Abstract
In this chapter, Golka develops his theoretical argument on the use of field theory for the study of financialization processes. Golka compares the explanatory horizon of prominent sociological field theories, particularly neo-institutional theories and Fligstein and McAdam’s strategic action fields theory, for the case of financialization. His analysis reveals the merits of strategic action fields theory over other field theories, but also shows how its lack of a mechanism to explain the emergence of cooperative ties as a result of skilled social action severely constrains the theory’s explanatory potential. To address this void, Golka draws on recent theorizing of pragmatist mechanisms.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I understand financial actors as those engaged in investment and speculation, in the sense of Knorr-Cetina (2009). Empirically, these are most frequently financial intermediaries.
- 2.
There are two important strands in the literature that I will ignore. First, issue fields (Hoffman 1999) which provide a more discursive and thus less functionalist definition of fields in comparison to DiMaggio and Powell (1983) and Scott (1987). This way, field dynamics can be understood as closely linked to membership dynamics. Nevertheless, issue field theory relies on a similarly problematic conception of agency as much of neo-institutional theory (see below). These problems are equally prominent in institutional logics theory (Reay and Hinings 2005; Thornton et al. 2012) albeit in a slightly different coloring. Assuming relatively homogenous field-level logics that are in coherence with the rationality criteria posed by the “society as an inter-institutional system” perspective and stabilized through individual-level cognitive scripts and schemas, the theory under-estimates the continuous creative capacities of human agency (Joas 1996) and resulting conflict in favor of a rather consensualist (albeit dynamic) view of institutions and fields (Fligstein and McAdam 2012, pp. 10–12).
- 3.
There are more reasons why these theories are not suitable for our endeavor. One is that, being located in organizational theory, most scholarship uses these theories to explain organizational outcomes, e.g. as changes in “templates” (Battilana et al. 2009). However, my interest is more broadly located on the field level and includes positions, relations, and resources in addition to forms of organizing.
- 4.
I consider the conception of IGUs as one of the weaker parts of SAF theory, both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, this somewhat functionalist construction partially contradicts the strict emphasis on social construction that prevails in the theory. If stable periods are achieved through mobilization and frame resonance, while at the same time all actors possess social skill, why would we then expect a norm-following organization such as IGUs constitutive of fields? Empirically, it has, for example in the case of intra-organizational equal opportunities officers, been shown how IGUs that were initially created by incumbent actors to maintain their rules in the face of growing criticism may develop an organizational interest in their own right that eventually alters the rules of the field contrary to incumbents’ interest (Dobbin 2009). Ultimately, upholding such a theoretically defined conception of IGUs would thus require us to ex ante define those as low skilled, interest-less, non-strategic actors, contradicting the theory’s assumption on the existential role of the social. For these reasons, as well as the fact that in the case of SII, trade associations can rather be considered as the very competing actors, I will disregard such a conception of IGUs for the remainder of this book.
- 5.
I have two concerns with their perspective. First, assuming that we “seek out instrumental gain, social status, and power […] because we want to prove to ourselves and others that we are worthy as people” (p. 46) fails to acknowledge that the construction of worth is socially contingent (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006; Stark 2011) and thus can hardly be assumed as a motivational force. As Beckert (2003) and Joas (1996) have shown, and as the authors themselves frequently point out, ends are constructed in social processes. It thus seems incorrect and contradictory to assume the cause of these different actions in their common motivational dimension. Second, noting that “by ‘winning,’ we confirm to ourselves and others that life is not meaningless” (p. 46) incorrectly assumes a motivational basis for winning. As my previous work has shown, faced with a situation where winning coincides with losing money, the “value of winning” is highly dependent upon an individual’s hormonal testosterone levels (Van Den Bos et al. 2013).
- 6.
Note that this does not imply that financializing state actions are always the result of financial actors’ strategic efforts vis-à-vis the state. Sometimes these actions are intended to achieve different goals but have led to increased financialization in markets (e.g. Krippner 2011, or Fligstein 1990, Chap. 5). That said, it seems to be the case that in the past decades, in many cases, state actions appear to be directed towards and lobbied for by financial actors (e.g. Langenohl and Wetzel 2011). As I will show in the longitudinal chapter, the growth of impact investing in the UK serves as a case in point here.
- 7.
Of course, changes in nonfinancial actors’ action patterns are not based on cooperation alone: unilateral dependencies exist. My point here is twofold: first, I am only interested in situations where such unilateral dependencies do not (yet) exist, as is for example the case in field emergence or invasion by outside actors. Second, I argue that even where nonfinancial actors are critically dependent on financial actors’ resources, they do not necessarily fully subjugate to financial actors’ interests. Thus, there is room for nonfinancial actors’ agency here, which needs to be understood in more detail.
