Postcards from the Front: Changing narratives in UK financial services

Critical Perspectives on Accounting 20 (2009) 884–895

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Postcards from the Front: Changing narratives in UK financial services David Collins a,∗ , Ian Dewing b , Peter Russell b a b

Essex Business School, University of Essex, Colchester, UK Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, UK

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 14 March 2008 Received in revised form 14 April 2009 Accepted 25 May 2009 Keywords: Accounting and writing Change Narratives Metaphor Context Financial services Financial Services Authority

a b s t r a c t This paper seeks to explore the methodological difficulties that confront those who would seek to explain, to account for and to intervene in social affairs. Noting the predominance of ‘behaviourist’ and ‘cognitivist’ accounts of the change process and the, recent, development of ‘narrative’ alternatives we reflect upon the craft of academic writing and upon the creative choices that fabricate our worlds and our understanding. Taking the Financial Services Authority (FSA) as our example we attempt to reveal the manner in which particular authorial strategies, that remain submerged with ‘behaviourist’ and ‘cognitivist’ accounts of change, precipitate distinctive forms of policy and action in the arena of financial services. Yet we also suggest that ‘narrative’ accounts of change, which base their authority on primary research, similarly, tend to downplay the political and poetical choices that shape their elaborations because they portray ‘context’ as natural and self-evident. By revealing the authorial strategies that shape our appreciation of ‘context’ and the organized world, more generally, we hope to encourage further reflection on the application of narrative approaches, and so, further discussion of the regulation of financial services. Through such analytical processes we aim to precipitate a ‘reciprocal’ appreciation of the problems associated with accounting for the lives and experiences of others. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

I have just read your letter written on the 25th . I cannot answer it now–not as I should like. For one thing I have a lot of men’s letters to censor before the post goes–prosaic and unimaginative most of them, but a few make me feel like a Father Confessor. Extract from a letter from Roland Leighton to Vera Brittain, Flanders 29th April 1915 (Bishop and Bostridge, 1999: 93)

∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Collins), [email protected] (I. Dewing), [email protected] (P. Russell). 1045-2354/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2009.05.004

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Field Service Postcard as completed by Roland Leighton 1915 (Bishop and Bostridge, 1999: 68) 1. Introduction The ‘Enron Scandal’, the ‘Equitable Debacle’, the ‘credit crunch’ of autumn 2007 and the global, financial ‘meltdown’, which has been on-going since autumn 2008, have all acted to bring the, previously, closed and obscure world of ‘high finance’ to the centre of everyday discussion (see The Economist, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2009a, 2009b). As we draft this paper, politicians, bankers and financiers–in a variety of guises–are casting around for solutions to what amounts to, not so much a bank crisis, but a crisis in banking itself. ‘Ordinary folk’ meanwhile look for answers, for protection and, increasingly, restitution. Legitimately they ask: What caused this? Did no one anticipate it? Should not ‘the regulators’ have prevented this? Have our leaders dithered? Is there, perhaps, another means of protecting the commonwealth that does not spare the wealthy? But where will we find the answers to such questions? Where–and how–should we look? Who should we ask? When we speak of ‘the regulators’ of whom and what do we speak? We recognise that, in the current climate when the state is being asked to support banks and financiers, questions of cause and blame are, indeed, pertinent. We do not, however, claim to have the answer to the pressing questions, posed by press and public alike. Yet we do, at least, recognise the central importance of such inquiry. Reflecting the concerns raised by our second interrogation, therefore, this paper offers a critical, yet constructive, analysis of a still emergent, approach to academic authoring which, because it acknowledges the artful ways in which academics construct their texts (see Schön, 1979) is often described as being ‘narrative’ in nature (see Shotter, 2002). This narrative analysis is tendered in the hope that it might add to the processes of methodological development that, in accounting research, have been precipitated by the contributions of writers such as Tomkins and Groves (1983a, 1983b), Abdel-Khalik and Ajinkya (1983), Morgan (1983), Willmott (1983), Chua (1986), Power (1996, 2003), Llewellyn (1999), Quattrone (2004), Haynes (2006, 2008) and Czarniawska (2008). Taking the Financial Services Authority (FSA)–the single regulator for UK financial services that was established by the Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA, 2000)1 –as our example we offer, as our title and frontispiece suggest, ‘postcards’ from the front-line of financial services as a contribution to the continuing debate on methodology. Thus in keeping with our preferred narrative approach we offer an account of contemporary events that mirrors, and yet extends, Hopkinson’s (2003) militaristic metaphor of the ‘front-line’ of the organization. In their novels of the First World War, Manning (1990 [1929]) and Graves (1990 [1929]) offer rich portraits of life on the ‘front-line’ of trench warfare. Countering childish presuppositions about the ‘order of battle’ each author skilfully recounts the different experiences of trench life at ‘the front’. Focusing upon the business of ‘soldiering’ as opposed to the violence of combat, Manning, in particular, captures the localised nature of life at the front as he documents, for example, the differences between those salients that continued to prosecute the war with vigour and those areas of entrenchment that had declared, locally and informally, the temporary cessation of hostilities. We are, of course, keenly aware that metaphors obscure as they illuminate; divert as they direct (see Morgan, 1997; Schön, 1979). It is important, therefore that we qualify at the outset our metaphorical frame. In constructing our account of the Financial Services Authority around metaphors of trench warfare we do not suggest that relations between the FSA and the industry, which it regulates are characterised by outright hostility. Nor do we suggest that

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www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga 20000008 en 1.

