0:00:00so we're here today with complete wrong with the research fellow the psychoanalysis unit of
0:00:04the university college london and also one of our new strategies for a fascinating project
0:00:10but the title of managing uncertainty in post now china and anthropology of financial iteration
0:00:16welcome to really
0:00:17thank you
0:00:18now one of the things that most adjusted reviewing your proposal and why things at
0:00:23most fascinating by this is your definition of initialisation okay where everyone else when they
0:00:28talk about financial station they tend to say things like a with the size of
0:00:32the finance industry more the ratio of debt to g d or something like that
0:00:36use a financial station
0:00:38is the spread of financial principles to non financial entities that you're focusing on the
0:00:44changing conceptual social reality and cultures the way finances changing our understanding of who we
0:00:51are i suppose that what i relations with each other are
0:00:53this is completely new definition i think to me but is a common your anthropologist
0:00:58or
0:00:59yes i am apologist
0:01:01well it even in anthropology and the sociology of fine arts
0:01:05that's been relatively on the research so we have literature with those of the for
0:01:09initialization of daily life in other words outside of the corpus for but in terms
0:01:15of looking at how financial principles have move from the financial markets to say no
0:01:21financial and tease that is
0:01:23corporate entities outside of what we've normally defined as high finance it still a relatively
0:01:27small area
0:01:30now the particular financial concept okay that using we focus on here is this concept
0:01:36of shareholder about one notion that our behaviours individual behaviours inside corporations or wherever
0:01:43should be focused on there's i think there are shareholder value that if you're not
0:01:47maximising shareholder value somehow you're not doing your job or something like that are there
0:01:52other elements of this financial way of looking at the world or this is a
0:01:56when you focus on
0:01:57well this is the one that was
0:01:59but came up and my fieldwork so i carried out sixteen months fieldwork inside the
0:02:03major
0:02:05a global management consultancy so this is and pick that is very much propagated and
0:02:11produced within the consultancy and then is
0:02:13taken as an example of good ethical practise and they try to transmit this
0:02:20so what i'm looking at the common cultural transmission of this particular thick fine arts
0:02:25to financial entities in other words the client
0:02:29now this is the entity you call proposals just al
0:02:33i'm given a this guy and i'm geminate pseudonyms though which as much as
0:02:37which is
0:02:38in a
0:02:38this is common or best practise for the pole it is that what i from
0:02:42what i understand from your proposal you actually did a sort of management training program
0:02:47insights a stereo yourself right so the real and what so this is the kind
0:02:51of a big with this question is what in management consultants to
0:02:55so in order to answer the question i decided i needed to showing be one
0:03:00and that was to go and sign of the samples with full consent and so
0:03:04the use the menu as another pose of in house of the produced
0:03:09and so i became an internal consultant
0:03:12to the management consultancy and i was able to gain access to the internal management
0:03:18practise as in management meetings to see how the joint operations were running
0:03:23and it's for understand your hypothesis or maybe your conclusion is that this idea shareholder
0:03:33value as the as the premium ethic that it that it starts inside this consoling
0:03:38formants l here thinking their own shoulders are that people to whom there ultimately
0:03:44responsible and they need organise their own firm in their own locks along this these
0:03:49lines sort of first of all and that was what you found most
0:03:53kind of surprising
0:03:55i mean this is one of the very interesting observations that i really made within
0:04:01the field work is that
0:04:03in part because it's so difficult because also is to define exactly what is they
0:04:09to their actually have to act out what they to in otherwise they practise internally
0:04:15what they go on to sell to the client
0:04:18so first and foremost they need to train their own consultants
0:04:22and the way is of for naturalisation that is that the guy shareholder value so
0:04:27one of the things that i look at is the kind of training that consultants
0:04:31take parts and in order to imbibe shareholder value as the ultimate structuring f like
0:04:37that they go onto is better to the clients
0:04:40and so you started with this question what that what is it that they do
0:04:45these management consultants of the good pay so much for and your hypothesis now as
0:04:50far as i understand it is that what they do is that is actually cultural
0:04:54okay what they do they spread this ethic okay
0:04:58it's not that they have some technical it was done for how to run your
0:05:01company better but it's about spreading this culture of finance and what have that right
0:05:09right i mean i'm looking at the logic's and principles and practice as of such
0:05:15a hold of a unified final visualization
0:05:18so
0:05:19people and management consultants and all that some extent fund managers what they are doing
0:05:25is the gradient depictions of certainty
0:05:28and predictability in a well that is fundamentally onset and unpredictable
0:05:33and the way they do this is through the creation of certain narratives and some
0:05:38of these narratives of have really gave instructions the shareholder value is a really opus
0:05:42example of this but a longer shareholder value we have all that what we can
