This book challenges amoral views of finance as the leading realm in which mammon – wealth and profit – is pursued with little overt regard for morality. The author details an enhanced ethical emphasis by leading Anglo–American professionals in the aftermath of the 2007–8 global financial crisis. Instead of merely stressing expert knowledge, professionals sought to overcome the alleged impossibility of serving “two masters” – mammon and God – by embracing religious finance, socio-economic inequality, sustainability and other overtly moral issues. Continuities in liberal values and ideas, however, limited the impact of this enhanced ethical emphasis to restoring the professional authority, as well as to more fundamentally reforming of Anglo–American finance following the most severe period of instability since the Great Depression. Providing a nuanced account of post-crisis change and continuity in a crucially important industry, Campbell-Verduyn advances a dynamic, process-based understanding of authority that will appeal to international political economists and sociologists alike.

Economists' role in society has always been an uneasy one, and in recent years the ethicality of the profession and its practitioners has been questioned more than ever. This collection of essays is the first to investigate the multifaceted nature of what forms economists' ethical and economic views. Bringing together work from international contributors, The Ethical Formation of Economists explores the ways in which economists are influenced in their training and career, examining how this can explain their individual ethical stances as economists. The book suggests that if we can better understand what is making economists think and act as they do, considering ethicality in the process, we might all be better placed to implement changes. The intent is not to exonerate economists from personal responsibility, but to highlight how considering the circumstances that have helped shape economists' views can help to address issues. It is argued that it is important to understand these influences, as without such insights, the demonization of economists is too easily adapted as a stance by society as well as too easily dismissed by economists. This book will be of great interest to those studying and researching in the fields of economics, ethics, philosophy and sociology. It also seeks to bring an ethical debate within and about economics and to cause change in the practical reasoning of economists.

Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009 several hundred different ‘cryptocurrencies’ have been developed and become accepted for a wide variety of transactions in leading online commercial marketplaces and the ‘sharing economy’, as well as by more traditional retailers, manufacturers, and even by charities and political parties. Bitcoin and its competitors have also garnered attention for their wildly fluctuating values as well as implication in international money laundering, Ponzi schemes and online trade in illicit goods and services across borders. These and other controversies surrounding cryptocurrencies have induced varying governance responses by central banks, government ministries, international organizations, and industry regulators worldwide. Besides formal attempts to ban Bitcoin, there have been multifaceted efforts to incorporate elements of blockchains, the peer-to-peer technology underlying cryptocurrencies, in the wider exchange, recording, and broadcasting of digital transactions. Blockchains are being mobilized to support and extend an array of governance activities. The novelty and breadth of growing blockchain-based activities have fuelled both utopian promises and dystopian fears regarding applications of the emergent technology to Bitcoin and beyond. This volume brings scholars of anthropology, economics, Science and Technology Studies, and sociology together with GPE scholars in assessing the actual implications posed by Bitcoin and blockchains for contemporary global governance. Its interdisciplinary contributions provide academics, policymakers, industry practitioners and the general public with more nuanced understandings of technological change in the changing character of governance within and across the borders of nation-states.

In the last several decades, there has been a surge of interest in expertise in the social scientific, philosophical, and legal literatures. While it is tempting to attribute this surge of interest in expertise to the emergence and consolidation of a "knowledge society," "post-industrial society," or "network society," it is more likely that the debates about expertise are symptomatic of significant change and upheaval. As the number of contenders for expert status has increased, as the bases for their claims have become more diverse, and as the struggles between these would-be experts intensified, expertise became problematic and contested. In The Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democratic Politics, Gil Eyal and Thomas Medvetz have brought together a broad group of scholars who have engaged substantively and theoretically with debates regarding the nature of expertise and the social roles of experts to examine these areas within sociology and allied disciplines. The analyses take an historical and relational approach to the topic and are motivated by the sense that growing mistrust in experts represents a danger to democratic politics today. The chapters will be organized into three general parts: key theoretical and historical debates, the politics of expertise, and expertise within and across professional, disciplinary, legal, and intellectual spheres. Among the topics considered here are the value and relevance of the boundary between experts and laypeople; the causes and consequences of mistrust in experts; the meanings and social uses of objectivity; and the significance of recent transformations in the organization of the professions. Bringing together investigations from social scientists, philosophers, and legal scholars into the political dimensions of expertise, this Handbook connects interdisciplinary work done in science and technology studies with the more classic concerns, topics, and concepts of sociologists of professions and intellectuals.