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regulator and regulated, necessarily, take opposing sides in some lesser conflict. Rather our metaphorical account of life at ‘the front’ is intended as an attempt to highlight the local and fractured nature of our experience of organization and, perhaps more importantly, the censorship that, often, accompanies the stories brought from ‘the front’ to those of us who dawdle ‘in the rear’. Our postcards from the front, like Hopkinson’s stories of the front-line of organization, therefore, contrast with the ‘behaviourist’ and ‘cognitivist’ (Tsoukas, 2005) narratives that are typically invoked when matters of change are discussed.2 Crucially our postcards demonstrate the ways in which such ‘orthodox’ (Llewellyn, 1999) texts act, in Schön’s (1979) terms, to ‘name and frame’ reality in ways which ‘make it seem graceful, compelling even obvious’ (Schön, 1979: 265). In an attempt to reveal and thence hamstring the ‘normative leap’ (Schön, 1979: 265) from data to recommendation; from fact to value and from what is to what ought, that occurs, Schön tells us, whenever reality is named and framed, we will employ a narrative account of the FSA. Through this analysis of the FSA we hope to restructure public appreciation of our current financial woes. Yet, as we shall see, our support for narrative approaches is, by no means, unconditional. Indeed we will suggest that the contrast painted between ‘orthodox’ narratives of accounting and management, and the ‘counternarrative’ (Llewellyn, 1999) or ‘discursive’ approach preferred by Tsoukas (2005) is less stark than is often portrayed. Thus we will argue that those seeking to operationalise narrative accounts ‘in the field’ have met, but not faced up to, a key narrative tension. In an attempt to acknowledge this tension we reflect upon the problems associated with accounting for change in context. In this regard our ‘postcards from the front’ might be read as an attempt to: (a) acknowledge the fluidity of organizing endeavours; (b) remind ourselves (and others) of the tensions associated with narrating change and the responsibilities which academics take on board when they choose to render the stories of others. Accordingly, the paper is structured as follows: our first section considers the manner in which narrative perspectives have entered and altered the field of organization and management studies. Here we will reflect upon the manner in which ‘narratology’ (Brown, 2006) challenges, both, our understanding of social organization and our appreciation of academic working practices. In our second section we build upon this narrative appreciation as we turn our attention to the ‘generative’ nature of metaphor. Building upon Schön’s (1979) analysis of problem-framing in social policy, and on Young’s (2001) account of ‘risky metaphors’, we will attempt to demonstrate the ways in which ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ reflect and depend upon the artful construction of narratives. Furthermore we will highlight the manner in which these narratives depend upon the operation of deeper metaphors as they ‘name and frame’ reality. In our third section we highlight a contradiction that exists within those texts that would operationalise narrative perspectives in the context of primary, field, research. Analysing the constitution of the contextual frame we will argue that ‘context’, despite being accorded an active role in the organizational processes subsequently explored (see Pettigrew, 1985), tends to be treated as naturally occurring; as self-evident and uncontentious. Disputing this we will attempt to demonstrate the authorial choices and conventions that fabricate ‘context’ in narrative research. In our fourth section we attempt to build upon the insights garnered in our earlier discussions. Noting the, as yet, underutilised potential of narrative forms that seek an ironic engagement with processes and events (Grant et al., 2004; Llewellyn, 1999) we will attempt to reveal the poetic licence and the political censorship associated with, merely, establishing the nature of our chosen example–the FSA. To this end we offer contrasting accounts of the FSA’s context, which, when taken together, highlight, both, the generative essence of metaphor and the generated nature of context. We then conclude with a brief discussion that reflects upon our attempts to form a narrative appreciation of the ‘changing processes of changing’ (Collins, 2003) in UK financial services. 1.1. Narratives of change In recent years scholars of accounting, organization and management have demonstrated an increasing interest in, and concern for, organizational narratives (Brown, 2000, 2003; Haynes, 2006; Llewellyn, 1999; Young, 2001) and stories (Boje, 1991, 2001; Boyce, 1995; Collins and Rainwater, 2005; Gabriel, 2000). This interest does not, of course, imply that narratives represent, somehow, a new development (see Collins, 2007; Currie and Brown, 2003; Czarniawska, 1997, 1999; Latour, 1987; Sims, 2003). Instead contemporary interest in all things narrative should be understood as reflecting a concern with ‘narratology’ (Brown, 2006)–a belief that the systematic study of narrative theory and narrative practice can precipitate accounts of organizing practices that ‘embrace pluralism and subjectivity’ (Brown, 2006: 732). Viewed in these terms the contemporary upsurge in narrative forms of analysis signifies a growing disillusionment with the

