Abstract
New York, NY and London: New York University Press / Social Science Research Council, 2011, £12.99 pbk, (ISBN: 9780814772782), 312 pp.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, £63 hbk, (ISBN: 9780230284722), 208 pp.
In his BSA Conference address last April, outgoing President John Brewer called for sociology’s value to be publicly promoted. That same month, Guardian economics writer Aditya Chakrabortty complained that sociologists are not offering alternative views on the economic crisis. Suitably then, both titles reviewed here, representing non-economic disciplines, have a somewhat public agenda in examining the crisis. There the similarity ends.
Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown has nine theoretical essays penned by an international assembly of US-based social scientists. Corporate Psychopaths: Organisational Destroyers reports the empirical research of one British marketing professor. The sociologists critique expansively contextualized systems, largely eschewing as a Wall Street defence any finger-pointing at ‘errant individuals’. The marketer’s focus remains fixed on evidence of culpability among the ‘Masters of the Universe’. One book debates whether capitalism can be saved or what might follow; the other defends it from its own insidiously deviant parasites. Although different, both angles deserve a wide audience for their challenges to mainstream interpretations of the mess we are in.
The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown is the first in a three volume Business as Usual series which also looks at governance and the potential for a new global economic order. It has a 15,000-word series introduction, as well as the shorter volume one overture. The result of a 2008 World Public Forum meeting, public intellectual Craig Calhoun says it is an example of ‘real time sociology’. It argues that predominating crisis analyses are framed within the same concepts that shaped financialization: the 1970s switch from productive-material growth to speculative-financial growth. By widening our perspective beyond this framework, the editors hope to deepen our understanding of the crisis’s meaning, implications and possible outcomes.
These complex themes might best be glimpsed in light of a key underlying question: is capitalism really spent? Among those responding ‘not necessarily’, Calhoun and Derluguian note a ‘new’ awareness of resource limits, but insist that one Business as Usual series aim is to locate growth opportunities. They introduce the contextualizing approach, surveying financialization’s ‘long bubble’ from the 1970s onwards and the influences of global geo-politics, religion, inequality and welfare. Arguing to save capitalism from neo-liberalism, Keyder’s context is more global. He diagnoses unequal world income distribution choking consumption (Marx, Hobson) and calls for an international Keynesianism: beef up redistributive global institutions and kick-start growth. Comparing financialization to a media-fuelled Ponzi scheme (Shiller and Minsky), Chirot shows capitalism acculturating individuals into reckless psychologies. Around this framework he sketches some agreement among several ‘long-cycle’ theories (Hansen, Kondratieff, Kuznet and Mankiw), but fixes more on non-correlating technology cycles; hoping to reboot supply-side innovation in biotech and healthcare, if the money is found and regulations are tightened.
Two long-cycle centred essays view past episodes of financialized panic as predictive of catastrophe. Silver and Arrighi’s reformulation of Braudel acquaints us with financialization’s mechanics, characteristics and centuries-long pattern of periodic resurgence. This predicts world war then a world state, but they see new anomalies. Moreover, given that past material expansions relied on nature’s cost-free inputs and that generalizing US consumption is impossible, we need a vastly different economy involving more labour and less waste. Arguably this meshes with Wallerstein, who also pivots from 1968 onwards, this time correlating Kondratieff’s long economic waves with Schumpeter’s longer geo-political cycles. Wallerstein says capitalism’s endless accumulation is unviable (we are on the last bubble of borrowed or printed bailouts) and he maps paradigm shifting possibilities among authoritarians and egalitarians.
Three essayists poke more or less around the new paradigm’s threshold. Harvey is another post-1960s reviewer, this time via Marx’s ‘crisis formation’ and O’Connor’s ‘systemic risk’. Capital’s growth appetite cannot, he says, surmount natural limits. He proposes alternative organizational forms that strategically match capitalism’s, and actualizing Marx’s dialectical motion among seven co-dependent groups (a Gramscian/ Lefebvrian ensemble). For Castells, the structural, multi-dimensional crisis (of economy, politics, patriarchy and networked society) exposes endless capitalist expansion as reliant on free resources. He scotches ‘illusory’ beliefs in indebted Keynesianism or system restoration, instead charting 11 examples of a use-value economy emerging under the politico-media culture’s radar; foreseeing confrontation. Fraser transcends ‘discredited’ economic models, elucidating their social context via Polanyi’s ‘double-movement’: the continuum between drives to socially disembed (autonomize) markets, and demands to enmesh them in socially protective institutions. Showing oppression in both poles, she adds a third emancipatory side, allied with more participatory democracies. Claiming this signposts alternatives to both capitalism and socialism, she challenges critical theory to regain its lost political-economy focus.
Two final contributions seem less optimistic. Balakrishnan also revisits the ‘long seventies’: capital flight from overcrowded manufacturing, ‘military Keynesianism’ and weakening public infrastructures. Comparing ‘plausible conceptions’ of capitalism (Weber, Smith, Polanyi, Schumpeter), he says it cannot resolve bio-political problems: we face a stationary economy, stagnating towards ecological fatality. Coronil unpacks paradoxical Latin American leftist states with compasses but no maps: facilitating capitalism; growing without equality; imposing inequalities; lacking alternatives. He outlines the search (Weber, Badiou, Zizek, Harvey), noting that while reformist and populist leaders (Casteñada) have replaced revolution with commitments to ‘deeper’ democracy, their citizens dangle in anticipation.
