Current
research
by
funded
by the Swedish Research Council
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Keywords: financial markets, meaning, morality,
re-enchantment Publications: 2, The Embeddednes of Financial Markets
Keywords:
financial market, embeddedness, technology, networks Publications: 3, Professional
Ethics and Moral Behaviour in Financial Markets
Keywords: Professional ethics, moral behaviour, financial markets, codes of conduct, ethics of virtue This investigation has
three objectives. One aim is to describe professional ethics and discuss the
question if responsible behaviour can evolve from within a sector of
business-life. Self-regulation often means that insiders erect walls
excluding outsiders, thus doing harm to the common good. Secondly, focus will
be put on desirable virtues in financial markets. Is intrinsically immoral
behaviour likely to lead to success? Greed is fundamental to the mentality of
financial markets, and plays an important role for the formation of
incentives to employees in financial markets. Education in economics
reproduces the belief in the justice and efficiency of the invisible hand.
Financial actors justify their actions with help of this abstract rationality
instead of taking much immediate moral responsibility. They tend to disregard
the moral foundation of their business. Thirdly, attention will be put on the
question how employees understand ethical codes. Employees together
training a sense for what is acceptable behaviour are consistent with
theories in ethics of virtue. A virtuous character is the result of enduring
practice. Popular is to take for granted that codes of
conduct improve communality and
the acceptance of a business.
Information
technology facilitates the formation of a global financial identity. By means
of technological development, a global financial market emerges as disembedded from local contexts. The relevance of the
physical setting diminishes. Financial markets can be regarded as virtual communities, where
certain forms of interaction take place, and norms and morality emerge. 5, Technology,
Impersonal Relations and Amorality In
trading rooms, reality is transmitted and fictionalised. Work becomes less real
and instead similar to computer games, thus demanding less empathy. If abstraction
magnifies into a forceful disappearance of reality, does morality disappear?
There will no longer be actual people to feel responsible towards. Always
interacting with digital projections of reality makes us less skilful in
relating to the real. This makes us morally numb in encounters with fellow
man. 6, Regulation in Financial Markets - a Question
of Culture and Morality Keywords: financial markets, responsibility, morality, regulation,
culture Western financial markets
were deregulated during the 1980’s with an early start in the United States already
in the late 1970’s.
As regulations have been abolished, the speed with which financial capital
and ensuing shock-waves transcend national borders has multiplied.
Rhetorically, the market works as a restriction. In order to justify policy,
financial markets are used as a given force demanding alignment. People are
supposed to behave in accordance with market signals. Employees in financial
markets regard themselves as serving the invisible hand. Instead of taking
much immediate responsibility, financial actors justify their actions with
help of this abstract rationality. There is in the working-role little
feeling of responsibility for the common good and the chain of consequences
that actors initiate. Markets can not be
controlled in detail. Financial markets harbour a strong tradition and
culture. Not taking account of cultural aspects while making law is likely to
lead to failure. One aim of this research is to discuss self-regulation, the
question if responsible behaviour can evolve from within. |
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