2 Tsoukas (2005) argues that ‘behaviourist’ models of organization suggest that managers act ‘according to habit, instincts, or environmental determination’ (97). Since these behaviourist models regard organizations as being static, change is portrayed as a episodic disturbance. Furthermore behaviourist models assume that change agents stand aloof from the processes of change, which are taken to be uni-directional in character. To support this belief, behaviourist models need, also, to assume that the object undergoing change has a structure that can be known objectively and described by a single mind. Where behaviourist models assume that humans, merely, react to stimuli, ‘cognitivist’ frameworks protest that humans act intentionally. Tsoukas, however, argues that we should not allow this difference to mask the common orientations that these models share. Thus he observes that cognitivist models of change remain episodic, objectivist and monological in nature for they assume that change–as the movement towards a new equilibrium–occurs when managers, as the controlling minds, intervene to alter the cognitive maps, which individuals use to process information.

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‘mainstream’ (Grant et al., 2004) or ‘orthodox’ (Llewellyn, 1999) methodologies and theories that underpin organizational studies. Contrasting ‘mainstream’ perspectives with their ‘narrative’ alternatives, Tsoukas (2005) complains that ‘behaviourist’ and ‘cognitivist’ accounts of change dominate organization studies. These approaches, he warns us, tend to treat organizational change in episodic terms as an exception to the norm of stability (see also Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). Moreover he notes that these renderings of the organized world tend to assume that Olympian actors within the organization who remain, nonetheless, outside the change, can form an objective understanding of the organization’s ‘needs’ that is concentrated in a single point-of view (see also Shotter, 2002). Taking issue with such accounts of change Tsoukas argues that a ‘discursive’, or narrative, appreciation of the dynamic processes of organizing offers clear analytical benefits because it problematises those elements of everyday life–organizations, change, technology, structures and the environment–that ‘behaviourist’ and ‘cognitivist’ accounts treat ‘ostensively’ (Hopkinson, 2003), as stable, uncontested and pre-existing. Within a narrative approach, therefore, the normal analytical orientations and presumptions that bring structure and fixity to ‘the world of things’ are re-cast: nouns become verbs; ‘things’ become ‘practices’; and stable institutions are recast as fluxing milieux (Chia and King, 1998). Consequently organization is construed in dialogic terms as an arena where temporary, and somewhat transient, meaning is ‘continuously constructed through the juxtaposition of competing views’ (Hopkinson, 2003: 1944) and ‘change’ becomes ‘the process of constructing and shaping new meanings and interpretations of organizational activities’ (Tsoukas, 2005: 98). Acknowledging the many roots that might nourish a discursive or narrative approach to the study of organization Rhodes and Brown (2005) suggest that narrative is: 1. 2. 3. 4.

A form of data A theoretical lens A methodological approach Some combination of 1, 2 and 3.

Llewellyn’s (1999) analysis, however, invites us to modify this taxonomy. She agrees with Rhodes and Brown that humans are pre-disposed to think in narrative terms and that academia should take steps to find a place for this, entirely legitimate, form of reasoning. Furthermore she agrees that narrative forms of analysis do, indeed, offer academics and practitioners powerful insights into organizing processes. Elaborating on this second point Llewellyn argues that ‘orthodox’ academic texts seek ‘facts’, ‘truth’, ‘answers’. Consequently, she argues, these texts are structured around a concern with relations and causality. Yet she suggests that, to maintain this concern as a viable project, the authors of ‘orthodox’ narratives must deny their own presence in the text while working to sustain the presumption that relations and relationships are, self-evidently, regular, fixed, and so, predictable. Commenting further on the peculiar place of the author in ‘orthodox’ academic texts, Llewellyn suggests that ‘counternarrative’ approaches should work to reveal the poetic and political choices that shape the collection and arrangement of what are presented as ‘findings’ (see also Power, 1996). Unlike Rhodes and Brown (2005), therefore, Llewellyn is suspicious of ‘data’. Latour (1999) shares this concern. Indeed he voices his suspicion rather eloquently. He suggests that ‘data’ should be rendered differently in order to demonstrate its fabrication. Thus Latour prefers the term ‘sub lata’, which he translates as achievement. Such taxonomic quibbles aside, supporters of ‘counternarrative’ approaches agree that narratology offers a productive mode of inquiry because it reveals our organizations, ourselves and our texts (see Brown, 2006; Haynes, 2006, 2008; Musson and Duberley, 2007) to be multi-discursive effects that are liable to revision and/or contestation. Expanding upon this Rhodes and Brown (2005) suggest that narrative approaches highlight: • Temporality, and so remind us that while we tend to speak of organizations as entities, or stable ‘things’, a narrative approach insists that organization is a fluxing product of space and time. Thus narrative perspectives highlight the local and the peculiar and would tend to eschew any search for a larger and more general truth. • Plurality, and so remind us that the narrative ordering, which portrays organizations in institutional terms is, but, one of the available means of structuring our realities. • Reflexivity insofar as they remind us that, as academics with a licence to speak on matters beyond our own life experiences and biographies, we must always take care to recognise that, in spite of our claims to knowledge, truth and validity, the narratives of organization that we construct remain temporal products; products, indeed, which have tended to manufacture coherence by silencing or subordinating competing perspectives (see also Brown, 2000, 2003; Buchanan, 2003; Collins and Rainwater, 2005). • Subjectivity which, in concert with the other elements in this listing of attributes, serves to remind us that organization is a narrative co-creation; a product of interwoven perspectives and subjectivities (Shotter, 2002). Outlining the practical and analytical benefits, which flow from these elements, Czarniawska (1997, 1999) has argued that narrative approaches facilitate ‘transgressive’ readings of management (see also Fine, 1994) which in seeking to narrate the organization more critically, but less authoritatively (see Wray-Bliss, 2003), remain faithful to the ambiguities of everyday life (Boje, 2001; Weick, 1995). Reflecting this agenda Llewellyn (1999), usefully, employs a ‘counternarrative’ text to explore

