Masters of the universe but slaves of the market: : bankers and the great financial meltdown

• Autores: Stephen Bell, Andrew Hindmoor
• Localización: The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, ISSN-e 1467-856X, Vol. 17, Nº. 1, 2015, págs. 1-22
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Research Highlights and Abstract �This article focuses on the banking crisis in the US and UK.

    �It is essential to understand banker agency and the institutional and structural contexts which shaped such agency.

    �Bankers experienced variegated patters of constraint and opportunity. At one level institutional theories that emphasise institutional constraint cannot easily account for the authority and agency enjoyed by key bankers.

    �On the other hand, bankers were heavily influenced by institutional change in the shape of market �liberalisation�, which produced intense levels of competition and pressures to achieve higher profit returns: an exacting form of market discipline.

    Bankers and financiers in the US and UK modified institutions and revolutionised the banking industry prior to the 2007-8 crisis. These agents were however heavily constrained and eventually overwhelmed by institutional pressures and wider structural forces that encouraged high-risk leveraged trading and which generated systemic risk. To account for this, institutional theory needs to incorporate a broader canvas of conditioning contexts, particularly the impact of structural or systemic forces on agents and the way in which these are actualised as a form of �ecosystem power�.