- 8.
This creates the contradiction that entrepreneurship is and is not an ability of the individual. This may be resolved by assuming entrepreneurship to be an individual ability conditioned by situations on the field level. I suspect that this is what the authors had in mind here.
- 9.
- 10.
Although the ability to learn empathy appears to be bound by biological factors such as prenatal testosterone levels: individuals with higher prenatal testosterone levels appear to be less empathetic, more motivated by money, and more successful in competitive financial professions (Baron-Cohen 2002; Coates and Herbert 2008; Eisenegger et al. 2011).
References
Fligstein, N., & McAdam, D. (2011). Toward a general theory of strategic action fields. Sociological Theory, 29(1), 1–26.
Ansell, C. K. (2001). Schism and solidarity in social movements: The politics of labor in the French third republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aoki, M. (2001). Towards a comparative institutional analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Baron-Cohen, S. (2002). The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(6), 248–254.
Battilana, J., & Dorado, S. (2010). Building sustainable hybrid organizations: The case of commercial microfinance organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1419–1440.
Battilana, J., & Lee, M. (2014). Advancing research on hybrid organizing: Insights from the study of social enterprises. Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 397–441.
Battilana, J., Leca, B., & Boxenbaum, E. (2009). How actors change institutions: Towards a theory of institutional entrepreneurship. Academy of Management Annals, 3(1), 65–107.
Beckert, J. (1996). What is sociological about economic sociology? Uncertainty and the embeddedness of economic action. Theory and Society, 25(6), 803–840.
Beckert, J. (2003). Economic sociology and embeddedness: How shall we conceptualize economic action? Journal of Economic Issues, 37(3), 769–787.
Beckert, J. (2010). How do fields change? The interrelations of institutions, networks, and cognition in the dynamics of markets. Organization Studies, 31(5), 605–627.
Beckert, J. (2011). Die sittliche Einbettung der Wirtschaft. Von der Effizienz-und Differenzierungstheorie zu einer Theorie wirtschaftlicher Felder. Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 22(2), 247–266.
Beckert, J. (2016). Imagined futures. Fictional expectations and capitalist dynamics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26(1), 611–639.
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. London: Penguin Books.
Blyth, M. (2010). On setting and upsetting agendas. In A. Gofas & C. Hay (Eds.), The role of ideas in political analysis: A portrait of contemporary debates (pp. 167–186). New York: Routledge.
Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (2006). On justification: Economies of worth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Botzem, S., & Dobusch, L. (2017). Financialization as strategy: Accounting for inter-organizational value creation in the European real estate industry. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 59, 31–43.
Bourdieu, P. (1998). The state nobility: Elite schools in the field of power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Coates, J. M., & Herbert, J. (2008). Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(16), 6167–6172.
Crouch, C. (2011). The strange non-death of neo-liberalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
De Tocqueville, A. (1856). L’ancien Régime et la Révolution. Paris: Michel Lévy.
Deeg, R., & Jackson, G. (2007). Towards a more dynamic theory of capitalist variety. Socio-Economic Review, 5(1), 149–179.
Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct: An introduction to social psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Diaz-Bone, R. (2015). Die “Economie des conventions”: Grundlagen und Entwicklungen in der neuen französischen Wirtschaftssoziologie. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
DiMaggio, P. (1988). Interest and agency in institutional theory. In L. G. Zucker (Ed.), Institutional patterns and organizations (pp. 1–21). Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
DiMaggio, P. (1991). Constructing an organizational field as a professional project: U.S. art museums, 1920-1940. In M. Powell & P. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
DiMaggio, P., & Powell, W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147–160.
Dobbin, F. (2009). Inventing equal opportunity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dowling, E., & Harvie, D. (2014). Harnessing the social: State, crisis and (big) society. Sociology, 48(5), 869–886.
Edelman, L. B. (1992). Legal ambiguity and symbolic structures: Organizational mediation of civil rights law. American Journal of Sociology, 97(6), 1531–1576.
Eisenegger, C., Haushofer, J., & Fehr, E. (2011). The role of testosterone in social interaction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(6), 263–271.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (1980). Cultural orientations, institutional entrepreneurs, and social change: Comparative analysis of traditional civilizations. American Journal of Sociology, 85(4), 840–869.
Eisinger, P. K. (1973). The conditions of protest behavior in American cities. American Political Science Review, 67(1), 11–28.
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 962–1023.
Feist, M., & Fuchs, D. (2014). Was heißt hier nachhaltig? In M. Heires & A. Nölke (Eds.), Politische Ökonomie der Finanzialisierung (pp. 225–240). Wiesbaden: Springer.