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the dynamics of clinical working and the dilemmas, which a new focus upon the demonstration of financial management capabilities throws up for clinicians, especially, in the early years of their careers. She suggests that the orthodox, calculative, narrative, typically applied when academics address such issues, would seek a relationship between the ‘propensity to assume financial responsibilities’ (230) and conceptual variables such as professionalism or classifiable variables ‘such as sex, age and race’ (230). Yet she argues that the search for causality and correlation in such cases is limiting because, in failing to address the problems and processes of clinical working, the calculative narrative is unable to address the paradoxes, which its own inquiry would tend to reveal. Thus Llewellyn observes that younger clinicians tend to exhibit attitudes towards the adoption of financial management responsibilities that are more positive than those of their senior colleagues. However, she argues that any policy, which sought to use junior clinicians as ‘champions of change’ would fail because these medical neophytes recognise that their senior peers will judge them, not on their financial acumen, but on their medical skills. Recognising the calculative text’s failure to account for the dynamics of clinical working, therefore, Llewellyn argues that ‘counternarratives’ facilitate a more intimate relationship with the field, and so, allow us to become aware of the ways in which narratives ‘give form and meaning to organizational themes and events’ (Llewellyn, 1999: 229). Schön’s (1979) analysis of problem-setting is, similarly, pre-occupied with the formulation of themes and events. Focusing upon metaphor he shows, very clearly, the manner in which particular tropes act to shape understanding and action. Countering the arguments of those who suggest that metaphors constitute anomalies in language which need to be cleared out in order to ensure clear and transparent communication, Schön insists upon a point of view ‘which treats metaphors as central to the task of accounting for our perspectives on the world: how we think about things, make sense of reality, and set the problems we later try to solve’ (254). Thus he argues that policy and action follow in the wake of ‘problems-as-set’. Consequently he insists that it is of crucial importance that we consider the processes whereby problems coalesce. For Schön, therefore, purposeful social research pauses to ask ‘how problems are set’ before rushing headlong in the search for a solution. Analysing the work of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), Young (2001) also draws our attention to the enduring consequences of the literary and linguistic formations that constitute our worlds. Recognising, both, the prospective and the selective characteristics of metaphors (see also Morgan, 1997), Young sets out to examine the ways in which such figurative forms of language shape our appreciation of risk and our stance towards it. Analysing the pronouncements of the FASB she argues that this organization’s metaphorical choices encourage us to regard risk as something which, while it should be avoided, might be assessed and, ultimately, controlled. Thus Young argues that metaphors, which portray risk ‘as a quality’ (618) encourage us to ‘view entities and transactions as well as assets and liabilities as containers for risk’ (618). However she also argues that more ‘ontological’ metaphors, which tend to portray risk in terms of burden, exposure, disease or adversary–as things apart–‘suggest that these containers may be emptied’ (618) or transferred. Furthermore Young suggests that ‘ontological’ metaphors of risk ‘have facilitated the explosion in financial instruments which has occurred [since the 1980s]’ (619) before pausing to add–in a deliberately understated fashion–that the directors of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM)3 might have been better served by a metaphor, which construed risk ‘as chaos’ (620). In summary: supporters of that family of approaches labelled, variously, as being ‘narrative’, ‘counternarrative’ and/or ‘discursive’ in nature encourage us to acknowledge and to revisit the authorial conventions that order and stabilise understanding so that we might come to appreciate the hidden, yet dynamic, world of process, flux and ambiguity that has been obscured by metaphors that make a fetish of stability. In so doing exponents of narrative forms of analysis also invite us to review those conventions of academic authoring, which detail who should speak, how, when and why (Haynes, 2006; O’Connor, 1995). Yet, as we shall see, this process of introspection is bounded by a range of practical and political concerns that, effectively, filibuster this debate on voice and perspective in academic authoring. 1.2. Academic authoring Discussing styles of writing Shotter (2002) complains that academic authoring, while working to deny the very craft of writing, actually generates texts that speak about events and others in a ‘monological-retrospective-objective’ fashion. Contrasting this ‘about’ form of reporting with his, preferred, ‘within’ style of writing Shotter argues, not for a new theoretical perspective, but for a new account that allows and notices the ways in which academic work separates itself from the obligations of everyday social exchange and the complexities of daily practice. Keen to establish a new correspondence between ‘the academy’ and ‘the field’, Shotter recommends that academic reporters should ‘unlearn’ their trade so that they might come to recognise the potential of ‘relationally responsive’ writing. In making a case for this approach Shotter suggests the need to write dialogically, from within movements and processes so that we might work to reveal, and to redeem, the conditional, contingent, fracturing stories which, within the flux of organization, compete to be heard. The problem being, however, that Shotter fails to elaborate on the processes that would convey this fractured ‘storyworld’ (Gabriel, 2000). For example, given the constraints of academic reportage how are we to communicate what we know of complexity in an efficient and engaging way? What implications does a ‘within’ style of writing have for the construction and for the communication of primary research? Or more pithily: How can we speak ‘from within’ to those who are, in any sense ‘without’? In order to flesh out these discontents let us consider the question of ‘context’.

