Articles
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.
Shame and Stock Market Losses: The Case of Amateur Investors in the US
2012, Pp. 81-98 in Emotions in Finance, Jocelyn Pixley (Ed.), Routledge.
Losing money evokes a host of emotions, most of them painful. In his earliest work, Adam Smith wrote of the “embarrassment” and shame associated with financial losses, with bankruptcy being “the greatest and most humiliating calamity” of all (2010 [1776]: 149). More recently, the financial crisis of 2008 has been defined by shame, guilt, and anger, both at the individual and collective levels (Brasset and Clarke 2012). As United States Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson observed, “we have in many ways humiliated ourselves as a nation” (2008). These emotions may be particularly troubling for Americans, used to regarding their country as among the world’s financial powerhouses, and inclined to view making money as a sign of good character, intelligence, and a host of other positive traits (Weber 2002 [1905]; Franklin 2011 [1748]). Losing it, on the other hand, makes one a fool; and as mid-century essayist Max Lerner put it, “there is no crime in the cynical American calendar more humiliating than to be a sucker” (1949: 300).
The Sociology of Financial Fraud
2012, Pp. 393-410 in The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Finance, Karin Knorr-Cetina and Alex Preda (Eds.), Oxford University Press.
If there is an Urtext for the sociology of fraud, it is surely Herman Melville’s 1857 novel “The Confidence Man . This “parable of the market economy” (Mihm 2007:4) follows the title character over the course of a day (April Fool’s Day, of course) as he plies his trade on a steamboat cruising down the Mississippi River—his trade being the extraction of money from his fellow passengers on pretexts ranging from donations to loans. The confidence man succeeds, Melville writes, not just because of his skill, but because the boat (much like the market as conceived in economic theory) is “always full of strangers, [and] she continually, in some degree, adds to, or replaces them with strangers still more strange” (Melville 1857 [2010]: 8). Amidst this continual turnover of actors, the swindler alone remains a steady presence, and fraud is the sole constant. No wonder then that one sociologist recently called for a reevaluation of “the major significance of the con man in the establishment of society” ( Ogino 2007: 96).
Trust and Estate Planning: The Emergence of a Profession and Its Contribution to Socioeconomic Inequality
2012, Sociological Forum, 27 (4): 825-846.
This article offers a new perspective on the connection between socioeconomic inequality and occupations by examining the impact of trust and estate planners on global wealth stratification. While many studies treat the professions as mirrors of inequalities in their environments, this article looks at the ways professionals participate in the creation of stratification regimes. Trust and estate planners do this by sheltering their clients’ assets from taxation, thereby preserving private wealth for future generations. Using tools such as trusts, offshore banks, and shell corporations, these professionals keep a significant portion of the world’s private wealth beyond the reach of the state. Trust and estate planning thus contributes to creating and maintaining socioeconomic inequality on a global scale. The significance of the profession has grown as wealth itself has become more fungible, spurring innovation in legal, organizational, and financial strategies, and thwarting a myriad of laws and policies designed to limit enduring inequality in modern, democratic societies.
Politics in the Public Sphere: The Power of Tiny Publics in Classical Sociology
2008, Sociologica, 1/2008: 1-20; with Gary Fine.
As Fine and Harrington [2004] have argued, the relationship between individuals and the social systems which they inhabit is shaped within face-to-face groups. Early work by Habermas and others on the development of the public sphere suggests that interactional arenas – salons, taverns, coffee houses, or other small group modalities – create arenas of discourse in which civil society is enacted and made concrete. However, this research has not led – as one might have expected – to the explicit theoretical attention by political sociologists to small groups and their political incarnation as “tiny publics.” In this article, we make the case for a stronger linkage between the two realms of theory, arguing that political sociology requires the conceptual frameworks of social psychology to explain how meaning and action are constituted in civic life.
Can Small Investors Survive Social Security Privatization?
2007, Pp. 308-13 in David Canon, John Coleman and Kenneth Mayer (Eds.), Faultlines: Debating the Issues in American Politics, W.W. Norton.
It has become nearly axiomatic in this country to argue that everything would be better off if it were run like a business. In response, government has shifted its mission: if it used to operate like Super Glue, bonding Americans to one another, it is now working more like WD-40, minimizing friction in the pursuit of individual (and corporate) profit. Social Security is not only the largest government program, but the embodiment of the Super Glue approach to politics: the ultimate test case for privatization.
Where the Action Is: Small Groups and Contemporary Sociological Theory
2006, Small Group Research, 37 (1): 1-16; with Gary Fine.
Although small group research has been somewhat marginalized within sociology during the past decades, the authors argue that a focus on interaction arenas can contribute to a more complete analysis of social life. Specifically the authors examine three central domains of sociological analysis—culture, organizations, and the economy—to demonstrate how a focus on the mesolevel of analysis allows for a merging of macrosociology and microsociology. The authors draw on the perspective of sociological miniaturism to provide a model for cross-level research.