, the knowledge being generated and circulated, as Bryan et al. argue, remains within a particular framework, with particular storylines. What, then, could an organizational studies perspective offer to the discussion? The hope is that organizational scholars see this book review as an invitation to engage more actively with this established problematic.
In organizing and assigning meaning to the suffering caused to people, financial markets, and institutional evolution, there is a tendency to frame the object of analysis in comparison to an ambiguous ascetic ideal. If this is what/who is to blame for the financial crisis, then what is the ideal that should have been exemplified? In Nietzsche’s (1969) work on the genealogy of morals, he claims the ascetic ideal is always juxtaposed to the belief ‘that something was lacking, that man was surrounded by a fearful void—he did not know how to justify, to account for, to affirm himself; he suffered from the problem of his meaning’ (p. 162, emphasis in original). The ascetic ideal gives meaning and fills that void with a false sense of security, but it also brings with it ‘fresh suffering’ (p. 162), as it perpetuates guilt and pain from events of the past by sedimenting particular knowledges and behaviors.
Rather than grounding organizational analysis in a perceived wrongdoing, lack, or void, perhaps it is time to accept that the past is gone. There is nothing but the present moment. I would suggest that an ethos of enlightenment also would emphasize the present moment as we wish to see it in the future. What you water today will grow. As such, in thinking about the global financial and economic crisis, organizational studies—as an interdisciplinary discipline (with our fruitful relationships across management studies, communication studies, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, gender studies, and others)—are well positioned to showcase the ‘power’ of existing alternative organizing practices and discourses. We see stories of love on organizational outcomes and industry operations (Barsade and O’Neill, in press). We see stories exploring new forms of social capital and more diverse conceptualizations of economic frameworks (Gibson-Graham, n.d.). By challenging extant definitions, heuristics, and other ‘truths’ of the crisis story, we identify taken-for-granted conflations between articulations of ‘economy’ and ‘capitalism’ and challenge the normative subsumption of heterodox economic theory within a homogenous domain of neoclassical economics (Grossberg, 2010). We also find a different set of stories when examining the cultural ‘purchase’ given to money and the constitutive, yet varied, dynamics of interpersonal intimacy in social exchange (Zelizer, 2000). An ethos of enlightenment is not simply a critique of the past or a hope for a ‘better’ world, but a recapturing of the present moment, as active, engaged inquirers committed to exploring the limits of what we do not know, situated from within. Continued questioning, searches for alternative perspectives, and transparency in knowledge claims will assist in excavating the field of possibilities shaping what we think we know about the financial crisis.