3 LTCM was a significant US hedge fund, which failed in 1998. Interested readers may wish to consult The Economist (2009b) for a brief, but lucid, summary of this hedge fund’s development and demise.

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1.3. Accounting for context If we accept that humanity is, in Fisher’s (1987) terms, homo narrens it seems clear that in seeking to narrate or to account for, our experiences, interests and concerns each of us confronts a key problem as we go about our everyday lives. How much background knowledge do we need to communicate to our audience in order to ensure that they will accept our experiences as valid, truthful or even moving? Those who tell stories for a living, such as screenwriters, film-makers and cartoonists have developed an array of tools and techniques for framing narratives (see Goldman, 2001). Discussing comic books, or ‘sequential art’ (Eisner, 2006a), McCloud (1994) and Eisner (2006b) draw our attention to the importance of the opening ‘panels’ of each comic tale, which are designed to locate and to frame the reader’s understanding of time, place and character. In film-making these ‘curtain-raising’ devices often employ ‘frames’ which place the viewer above the scene or ‘pan’ in order to follow a key player through, or across, the stage (Goldman, 2001). As professional exponents of the art of narrative construction academics, too, must take steps to construct an appropriate frame for their accounts of organization (see Buchanan and Dawson, 2007; Collins, 2007). Those working within a ‘behaviourist’ or ‘cognitivist’ tradition (Tsoukas, 2005) have relatively few problems in framing their narratives since such accounts of organization and change proceed from the understanding that ours is a world of things, that may be encapsulated within a simple, monological ‘history’ (see Gabriel, 2000). Those working within a narrative or discursive tradition, however, (should) find it more difficult to frame their concerns, for if organizations are understood as constellations of ‘languagedependent institutional realities’ (Tsoukas, 2005: 98) then there can be no neutral position from which information on the case at hand might, simply, be communicated to the audience. Despite this, narrative accounts of organization and change, that derive their authority from primary data, often, continue to suggest that the context of the problem/organization under study might, simply, be made known to the audience. O’Leary (2003), for example, offers an engaging narrative analysis of change in a regional newspaper that is based upon fieldwork. Yet she frames this narrative analysis of change within an ‘ostensive’ account of the organization’s context, and so, suggests that the organization is to be found within a political economy that is uncontested and pre-existing. Similarly, Buchanan and Dawson (2007) offer an empirical account of change as ‘multi-story process’ which treats organization in a polyphonic fashion, and yet, deals with context in a ‘monological-retrospective-objective’ manner (Shotter, 2002). Llewellyn’s (1999) account of clinical working deals with ‘context’ in just a few words. However these, few, words shape her narrative in very important ways. Indeed, both, the calculative narrative of clinical work and the ‘counternarrative’ preferred by Llewellyn build and depend upon an account of context that has been plotted in the narrow space defined by the axes of ‘autonomy’ and ‘professionalism’. In fairness we should point out that, despite its brevity, Llewellyn’s account of the clinical context of the National Health Service (NHS) is plausible and, broadly, persuasive. But it is not exhaustive and it is certainly not naturally occurring. Indeed an alternative context, and so, a qualitatively different narrative might be envisaged. We could, for example, imagine another scenario wherein ‘calculative’ research lacks, both, rigour and explanatory power. In such a context the ‘bright young things’, that appear throughout Llewellyn’s text, and who would in other circumstances, happily, adopt the mantle of financial management take on a different hue. In this alternative realisation of ‘context’ the ‘calculative’ research agenda is undone at the outset by the cupidity of its respondents. Here the ‘young clinicians’ reappear as individuals who think of their work, only, in narrow clinical terms but who will, nonetheless, engage in ‘social reporting’ when quizzed by managers and researchers about their willingness to take on managerial work. Indeed we could take this further. We could, for example, imagine a scenario that revealed junior clinicians to be sociopaths; manipulative individuals who will simply tell managers, consultants and researchers whatever they need to hear! This final context is, of course, a bleak one. Indeed we must all hope that it is nothing more than a ‘thought experiment’. Yet the serious point remains that academic texts, even when these reflect ‘discursive’ or ‘counternarrative’ sensitivities, build and depend upon notions of context that are, too often, presented as natural and self-evident when they are, more faithfully, rendered as achievements (Latour, 1999)–outcomes of poetic and political choice-making–that reflect distinctive agendas and promote particular forms of action. In the section that follows we take the Financial Services Authority as our case example. In an attempt to reveal the choices that condition our appreciation of financial regulation we offer an examination of the FSA in context. Yet we do not pretend that such contextual knowledge can be, simply, found. Nor do we suggest that it can be communicated, unproblemmatically, in a ‘monological-retrospective-objective’ fashion (Shotter, 2002). Instead we hope to demonstrate the manner in which narrative strategies guide action and policy in this arena. 1.4. The FSA in context This section of the paper offers three narratives; three postcards from the front-line of financial services which, in different ways, seek to account for ‘the FSA in context’. To show the manner in which these accounts of context shape policy and action in academia, in financial services, and in other domains, each rendering of the FSA is presented, here, as if it were the introduction to an academic paper. Yet, despite their surface compliance with the normal conventions of academic writing, closer analysis reveals that each of our postcards makes use of larger narrative resources such as metaphor, characterisation and plot to establish its meaning and effect.