The value of the sociological perspective here is that we see financialization’s caged thinking in context. The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown situates that conceptual framework in a more complex global, socio-geo-political and long-term historical landscape. Consequently, the cage becomes visible: a limited perception of the moment offering characteristically short-term, superficial solutions. Contrast that with the multi-dimensional milieus in which this book considers the past 40 years’ financialization, deregulation and BRIC ascension. Over 90 intellectuals appear in the 700 entry index, including around 35 economists. This academic Argus is sharpened with practical, technical facts and information: anecdotes, news reports, statistics and financial figures abound, though I would prefer much more of them to be referenced (the essays average 22 notes). Nevertheless, these somewhat overlapping accounts expand understanding: we do get alternatives to mainstream narratives. Moreover by contextualizing crisis roots, some authors exceed expectations, pointing toward something new. I would ask them if ‘growth’ is part of the governing conceptual framework and, given mentions of the ‘brightest and best’ reproducing financialization, about intellect’s relationship with society. I will be reading further volumes, but query the book’s claim to diverse viewpoints extraneous to economics. This claim is true, but only within a sociological framework focused on systems. As Castells says, they are shaped by social actors. Behaviours like irrationality, predation, greed, fraud, theft and mismanagement pepper this book; arguably with insufficient account.
Perhaps Clive Boddy’s evidence fits here. His ‘Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis’ traces lineage to dark management theory, drawing also from psychology (Babiak, Blair, Clarke, Cooke and Hare are prominent among some 330 citations). One aim of the 15-chapter Corporate Psychopaths: Organisational Destroyers is to stimulate debate outside of psychology and criminology. Consequently, the opening chapter’s methodology and results summary appear only after Boddy starts disentangling this popularly misconceived, professionally contested construct. Among the population’s 1 per cent without conscience or empathy, who seek leadership, power, influence, prestige and wealth, he describes two sub-groups: ‘criminal’ and ‘successful’, undetected psychopaths (his examinees). Chapter two’s literature review charts current understanding of this syndrome of behaviours; its developmental origins and how society, social status and intelligence influence its expression.
Thus acquainted, Boddy reports two empirical studies; the first in this field, he says. Over half the book details one, conducted among 346 white collar employees. It incorporates the Psychopathy Measure: Management Research Version (PM-MRV) assessment tool into a broader self-completion survey comprising mostly commonplace organizational performance scales (mainly Spector and Jex). Accordingly, he measures both the presence of (perceived incidence of exposure to) psychopathic behaviours in organizations and their impact on ‘organisational outcomes’. Developed from Hare’s PCL-R global ‘gold standard’ clinical assessment tool, the PM-MRV allows both continuous and categorical variables; scoring managers as ‘normal’, ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘psychopathic’. Self-completion surveys and indirect measurements of observable behaviour are discussed, but Boddy is confident that the PM-MRV is ready for management research use.
Observations were sought on both current and past managers’ behaviour, so the 346 respondents produced 487 complete responses. The results show a higher presence of psychopaths in corporations than in the population; 5.75 per cent of respondents were currently working with a psychopathic manager; 32.1 per cent had done so in the past. Specifically, 104 responses (21.3%) described managers in whom some psychopathy was present and 119 (24.4%) those in whom it was fully present. Their organizational impacts were assessed by using the PM-MRV’s Corporate Psychopath (CP) score as a continuous variable against six scales, each detailed in its own chapter. Correlations are shown between CP presence and: more bullying and conflict (‘remarkable’); weaker corporate social responsibility (‘highly significant’); higher performance constraints (‘disturbing’); lower job satisfaction (‘highly significant’); and more withdrawal from work (‘small but significant’). A correlation between CP presence and high workload is ‘relatively weak’ but still predictable. Two further chapters detail CPs by seniority (bolstering a thin but clear senior management association with a comparable studies review); and by organization type (just as present in public services, including education; perhaps less so in caring professions).
Boddy’s smaller study of 61 business postgraduates enriches this picture with critical incident accounts, noting some alignment between the perceived values of CPs and corporations. Before pitching his CP crisis theory (the hallmarks of psychopaths commanding large, powerful corporations) and ending on ethical issues (are psychopaths responsible for their actions?) Boddy returns to psychopathy as construct; mapping its relation to anti-social personality disorder, dissocial personality, psychosis, sociopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.
Notwithstanding sampling difficulties, Boddy establishes clear and mostly significant results. He convinces the reader that management research cannot ignore this evidence and suggests over a dozen new enquiries, many of sociological interest (for example, psychopathy’s cultural constraints or associated promiscuity at work). He warns organizations to adopt protective screening in order to avoid ‘inadvertently attracting’ and becoming corrupted by psychopaths. Corporations thus seem value-neutral, yet he also shows how psychopaths appear desirable as their employees. More ruthless, unemotional and prepared to lie, they better fit corporations’ cultural expectations. These latter, he says, are mechanisms for creating wealth that can encourage employees towards poor ethical conduct. Nevertheless, he condemns narcissistic self-aggrandizing and the pursuit of power for personal gain. This discussion flags the book as a stimulant for theoretical as well as empirical work. His execution of it is richly edifying: the literature reviews are invaluable and almost every ‘fact’ seems referenced. But discussion seems somewhat jumbled with results. Most chapters reiterate the construct and some headings seem dissociated from the text. I would prefer the book to comprise two parts: one reporting research results and one debating psychopathy’s meaning and relation to the corporate form; perhaps supported by an index larger than 57 entries.
Like Calhoun and Derluguian, Boddy has achieved some public recognition for his work, albeit mainly in the USA. Sociology is perhaps uniquely capable of considering, theoretically and empirically, both systemic and individual aspects of the economic crisis. With the economy’s continuing topicality, both books offer a stimulus for future public debates on sociology’s value.