Articles
Between Kinship and Commerce: Fiduciaries and the Institutional Logics of Family Firms
2018, Family Business Review, 31 (4): 417-440; with Vanessa Strike.
In this study we explore how the institutions of kinship and commerce are integrated within family businesses. Previous research shows that family firms’ characteristic synthesis of institutional logics often unravels during intergenerational successions; however, it remains unclear how this process can be arrested, or by whom. Through inductive analysis, we offer a novel insight: outside advisors can act as surrogates for family in this integrative role. Specifically, we identify fiduciaries—professionals with special client obligations—as key actors in preserving family firms’ viability as commercial enterprises and kinship groups. Our findings contribute to theories of family businesses, professions, and institutions.
Habitus and the Labor of Representation Among Elite Professionals
2017, Journal of Professions and Organization, 4: 282-301.
This paper reports findings from an 8-year study of the embodiment, acquisition, and consequences of habitus in the wealth management profession. The study contributes in three ways to the ongoing effort to apply Bourdieu’s theories to contemporary professional service work. First, it sheds light on the agency of individual practitioners in manifesting habitus, including the avoidance of certain behaviors in interactions with clients and peers. Second, it looks in greater depth at the process of acquiring habitus through work experiences, particularly among those who come to the profession without a suitable primary habitus; the findings suggest that having a fragmented habitus can constitute a strategic advantage for some practitioners. Third, the study sheds light on ways habitus affects client service; contrary to the trend in other professions, wealth managers’ ability to enhance clients’ cultural capital is often more highly valued than increasing their economic capital. These novel contributions are offered through analysis of a broadly global dataset, incorporating original interview data with 65 practitioners in 18 countries. This forms the basis for new insights on ‘global habitus’ in trans-national professional work—a topic of current scholarly debate.
Studying Elite Professionals in Transnational Settings
2017, Pp. 39-49 in Professional Networks in Transnational Governance, Leonard Seabrooke and Lasse Folke Henriksen (Eds.), Cambridge University Press.
Reflections on the special challenges of studying professionals when conducting ethnographies of elites.
Fraud and Fantasy: Toward a New Research Agenda for Economic Sociology
2017, Socio-Economic Review, 15 (1): 249-255.
This brief article looks at the role of deception and fraud in capitalism–a neglected issue within economic sociology–and suggests a research agenda to build knowledge in this area.
Social Structure, Power and Financial Fraud
2016, Pp. 340-355 in The Global Financial Crisis: Hidden Factors in the Meltdown, Tassos Malliaris, Leslie Shaw and Hersh Shefrin (Eds.), Oxford University Press.
This paper examines financial fraud as a manifestation of power by elites. The perspective is historical, going back to the 18th century, but the emphasis is on the 2008 global financial crisis and its sources.
Trusts and Financialization
2017, Socio-Economic Review, 15 (1): 31-63.
This article identifies trusts as a legal structure associated with the global spread of financialization. Although trusts originated in Medieval England, they have acquired a new significance in contemporary finance by virtue of their advantages in terms of profit maximization and capital mobility. As a result, trusts have become common in contemporary structured finance for corporations, in addition to their traditional functions as estate planning and asset protection vehicles for high-net-worth individuals. This article specifies three ways in which the trust structure has facilitated the global spread of financialization: by privileging the rentier–investor within the world economy; by perpetuating a distinctively Anglo-American approach to finance internationally; and by increasing the autonomy of finance vis-a-vis the nation-state. This study shares the primarily descriptive and conceptual intent of Krippner’s work on financialization, but extends it in two ways: by comparing trusts to the better-known corporate form of organizing financial activity, and by showing how private capital is implicated in the financialized economy alongside corporate wealth.
Going Global: Professionals & the Microfoundations of Institutional Change
2015, Journal of Professions and Organization, 2 (2): 103-121.