Fiss, P. C., & Zajac, E. J. (2004). The diffusion of ideas over contested terrain: The (non) adoption of a shareholder value orientation among German firms. Administrative Science Quarterly, 49(4), 501–534.
Fligstein, N. (1990). The transformation of corporate control. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fligstein, N. (2001a). The architecture of markets: An economic sociology of twenty-first-century capitalist societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fligstein, N. (2001b). Social skill and the theory of fields. Sociological Theory, 19(2), 105–125.
Fligstein, N. (2008). Fields, power and social skill: A critical analysis of the new institutionalisms. International Public Management Review, 9(1), 227–253.
Fligstein, N. (2013). Understanding stability and change in fields. Research in Organizational Behavior, 33, 39–51.
Fligstein, N., & McAdam, D. (2012). A theory of fields. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Forst, R. (2015b). Noumenal power. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 23(2), 111–127.
Fourcade, M. (2007). Theories of markets and theories of society. American Behavioral Scientist, 50(8), 1015–1034.
Friedland, R., & Alford, R. R. (1991). Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices and institutional contradictions. In W. Powell & P. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 232–263). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Gamson, W. A. (1975). The strategy of social protest. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge: Blackwell, Polity Press.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Goffman, E. (1973). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goldstone, J. A. (2004). More social movements or fewer? Beyond political opportunity structures to relational fields. Theory and Society, 33(3), 333–365.
Goodwin, J., & Jasper, J. M. (1999). Caught in a winding, snarling vine: The structural bias of political process theory. Paper presented at the Sociological forum.
Greenwood, R., & Hinings, C. R. (1996). Understanding radical organizational change: Bringing together the old and the new institutionalism. Academy of Management Review, 21(4), 1022–1054.
Gross, N. (2009). A pragmatist theory of social mechanisms. American Sociological Review, 74(3), 358–379.
Habermas, J. (1981). Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns band 1: Handlungsrationalität und gesellchaftliche Rationalisierung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Hall, P. A., & Soskice, D. (2001). Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundations of comparative advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hardy, C., & Maguire, S. (2010). Discourse, field-configuring events, and change in organizations and institutional fields: Narratives of DDT and the Stockholm convention. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1365–1392.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hedström, P., & Swedberg, R. (1998). Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to social theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hiß, S. (2006). Warum übernehmen Unternehmen gesellschaftliche Verantwortung? Frankfurt am Main: Campus.
Hiß, S. (2013). The politics of the financialization of sustainability. Competition & Change, 17(3), 234–247.
Hoffman, A. J. (1999). Institutional evolution and change: Environmentalism and the US chemical industry. Academy of Management Journal, 42(4), 351–371.
James, W. (1907/1975). Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Joas, H. (1996). The creativity of action (J. Gaines & P. Keast, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Kingdon, J. (1995). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers.
Kluttz, D. N., & Fligstein, N. (2016). Varieties of sociological field theory. In S. Abrutyn (Ed.), Handbook of contemporary sociological theory (pp. 185–204). Cham: Springer.
Knoll, L. (2012). Über die Rechtfertigung wirtschaftlichen Handelns: CO2-Handel in der kommunalen Energiewirtschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Knorr-Cetina, K. (2009). What is a financial market? In J. Beckert & C. Deutschmann (Eds.), Wirtschaftssoziologie (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 49) (pp. 326–342). Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Krippner, G. R. (2011). Capitalizing on crisis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kurzman, C. (1996). Structural opportunity and perceived opportunity in social-movement theory: The Iranian revolution of 1979. American Sociological Review, 61(1), 153–170.
Langenohl, A., & Wetzel, D. (2011). Finanzmärkte und ihre Sinnformen: Handlungskoordination und Signalkommunikation. Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 21(4), 539–559.
Lawrence, T. B., Suddaby, R., & Leca, B. (Eds.). (2009). Institutional work: Actors and agency in institutional studies of organization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lawrence, T. B., Suddaby, R., & Leca, B. (2011). Institutional work: Refocusing institutional studies of organization. Journal of Management Inquiry, 20(1), 52–58.
Lazonick, W., & O’Sullivan, M. (2000). Maximizing shareholder value: A new ideology for corporate governance. Economy and Society, 29(1), 13–35.
Leifer, E. M. (1995). Making the majors: The transformation of team sports in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
MacKenzie, D. (2016). A material political economy: Automated trading desk and price prediction in high-frequency trading. Social Studies of Science, 47(2), 172–194.
Maguire, S., Hardy, C., & Lawrence, T. B. (2004). Institutional entrepreneurship in emerging fields: HIV/AIDS treatment advocacy in Canada. Academy of Management Journal, 47(5), 657–679.
