Rogue Logics: Organization in the Grey Zone

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of the 'rogue' through an examination of how the figure appears in business ethics and as the rogue trader. Reading the rogue trader through institutional logics and Jacques Derrida's book Rogues, we suggest that the rogue is not on the dark side of organization so much as in an indeterminate grey zone, where the boundary between acceptable behaviour and misconduct is unclear. We further argue that this boundary is necessarily unclear as it is in the nature of organization, at least within

Safety Culture in Financial Trading: An Analysis of Trading Misconduct Investigations

“…In particular, safety culture appears relevant to financial trading because similar factors as those found to underlie mishaps in safety critical domains (e.g. reward structures, poorly designed Systems, skill deficits, unclear boundaries of acceptable behaviour) have been identified as important in cases of financial mismanagement and rogue trading (Land et al 2014;Sims and Brinkmann 2003). Yet, in financial trading, no coherent framework exists for describing how organisational culture influences risky and unethical behaviours (Power et al 2013;Ring et al 2016).…”

Augustus Melmotte in Anthony Trollope'sThe Way We Live Now:characterizing the swindler as an important cultural and organizational figure

“…In that spirit, the current article aims for a critical, reflexive engagement between the academic, the novelist and the characters embedded in a fictional text to draw alternative insights about culture, capitalism, and organizational dynamics. It aims to do so through a consideration of the fictional and real-world organizational character of the swindler, and how their attempts to secure organizational legitimacy, often successful, might shed a more nuanced light on the ethics and institutional settings surrounding their actions (Land et al 2014;Michaelson 2005).…”

“…Furthermore, organizational characterizations, such as incoming chief executives or star financial traders and entrepreneurs, may be dynamically reconstructed as they are made sense of across time. Heroes may become villains, saviors become scapegoats, along with many other indeterminate, flickering shades of grey (Land et al 2014;Stein 2000). In fiction, changing understandings and competing constructions of focal characters and groups can be integral to a sense of drama and conflict (Gabriel 2000;Harper 2004).…”

“…To resist calling an organizational and/or fictional wrongdoer a villain or evil is of course not to paint them as a passive victim free of any responsibility for their actions -they may still be responsible for considerable wickedness (Midgley 2003). However, refraining from a onedimensional characterization of an organizational actor can allow us to deconstruct a wider set of ethical and institutional roles, motives and dynamics (Land et al 2014;Michaelson 2005).…”

“…In conjunction with a supporting cast of fictional characters, Melmotte carries out a distinctive type of institutional work related to seducing and duping societal and organizational elites. Finally, the narrative arc followed by the Melmotte swindler character reveals the shifting legitimacy of the 'dark side' or 'grey zones' of ambitious, risky and transgressive organizational activities and organizing (Land et al 2014;Linstead et al 2014;Vaughan 1999). The historical aspects of Victorian culture experienced by Trollope and featured 5 in literary form in TWWLN can thus be connected to the ongoing cultural importance of swindlers, past and present, and their role in shaping trajectories of twenty-first century capitalism.…”