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Reflecting upon these narrative resources Frye (1957) proposes a fivefold typology of form that turns upon the leading actor’s, or if you will, the hero’s, ‘power of action’. This classification contrasts markedly with earlier, classical, formulations. In, perhaps, the earliest sustained analysis of narrative forms Aristotle (1965) argues that a ‘tragedy’ is characterised by a downturn in the fortunes of the leading actor whereas a ‘comedy’ turns upon a improvement in the fortunes of the hero. Acknowledging this classical source, Frye, nonetheless, argues that his, more contemporary classification, corrects an earlier misreading of Aristotle’s Poetics while incorporating key fictional modes such as ‘myth’ which ‘are as a rule found outside the normal literary categories’ (33). Frye’s classification, therefore, deals with: 1. Myth, where the hero is superior in kind to ‘other men [sic] and to the environment of other men’ (33). Here the hero is divine, and so, the tale is ‘a myth in the common sense of a story about god (33 original emphasis). 2. Legend and folk-tales, where the hero is superior in degree to his/her peers and to the environment. Here the normal laws of nature are suspended. Thus Frye tells us that the hero is a ‘romantic’ figure, capable of extraordinary feats of courage and endurance. Furthermore, witchcraft, sorcery and all forms of talking creature are accommodated within this storyworld. 3. The ‘high mimetic’ form. Here the hero is the sort of actor that figures in epic and tragic tales. Thus the hero is portrayed as a human, superior in degree to his/her peers, but subject to the laws of nature. In the ‘high mimetic’ form, therefore, the hero has authority, passions and powers of expression that are far greater that the reader’s, yet what the hero does remains subject to social criticism and to the laws of nature. 4. The ‘low mimetic’ form. Here the hero appears as an ordinary specimen of humanity. S/he has no special blessings or powers. Stripped bare in this way the hero of the ‘low mimetic’ form is ideal, Frye tells us, for roles in comedies and in realistic fiction. 5. Heroes who are plainly inferior to the reader. In this form (which Frye refuses to name) we are encouraged, either, to look down upon or to empathise with a subject who finds him/herself in a frustrating or absurd predicament. Gabriel (2000, 2004) operates with a different typology. His account of the poetic tropes is based, largely, upon oral storytelling in contemporary organizational contexts, and so, turns upon the emotional response of the audience. Thus Gabriel argues that a tale is ‘heroic’ if it invites the audience to take pride in the actions of the lead actor. Conversely a ‘tragic’ tale, for Gabriel, is one where we are moved to feel sympathy for the plight of the main actor. Laughter is central to Gabriel’s notion of comedy. Thus he argues that a comic tale is a story which encourages us to laugh at, or with, the key actor. This contrasts with Frye’s classification of these matters, which is rooted in a more classical appreciation of ‘comedy’, and so, remains stubbornly anchored in a concern with form. Thus, for Frye, a comic tale is a narrative where the hero is incorporated into society whereas a tragic tale is a text that deals with the key actor’s isolation from the commonwealth. Booker’s (2007) analysis of storytelling, however, suggests that, in this summary account of narrative forms, Frye highlights, only, some forms of comic narrative and, in so doing, undersells the nuances and complexities of his own analysis. Noting the existence of darker comic forms, which conclude with the villain being ‘bundled derisively off stage as an unreconciled dark figure’ (120), Booker suggests that: ‘The essence of comedy is always that some redeeming truth has the be brought out of the shadows into the light’ (Booker, 2007: 123 original emphasis). Llewellyn’s (1999) analysis of narratives in accounting and management research introduces more mist to this stage since her account of the ‘romantic’ form, for example, leans towards Gabriel’s (2000) classification while straddling the ‘legendary’ and ‘high mimetic’ forms detailed by Frye (1957). Thus Llewellyn argues that goal-directed romantic plots depict ‘steady progression towards a pre-defined objective, hence [they have] lots of scope for heroes who make decisive and successful interventions [which bring about] a happy ending’ (Llewellyn, 1999; 226). Our first account of context, despite its air of detached observation and academic objectivity, operates as the introduction to a tale that is ‘heroic’ in Gabriel’s (2000) terms, ‘romantic’ in Llewellyn’s (1999) terms and, more clumsily, of the ‘high mimetic’ forms in Frye’s (1957) terms. In this narrative Gordon Brown appears as a man of wisdom. He is cast as a man with clarity of vision; a man who understands the need for a radically different approach to financial regulation. Arguably, however, the force of the narrative stems not from this characterisation but from the root metaphor concerned with change, strategy and action that nourishes the tale. Thus the pre-existing regulatory environment is dismissed as piecemeal, reactive and incremental, and so unsuited to a world that is taken to be complex and fast-paced and which, consequently, demands leadership, proactivity and radical change from its heroes. 1.5. The FSA as triumph The UK financial services industry is one of Britain’s most important business sectors. Prior to the financial ‘meltdown’ of autumn 2008 (see The Economist, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c) the industry employed 1.07 million people and was said to be worth £3.8 trillion (British Bankers’ Association, 2007). Until 2001 Britain’s financial services industry was supervised by a patchwork of regulation conducted under the auspices of the Insurance Companies Act 1982; Building Societies Act 1986; Financial Services Act 1986; Banking Act