0:05:46cool kind of concomitant narrative so things like
0:05:50outsourcing layoffs cost reduction and how they are kind of opposed to things like revenue
0:05:56production these are also really important that is which can convey to invest is that
0:06:01the entity that they are thinking of investing in is one with good management which
0:06:06is in itself highly subjective
0:06:09interpretation i see so you're saying that in the i guess this i want to
0:06:13come onto this connects with this project you're doing with david target that in a
0:06:18world where you don't really know what the future of this firm is gonna be
0:06:24shoulders or investors or fund managers instead of trying to guess the future which is
0:06:29impossible they try to evaluate the managers right and that in it and the and
0:06:35the question is have these managers adapted best practise k which is just say have
0:06:41the body in
0:06:43to this i think of shareholder value and if they have well then we contrast
0:06:47and if they haven't well then we can't
0:06:50that's the that's a sort of shortcut in a world of uncertainty
0:06:56right in the stroke about the showgirls very difficult to ascertain right i mean it's
0:07:02very difficult to say what is good management and it's difficult to say whether the
0:07:07the and seeing question has good management well i think it was really fortuitous for
0:07:12me working with david on this project on fire with fire managers because
0:07:18this was able to kind of fell a located in my own work which was
0:07:22how do investors to see if chinese
0:07:27the prices a particular state and price
0:07:30and what was great for me with that his work sesame substantiate the findings i
0:07:34already had made in my doctoral research so within a consultancy there was definitely this
0:07:41perception that state enterprises were a problem and this is certainly corroborated by existing literature
0:07:47well the perceptions of investors of state and spices that they might not be that's
0:07:52fine actualised as other entities particularly western companies
0:07:56and dave it's
0:07:58interviews we see troops like well how do we know that chinese data and the
0:08:03voice on really employment agencies of the chinese state another was that there's this free
0:08:09here on the positive s is that it's gonna vestiges of socialism still haven't been
0:08:15effectively expunged from these and seats
0:08:18and this is where management consultants really come and isn't them organization of chinese state
0:08:23and surprise as well my research types to highlight is the role of west an
0:08:29intermediary west and
0:08:32business advises in green capitals and china or on a very early shaping the kind
0:08:38of capitalism that is so culturally but also which admission function writes to us to
0:08:44invest this well mostly in the last time i'm to understand how you got to
0:08:48this because i'm looking you're see your
0:08:51and i see that you are in fact you due to be a economics and
0:08:53sociology a at cambridge but then you didn't pursue economics you win on and you
0:08:59get a masters in a in anthropology unit phd in anthropology that wasn't so long
0:09:03ago two thousand for your be a do you remember back
0:09:07that decision to go into anthropology instead of economics what was what was it's take
0:09:12their in your in your mine
0:09:14you're right it's not that longer and i do remember that decision i remembered one
0:09:19i
0:09:21and decided to leave economics and
0:09:26in short i did not feel that economics as i was being taught
0:09:31was a good reflection of how people actually behaved on the ground
0:09:37and that still domains my passion is to understand how the economic behavior actually happen
0:09:44in social reality
0:09:45and for that i had to go
0:09:48elsewhere an apology was an excellent place me to go
0:09:53and you state in there and you how did you get in touch with david
0:09:57target with the train your phd or
0:09:59he just ewing into an ad or i also known that i and i got
0:10:04the job so how about that and sometimes the market work the i and i
0:10:12noticed also on your c d you talk about this group of people sort of
0:10:16i guess comments your it's
0:10:18rhino look at new york university could answer i'm from the cultures the finance group
0:10:24their effect of given talks there and in c and i now either new given
0:10:27talks there so they are all their mostly anthropologists but what's fascinating to me about
0:10:33them is that they love having a commas common talk
0:10:37two so they're trying to have dialogue with a condom as i think it comes
0:10:43on a rigid body anthropologists to talk to their i don't of the type that
0:10:47sort of thing is happening cambridge's well or london at u c l
0:10:51it's
0:10:52not as much as it is a new okay i think what they have in
0:10:55the new okay and y in particular was at least the time when i was
0:10:59there was this
0:11:01critical mass
0:11:02of people who what for studying
0:11:05the cultural social
0:11:07of finance
0:11:09and it that's one of the we can find when that was because i couldn't
0:11:12find that in london but i'm hoping that we are developing a and critical mass
0:11:19in london i u c l but also with the at the london universities
0:11:24and that we will be able to have a similar kind of group which is
0:11:29if anything even more interdisciplinary because i would also like to work with people like
0:11:34computer sciences
0:11:35the people in public policy which wasn't the most the case
0:11:41well that's great so that i met new economic thinking is new thinking about the
0:11:45economy man necessarily back on a miss so you're for our point of view you
0:11:50are nine data condiments and i'm happy to welcome you to the stable aligned economists
0:11:55thank you very much