This book responds to a gap in the literature in International Relations (IR) by integrating technology more systematically into analyses of global politics. Technology facilitates, accelerates, automates, and exercises capabilities that are greater than human abilities. And yet, within IR, the role of technology often remains under-studied. Building on insights from science and technology studies (STS), assemblage theory and new materialism, this volume asks how international politics are made possible, knowable, and durable by and through technology. The contributors provide empirically rich and pertinent accounts of a variety of technologies relevant to the discipline, including drones, algorithms, satellite imagery, border management databases, and blockchains. Problematizing various technologically mediated issues, such as secrecy, violence, and questions of how authority and evidence become constituted in international contexts, this book will be of interest to scholars in IR, in particular those who work in the subfields of (critical) security studies, International Political Economy, and Global Governance.

This Palgrave Pivot aims to examine the bourgeoning relationship between the Principles for Responsible Investment and the Credit Rating Industry. Since May of 2016, when the partnership was initially publicised, the PRI have endeavoured to incorporate Credit Rating Agencies into its initiative via its ‘ESG in Credit Ratings Initiative’, and have been working diligently to find, and create common ground between Credit Rating Agencies and Institutional Investors seeking to be more forward-looking in their investment approaches. However, in recent years the ‘Big Two’ Credit Rating Agencies – Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s – have finally received record fines for their conduct in the run-up to the Financial Crisis. There is a need, then, to examine the incorporation of the Credit Rating Agencies into such a progressive initiative. To achieve this objective, this book examines the field of ‘responsible investing’, the credit rating industry, and the power dynamic that exists between the rating industry, investors, and the PRI (via its ‘Initiative’).

In The Global Financial Crisis, contributors argue that the complexity of the Global Financial Crisis challenges researchers to offer more comprehensive explanations by extending the scope and range of their traditional investigations. To achieve this, the volume views the financial crisis simultaneously through three different lenses---economic, psychological, and social values. Contributors offer a constructive methodology suitable for exploring financial crises. They recognize how current economic analysis did not prepare academic economists, business economists, traders, and regulators to anticipate economic and financial crises. So, they search more extensively within the broader discipline of economics for ideas related to crises but neglected perhaps because they were not mathematically rigorous. They affirm that the complexity of financial crises necessitates complementary research. Thus, to put the focal purpose of this book differently, they explore the Global Financial Crisis from three interconnected frameworks: the standards of orthodox economic analysis, Minskyan economics, and the role of ideas and values in economics. Values are the subject of both philosophy and psychology and can contribute to a better understanding of the Global Financial Crisis. Values, in general, have been relatively neglected by economists. This is not because there is doubt about their significance, but rather because welfare economics and collective choice still operate within the neoclassical paradigm. This volume argues that analyzing the value implications requires moving from the neoclassical framework to something that is broader and multidisciplinary.

The public relations profession positions itself as expert in building trust throughout global markets, particularly after crisis strikes. Successive crises have tainted financial markets in recent years. Calls to restore trust in finance have been particularly pressing, given trust’s crucial role as lubricant in global financial engines. Nonetheless, years after the global financial crisis, trust in financial markets remains both tenuous and controversial. This book explores PR in financial markets, posing a fundamental question about PR professionals as would-be ‘trust strategists’. If PR promotes its expertise in building and restoring trust, how can it ignore its potential role in losing trust in the first place? Drawing on examples from state finance, international lending agencies, trade bodies, financial institutions and consumer groups in mature and emerging financial centres, this book explores the wide-ranging role of PR in financial markets, including: State finance and debt capital markets Investor relations, M&A and IPOs Corporate communications for financial institutions Product promotion and consumer finance Financial trade associations and lobbying Consumerism and financial activism. Far reaching and challenging, this innovative book will be essential reading for researchers, advanced students and professionals in PR, communication and finance.

Professional organizations—such as accounting and consulting firms, law firms, and investment banks—are fundamental to the functioning of the global economy. Yet many of the most powerful are notoriously private. This book uncovers the complex, messy, and surprisingly emotional challenges of leading professional organizations—revealing the realities that lies beneath the 'professional' surface which these organizations present to the outside world. Individual professionals—highly educated, highly intelligent, and highly opinionated—are generally reluctant to see themselves as followers and may be equally reluctant to put themselves forward as leaders. They value their autonomy and confer authority on their leaders on a highly contingent basis. How does a professional come to be seen as a leader within a professional organization? How do leaders maintain their position once they have reached the top of their organization? How do they navigate the complex power relationships among their professional colleagues and actually get things done? Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas analyses the complex power dynamics and interpersonal politics that lie at the heart of leadership in professional organizations. It is based on Laura Empson's scholarly research into the world's leading professional organizations across a range of sectors, including interviews with over 500 senior professionals in 16 countries. It draws on the latest organizational and leadership theory to analyse in detail exactly how professionals come together to create 'leadership'. It identifies how change happens within professional organizations and explains why their leaders so often fail.

The Global Financial Crisis is acknowledged to be the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s, and one that is unique in its underlying causes, its scope, and its wider social, political and economic implications. This volume explores some of the ethical issues that it has raised.