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1987 and the Friendly Societies Act 1992 (Dewing and Russell, 2005). The move from this collection of sector-specific regulations to a single regulator was accomplished by means of the Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA, 2000), which unified the regulation of the financial services industry and made the FSA responsible for deposit takers, insurers and investment firms. This policy change was one of the first actions of the Labour government elected in May 1997 (Brown, 1997), however the new, super-regulator did not assume its full powers until December 1, 2001, a date known in the industry as ‘N2’. The creation of this new, single, regulator represents a ‘step change’ in Britain’s system of financial regulation. Significantly this new approach to regulation has been designed to end the reactive and incremental cycle of change that had led, successive, governments to respond to previous financial failures by tweaking elements of the existing patchwork of legislation. Since December 2001 the FSA has worked hard to deliver on the promised step change that was announced by Gordon Brown in 1997. Accordingly, it has–from within the patchwork of pre-existing obligations and practices–developed a unified structure for financial regulation that is public, rational and in accordance with a single set of clear principles. To this end it has developed a risk-based operating framework and an associated risk-assessment (ARROW) process. This ARROW process is designed I) to identify the main risks to the FSA’s statutory objectives as these arise and II) to help formulate an approach to the management of such risks. Through the ARROW process firms are placed in one of four risk categories–High, Medium High, Medium Low or Low–and are subjected to the level of ‘supervisory intensity’ deemed appropriate to their risk categorisation. When calculating each firm’s risk assessment the FSA considers a) the probability that the risk envisaged will crystallise and b) the impact that such an event would have on the FSA’s statutory objectives (Dewing and Russell, 2005). Recognising the important role played by financial services in the UK and recognising, too, the, essential, diversity of financial services we seek to understand the impact of the FSA on the working practices of, both, regulators and the regulated. Our analysis, therefore, builds upon interviews with the Approved Persons, whom the FSA obliges financial institutions to nominate. These individuals play an important role within Britain’s new systems of financial regulation. They are personally responsible to the FSA for ensuring that financial institutions have systems in place to comply with FSA requirements. In addition they are required to disclose any information that the regulator might reasonably expect to have access to. While celebrating the institution and subsequent development of a system that has, for the first time, brought order and standardisation to the regulation of the financial services industry we offer a health-check or, if you will, a progress report on the management of Gordon Brown’s vision. Thus we seek answers to two related questions: Does the role of Approved Persons in the regulation of financial services diminish the concept of corporate governance? And does the on-going relationship between regulator and Approved Person diminish the independence of the regulator in the field, and so, heighten the prospect of regulatory capture? The renderings of context conveyed in the two remaining postcards, however marshal their narrative resources in ways that produce rather different accounts of the FSA and its progenitors and handmaidens. Our second rendering of ‘the FSA in context’, for example, portrays the regulatory regime in a manner, which Gabriel (2000) and Frye (1957), albeit in different ways, would recognise as being ‘tragic’. In Gabriel’s terms this tale is tragic because Gordon Brown and his ministers and civil servants fail in their quest, and so, condemn the other members of the cast–the consumers of financial services: the pensioners, endowment-holders and small-scale stockmarket investors–to financial loss and disappointment. The analyses of Frye (1957) and Booker (2007), however, offer a fuller elaboration of the nature of tragedy, which adds to our reading of this ‘postcard’. Commenting on the difference between ‘heroic’ and ‘tragic’ narratives, Booker (2007) argues that the hero of the ‘epic’ drama, humbly, accepts an ennobling challenge whereas the central figure in a ‘tragic’ narrative succumbs to a nagging temptation, perhaps for power, wealth, immortality or, even, sensual gratification and, in so doing, secures their own downfall. Viewed through the lens provided by Booker our second tale is tragic because it (a) signals Gordon Brown’s isolation from the society that he had hoped would commend his actions as ‘a triumph’–in the classical sense of this term and (b) suggests that the Chancellor has, in fact, brought this failure and his, consequent, isolation upon himself. Thus our second postcard suggests that the FSA has failed in its mission because, key policy-makers succumbed to hubris, and so, confused the map with the terrain of financial services. In common with our first account of context this tragic rendering of the FSA is sustained by a root metaphor, which is pre-occupied with the limits and perils of traditional, conservative thinking. In this account of context, however, the drama becomes a tragedy because the hero’s character flaws undermine their endeavours, and so, prevent the conquest of incrementalism. 1.6. The FSA as failure Gordon Brown announced his intention to bring the regulation of UK financial services under the control of a single, statutory, authority in May 1997 (Brown, 1997). The development of the FSA was said to herald a new era of transparency

