so we're here today with complete wrong with the research fellow the psychoanalysis unit of

the university college london and also one of our new strategies for a fascinating project

but the title of managing uncertainty in post now china and anthropology of financial iteration

welcome to really

thank you

now one of the things that most adjusted reviewing your proposal and why things at

most fascinating by this is your definition of initialisation okay where everyone else when they

talk about financial station they tend to say things like a with the size of

the finance industry more the ratio of debt to g d or something like that

use a financial station

is the spread of financial principles to non financial entities that you're focusing on the

changing conceptual social reality and cultures the way finances changing our understanding of who we

are i suppose that what i relations with each other are

this is completely new definition i think to me but is a common your anthropologist

or

yes i am apologist

well it even in anthropology and the sociology of fine arts

that's been relatively on the research so we have literature with those of the for

initialization of daily life in other words outside of the corpus for but in terms

of looking at how financial principles have move from the financial markets to say no

financial and tease that is

corporate entities outside of what we've normally defined as high finance it still a relatively

small area

now the particular financial concept okay that using we focus on here is this concept

of shareholder about one notion that our behaviours individual behaviours inside corporations or wherever

should be focused on there's i think there are shareholder value that if you're not

maximising shareholder value somehow you're not doing your job or something like that are there

other elements of this financial way of looking at the world or this is a

when you focus on

well this is the one that was

but came up and my fieldwork so i carried out sixteen months fieldwork inside the

major

a global management consultancy so this is and pick that is very much propagated and

produced within the consultancy and then is

taken as an example of good ethical practise and they try to transmit this

so what i'm looking at the common cultural transmission of this particular thick fine arts

to financial entities in other words the client

now this is the entity you call proposals just al

i'm given a this guy and i'm geminate pseudonyms though which as much as

which is

in a

this is common or best practise for the pole it is that what i from

what i understand from your proposal you actually did a sort of management training program

insights a stereo yourself right so the real and what so this is the kind

of a big with this question is what in management consultants to

so in order to answer the question i decided i needed to showing be one

and that was to go and sign of the samples with full consent and so

the use the menu as another pose of in house of the produced

and so i became an internal consultant

to the management consultancy and i was able to gain access to the internal management

practise as in management meetings to see how the joint operations were running

and it's for understand your hypothesis or maybe your conclusion is that this idea shareholder

value as the as the premium ethic that it that it starts inside this consoling

formants l here thinking their own shoulders are that people to whom there ultimately

responsible and they need organise their own firm in their own locks along this these

lines sort of first of all and that was what you found most

kind of surprising

i mean this is one of the very interesting observations that i really made within

the field work is that

in part because it's so difficult because also is to define exactly what is they

to their actually have to act out what they to in otherwise they practise internally

what they go on to sell to the client

so first and foremost they need to train their own consultants

and the way is of for naturalisation that is that the guy shareholder value so

one of the things that i look at is the kind of training that consultants

take parts and in order to imbibe shareholder value as the ultimate structuring f like

that they go onto is better to the clients

and so you started with this question what that what is it that they do

these management consultants of the good pay so much for and your hypothesis now as

far as i understand it is that what they do is that is actually cultural

okay what they do they spread this ethic okay

it's not that they have some technical it was done for how to run your

company better but it's about spreading this culture of finance and what have that right

right i mean i'm looking at the logic's and principles and practice as of such

a hold of a unified final visualization

so

people and management consultants and all that some extent fund managers what they are doing

is the gradient depictions of certainty

and predictability in a well that is fundamentally onset and unpredictable

and the way they do this is through the creation of certain narratives and some

of these narratives of have really gave instructions the shareholder value is a really opus

example of this but a longer shareholder value we have all that what we can

cool kind of concomitant narrative so things like

outsourcing layoffs cost reduction and how they are kind of opposed to things like revenue

production these are also really important that is which can convey to invest is that

the entity that they are thinking of investing in is one with good management which

is in itself highly subjective

interpretation i see so you're saying that in the i guess this i want to

come onto this connects with this project you're doing with david target that in a

world where you don't really know what the future of this firm is gonna be

shoulders or investors or fund managers instead of trying to guess the future which is

impossible they try to evaluate the managers right and that in it and the and

the question is have these managers adapted best practise k which is just say have

the body in

to this i think of shareholder value and if they have well then we contrast

and if they haven't well then we can't

that's the that's a sort of shortcut in a world of uncertainty

right in the stroke about the showgirls very difficult to ascertain right i mean it's

very difficult to say what is good management and it's difficult to say whether the

the and seeing question has good management well i think it was really fortuitous for

me working with david on this project on fire with fire managers because

this was able to kind of fell a located in my own work which was

how do investors to see if chinese

the prices a particular state and price

and what was great for me with that his work sesame substantiate the findings i

already had made in my doctoral research so within a consultancy there was definitely this

perception that state enterprises were a problem and this is certainly corroborated by existing literature

well the perceptions of investors of state and spices that they might not be that's

fine actualised as other entities particularly western companies

and dave it's

interviews we see troops like well how do we know that chinese data and the

voice on really employment agencies of the chinese state another was that there's this free

here on the positive s is that it's gonna vestiges of socialism still haven't been

effectively expunged from these and seats

and this is where management consultants really come and isn't them organization of chinese state

and surprise as well my research types to highlight is the role of west an

intermediary west and

business advises in green capitals and china or on a very early shaping the kind

of capitalism that is so culturally but also which admission function writes to us to

invest this well mostly in the last time i'm to understand how you got to

this because i'm looking you're see your

and i see that you are in fact you due to be a economics and

sociology a at cambridge but then you didn't pursue economics you win on and you

get a masters in a in anthropology unit phd in anthropology that wasn't so long

ago two thousand for your be a do you remember back

that decision to go into anthropology instead of economics what was what was it's take

their in your in your mine

you're right it's not that longer and i do remember that decision i remembered one

i

and decided to leave economics and

in short i did not feel that economics as i was being taught

was a good reflection of how people actually behaved on the ground

and that still domains my passion is to understand how the economic behavior actually happen

in social reality

and for that i had to go

elsewhere an apology was an excellent place me to go

and you state in there and you how did you get in touch with david

target with the train your phd or

he just ewing into an ad or i also known that i and i got

the job so how about that and sometimes the market work the i and i

noticed also on your c d you talk about this group of people sort of

i guess comments your it's

rhino look at new york university could answer i'm from the cultures the finance group

their effect of given talks there and in c and i now either new given

talks there so they are all their mostly anthropologists but what's fascinating to me about

them is that they love having a commas common talk

two so they're trying to have dialogue with a condom as i think it comes

on a rigid body anthropologists to talk to their i don't of the type that

sort of thing is happening cambridge's well or london at u c l

it's

not as much as it is a new okay i think what they have in

the new okay and y in particular was at least the time when i was

there was this

critical mass

of people who what for studying

the cultural social

of finance

and it that's one of the we can find when that was because i couldn't

find that in london but i'm hoping that we are developing a and critical mass

in london i u c l but also with the at the london universities

and that we will be able to have a similar kind of group which is

if anything even more interdisciplinary because i would also like to work with people like

computer sciences

the people in public policy which wasn't the most the case

well that's great so that i met new economic thinking is new thinking about the

economy man necessarily back on a miss so you're for our point of view you

are nine data condiments and i'm happy to welcome you to the stable aligned economists

thank you very much