Abstract
This article explores how Anglo-American financial firms since the 1980s have operated and acted in an increasingly deregulated, risky, and uncertain arena. I look at these firms and their actions with a particular focus on “temporality” and requisite “emotion-rules,” where variations in emotion-rules correspond with organizational definitions of uncertainty. Firms impose specific emotion-rules, depending on national policies, official duties, and interpretations of each risk. In finance, caveat emptor (i.e., buyer or lender distrust) is an emotion-rule set in screening policies and data collection for credit risks and risks of fraud by personnel, and it gives rise to actual emotions. I argue that three time-orientations are significant in creating emotion-rules. If a past, present, or a long-term future is deployed to construct a future, that creates and frames an institution’s attempts to manage uncertainty. Looking exclusively at Anglo-American corporate finance policies and strategies (often deemed the international “one best way”), six modes of certainty constructions are presented. Each is assessed against the dispositions and emotional strategies required in highly-skilled careers, in specific organizational settings. The relative influence of individual perspectives, institutional rules and general typologies of social action is assessed and found to comprise one past view, three present views, and one future-oriented perspective towards the future. Implications are outlined for emotion-rules relevant to financial careers and office.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Flam (2002) gives an overview of the debates on emotion-rules and emotions in corporations and bureaucracies, discussing critically Hochschild’s (1983) presentational, cognitivist concept (emotion “work”). Erving Goffman, of course, saw that emotions were difficult to hide under the required interaction rules (that are really emotion rules). Pixley 2004 shows that emotions do operate to the full in financial firms in Anglo-America (and differently in Europe and Asia).
Weber imputes “inner feelings” to early Protestants, which is avoided in the emotion-rule concept.
Spatial metaphors extol “time” as technically instantaneous in global “space.” The gulf to the future is no space, but rather unfolding time.
Ericson & Doyle 2004: since September 11, insurance obeys the precautionary principle (the US government underwrites unknowable dangers like hurricanes). Cf. widespread fears about banks purposefully becoming “too big to fail.”
Interview subjects are named only with permission and their correction of transcripts, as in Pixley 2004, List of interviews pp ix–xi. Some quotes are “off the record.” Interviews, started in 2000, continue.
In FOMC transcripts, cited Pixley 2004: 109. Central bankers now must be actors to many publics, as the “sub-prime” mortgage crisis of 2007 shows (again), and also their failure to convince the public with the UK Northern Rock run.
FOMC, Federal Open Market Committee of the US Federal Reserve System: Transcription of Meeting 28 September 1998 (accessed 17.06.04) from www.federalreserve.gov/fomc/#calendars, pp 70 and 107.
Pixley 1993 explores how work obligations can be “freely-assumed” or duties will be imposed (e.g., workfare or servile labor). Giddens’ autonomy model is weak in this respect because a rewarding career involves obligations, as Everett Hughes makes plain, as above.
S. Salermo, “Ironic discovery: the downside of being uplifted” Sydney Morning Herald, 18 January, 2006.
John Bogle Statement to US Congress: March 12, 2003 Washington DC. Bogle told me before the New York Attorney-General’s investigations that the non-mutual Mutual Fund system was corrupt.
References
Berezin, M. (2003). Emotions and the economy. CSES working paper series 12. Center for the study of economy and society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
Bittman, M., & Pixley, J. (1997). The double Life of the Family. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Bogle, J. (2003). Statement before the US House of Representatives Sub-Committee of the Committee on Financial Services. 12 March 2003.
du Gay, P., & Pryke, M. (eds). (2002). Cultural economy. London: Sage.
Ericson, R. V., & Doyle, A. (2004). Catastrophe risk, insurance and terrorism. Economy & Society, 33(2), 135–173.
Flam, H. (2002). Corporate emotions. In Emotions and sociology, sociological review monograph. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fligstein, N. (2001). The Architecture of markets. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Frisby, D. (1992). The alienated mind. London: Routledge.
Hochschild, A. (1983). The managed heart. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hughes, E. C. (1937). Institutional office and the person. American Journal of Sociology, 43(3), 404–413.
Jackall, R. (1988). Moral mazes: The world of corporate manager. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kindleberger, C. P. (1989). Manias, panics and crashes: A history of financial crises (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan.
Knorr Cetina, K., & Bruegger, U. (2002). Traders’ engagements with markets: a postsocial relationship. Theory, Culture & Society, 19(5/6), 161–185.
Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Mannheim, K. (1940). Man and society in an age of reconstruction. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Marshall, K. (2005). Only the bright and bold need apply. Australia Financial Review July 11, 2005: 31
Miyazaki, H. (2003). The temporalities of the market. American Anthropologist, 105(2), 255–265.
Paniç, M. (2003). Globalization and national economic welfare. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pixley, J. F. (1993). Citizenship & employment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pixley, J. F. (2004). Emotions in finance: Distrust and uncertainty in global markets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pixley, J. F. (2005). Central Bank syndrome. Australian Financial Review, 3, 9–10.
Rajan, R. G. (2005). Has financial development made the World riskier? Director of research, international monetary fund, article on www.kc.frb.org/PUBLICAT/SYMPOS/2005 downloaded June 11, 2007.
Schlicht, E. (1998). On custom in the economy. Oxford: Clarendon.
Williamson, O. E. (1991). The logic of economic organization. In O. E. Williamson & S. G. Winter (Eds.), The nature of the firm. New York: Oxford University Press.
Zinn, J. (2004). Health, risk and uncertainty in the life course. Social Theory and Health, 2, 199–221.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Craig Browne, Norbert Ebert, Michael Pusey, Denise Thompson, and Jens Zinn, to referees for anonymous comments, and to my FRG Research Grant (UNSW 2007).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This article was written before the full financial crisis unfolded, which the argument here substantially foreshadows.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pixley, J. Time orientations and emotion-rules in finance. Theor Soc 38, 383–400 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-009-9086-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-009-9086-4