Mair, J., & Marti, I. (2009). Entrepreneurship in and around institutional voids: A case study from Bangladesh. Journal of Business Venturing, 24(5), 419–435.
Martin, J. L. (2003). What is field theory? American Journal of Sociology, 109(1), 1–49.
Martin, J. L. (2011). The explanation of social action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McAdam, D. (1982). Political process and the development of black insurgency. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, A. D. (1982). Adapting to environmental jolts. Administrative Science Quarterly, 27, 515–537.
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83, 340–363.
Meyer, J. W., & Scott, W. R. (1991). The organization of societal sectors: Propositions and early evidence. In M. Powell & P. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 108–140). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Mische, A. (2009). Projects and possibilities: Researching futures in action. Sociological Forum, 24(3), 694–704.
Pacewicz, J. (2012). Tax increment financing, economic development professionals and the financialization of urban politics. Socio-Economic Review, 11(3), 413–440.
Podolny, J. M. (1993). A status-based model of market competition. American Journal of Sociology, 98(4), 829–872.
Quinn, S. L. (2010). Government policy, housing, and the origins of securitization, 1780–1968. (PhD), Berkeley, CA: University of California.
Reay, T., & Hinings, C. R. (2005). The recomposition of an organizational field: Health care in Alberta. Organization Studies, 26(3), 351–384.
Rule, J., & Tilly, C. (1975). Political process in revolutionary France: 1830-1832. In J. M. Merriman (Ed.), 1830 France (pp. 41–85). New York: New Viewpoints.
Scott, W. R. (1987). The adolescence of institutional theory. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32(4), 493–511.
Scott, W. R. (1991). Unpacking institutional arguments. In W. Powell & P. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 164–182). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Scott, W. R. (1995). Institutions and organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Scott, W. R. (2001). Institutions and organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Seabrooke, L. (2010). Everyday legitimacy and institutional change. In A. Gofas & C. Hay (Eds.), The role of ideas in political analysis: A portrait of contemporary debates (pp. 78–93). New York: Routledge.
Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (1988). Ideology, frame resonance, and participant mobilization. International Social Movement Research, 1, 197–217.
Sparsam, J. (2014). Wirtschaft in der new economic sociology: Eine Systematisierung und Kritik. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Stark, D. (2011). The sense of dissonance: Accounts of worth in economic life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stinchcombe, A. L. (1998). Monopolistic competition as a mechanism: Corporations, universities, and nation-states in competitive fields. In P. Hedström & R. Swedberg (Eds.), Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to social theory (pp. 267–305). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Streeck, W. (2013). Gekaufte Zeit. Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
Swartz, D. (1997). Culture and power: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Tarrow, S. (2011). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tavory, I., & Timmermans, S. (2014). Abductive analysis: Theorizing qualitative research. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Thornton, P. H., Ocasio, W., & Lounsbury, M. (2012). The institutional logics perspective: A new approach to culture, structure, and process. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tilly, C. (1978). From mobilization to revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Tilly, C. (2001). Mechanisms in political processes. Annual Review of Political Science, 4(1), 21–41.
Tolbert, P. S., & Zucker, L. G. (1983). Institutional sources of change in the formal structure of organizations: The diffusion of civil service reform, 1880-1935. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 22–39.
Turk, H. (1977). Organizations in modern life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Van Den Bos, W., Golka, P. J., Effelsberg, D., & McClure, S. M. (2013). Pyrrhic victories: The need for social status drives costly competitive behavior. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7, 1–11.
Van der Zwan, N. (2014). Making sense of financialization. Socio-Economic Review, 12(1), 99–129.
Vedres, B., & Stark, D. (2010). Structural folds: Generative disruption in overlapping groups. American Journal of Sociology, 115(4), 1150–1190.
Vitols, S. (2002). Shareholder value, management culture and production regimes in the transformation of the German chemical-pharmaceutical industry. Competition and Change, 6(3), 309–325.
Warren, R. L. (1967). The interorganizational field as a focus for investigation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 12, 397–419.
Weber, M. (1921/2002). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
White, H. C. (1970). Chains of opportunity: System models of mobility in organizations. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Wooten, M., & Hoffman, A. J. (2017). Organizational fields: Past, present and future. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, T. Lawrence, & R. Meyer (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 55–76). Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage.
Zucker, L. G. (1977). The role of institutionalization in cultural persistence. American Sociological Review, 42(5), 726–743.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Golka, P. (2019). Financialization, Fields, and Change. In: Financialization as Welfare. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06100-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06100-5_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-06099-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-06100-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)