This study links theories of relationality and institutional change to deepen understanding of professionals’ role in globalization. In previous institutional research, it has been conventional to treat professionals as agents of firms or transnational organizations, and institutional change as the result of planned, strategic ‘professional projects’. By bringing a relational analysis to bear on the problem of institutional change, this study reasserts the theoretical significance of individual agency and everyday interactions between professionals and their clients, peers, and organizational environment. It also broadens the model of agency to include invention and improvisation by individual professionals, as a counterpart to collective strategic action. The argument is based on data from a 16-nation study exploring the emergence of a particular ‘globalized localism’: the transformation of the asset-holding trust from a tool of medieval English landowners into a mainstay of contemporary international finance. Drawing on interviews with 61 wealth management professionals in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, this article uses their accounts of the diffusion and deployment of trusts to specify a new, more detailed model of the ways local practices and ideas develop into global institutions
Immersion Ethnography of Elites
2015, Pp. 134-142 in Handbook of Qualitative Organizational Research, Kim Elsbach and Roderick Kramer (Eds.), Routledge.
This chapter considers the practice of “immersion ethnography” in terms of its contributions to knowledge, as well as its demands and its history as a methodology within social science. Four recent books are examined as illustrations of the technique: Mears’ (2011) “Pricing Beauty,” Ho’s (2009) “Liquidated,” Khan’s (2011) “Privilege,” and Zaloom’s (2006) “Out of the Pits.”
The Companies We Keep: From Legitimacy to Reputation in Retail Investment
2014, Socio-Economic Review, 12: 186-195.
Few studies have examined public response to unethical or illegal behavior by firms, despite some research on institutional investors, organized protest groups or shareholder activists. Although a robust research literature shows that corporations invest heavily in impression management the relevant audiences for these messages have generally been construed by scholars as other organizations, obscuring the micro-foundations of market activity. This paper will address the knowledge gap by drawing on evidence from a long-term field study of retail investors. Based on their responses to firms’ misconduct before and after the corporate fraud scandals of the twentieth century, this paper will extend current theoretical models by combining the micro level of analysis with considerations of historical context. The latter is particularly important in explaining how the evaluative standards applied to corporations change over time, from reputation-based assessments to those based on legitimacy.
States and Financial Crises
2013, Pp. 267-282 in Introduction to Political Sociology, Benedikte Brincker (Ed.), Gyldendal Akademisk.
Most states act to protect the “safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people” against the depredations of financial crises in some or all of the following ways: regulation; provision of a safety net to protect individuals and key institutions from being irreparably damaged by crises; and, finally, punishment of those responsible in order to prevent crises in future. All three measures are intended to sustain public trust in financial systems. This is essential because, as former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan put it, “Trust is at the root of any economic system based on mutually beneficial exchange … If a significant number of businesspeople violated the trust upon which our interactions are based, our court system and our economy would be swamped into immobility” (Greenspan, 1999). These claims were borne out by the global financial crisis of 2008, during which trust was so depleted that banks stopped lending to one another and consumer credit became nearly unattainable (Mollenkamp et al., 2008). Since then, evidence has come to light suggesting that governments not only failed to prevent or adequately respond to the financial crisis but were also complicit in its creation (Burns, 2009; Vinocur, 2009; Alderman, 2010; Stiglitz, 2010). This chapter will review the circumstances surrounding that crisis and show that such complicity is consistent with the past 300 years of economic history: since the first known financial crisis occurred in 1720, states have betrayed their core obligation to protect the interests of their citizens. This conflict will be the focus of the chapter.
From Trustees to Wealth Managers
2012, Pp. 190-209 in Inherited Wealth, Justice & Equality, Guido Erreygers and John Cunliffe (Eds.), Routledge.
This chapter will address the question: why did trusteeship become a profession in its own right after centuries as a voluntary undertaking? The question ties into the core themes of this volume because trustees are central actors in the intergenerational transmission of wealth, and, as a result, shape patterns of inequality (Harrington, 2012a). Trustees – now more often known as wealth managers– create and oversee the structures that allow families to remain wealthy over multiple generations.
Scenes from a Power Struggle: The Rise of Retail Investors in the US Stock Market
2012, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 34: 231-258.
This chapter examines the mass movement of Americans into investing during the 1990s as both a consequence and a cause of contested power between corporations and individuals. This movement was part of a larger historical pattern of economically marginalized people consolidating their power through associational strategies in the realm of finance. Using US investment clubs as a case study, the chapter draws on Foucault’s theories to illuminate the bilateral power structure of modern capitalism, in which market institutions and small groups at the grassroots level mutually influence one another. While the investment club movement was in part a response to economic domination by corporate and political elites, it also catalyzed genuine shifts in the power dynamics between individuals and corporations.