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and accountability that would rekindle public trust in financial services in the aftermath of previous failures and scandals. Furthermore the institution of this super regulator was said to signal an end to the cosy, piecemeal, reactive and incremental processes of legislative reform that characterised previous approaches to financial regulation in the UK. Yet the FSA has failed on both counts. It has failed to make financial services accountable to, either, customer or regulator. For example The Economist (2005a, 2005b) has questioned the credibility of the actions taken against those who transgress the requirements of the, new, regulatory framework. Similarly Jopson and Tassell (2006) complain that the FSA has made little progress in tackling ‘insider dealing’. Meanwhile Felsted (2006) and Deg (The Daily Telegraph, 03/12/2006) have both complained that the regulator has had a negative effect on customers. Examining the burgeoning bureaucracy associated with the FSA–its, seemingly endless, stream of up-dates and consultation papers (see for example FSA, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002a, 2002b)–Cave (The Daily Telegraph, 19/11/2003) and Spalek (2001) suggest that the regulator’s approach to financial regulation remains, stubbornly reactive, and painfully incremental. Indeed Cave and Spalek seem to suggest that the FSA has been drafting regulation ‘on the hoof’. In this paper we assess these charges. We ask: How did the FSA get it so wrong? Do we need an FSA? And if we do what might now be done to rebuild trust, transparency and accountability in UK financial services? Our third rendering of the FSA in context is comical in Gabriel’s (2000) terms and, darkly comic in Booker’s (2007) terms, insofar as it depends upon a redeeming truth being brought from the shadows. Indeed our third postcard from the front threatens to turn ‘the mob’ on our politicians and their civil servants (see Frye, 1957) because it incites us to jeer at the failings and foibles of those we had charged with safeguarding and/or advancing our interests. In this narrative the setting changes somewhat. We are transported from the financial locales of Wall Street and Canary Wharf to the ‘corridors of power’ in Whitehall as we consider the conduct of those who have, in this rendering, barrelled illconsidered legislation through the Houses of Parliament. This narrative is nourished, of course, by metaphor. In this instance, however, the metaphor is grotesque. Thus the elected government and the civil servants who furnish it are portrayed as deserving of our ire because they are taken to be selfish, fat and lazy (see Barthes, 2000).

1.7. The FSA as a comedy of errors Gordon Brown announced his intention to unify the regulation of UK financial services under a single regulator in 1997 (Brown, 1997). However it took a further four, long, years for parliament to enact the legislation, necessary, to bring substance to this press release. Analysing the conception and gestation of this regulatory authority Trefgarne (2001) takes a dim view of the FSA. Indeed he has described the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Bill through Parliament as a long-running farce. Noting that the Government, itself, put forward more than 1,000 of the 2,778 amendments tabled Trefgarne observes that the legislation has been ‘dubbed the F S&M Bill’. This paper offers an intimate examination of the development of the Financial Services and Markets Act that builds upon discussions with key civil servants. Following Craig (2008) and Sampson (2004) we will argue that the Bill’s passage through parliament is symptomatic of executive incompetence, which is, itself, a product of the politicisation of the civil service since 1997. In this regard we suggest that the FSA was ‘an accident waiting to happen’ within a larger system of politics and patronage that is self-satisfied, self-serving and overdue for radical reform. . . 1.8. Tropes, fabrications and deformations Each of our postcards from the front offers a different account of the FSA. The characters, the locations and the plots change but key similarities remain. Crucially each narrative treats change and organization ostensively–as factors that will bend to the controlling will of a single mind. . .if only the key players can get their acts together. Furthermore each presumes to speak on behalf of the consumers of financial services or, in the final narrative, for the polity as a whole. Taken individually the postcards constitute what engineers would call ‘noise’. That is to say that taken on their own terms these narratives simply add more voices to the debate that rages in the agora without adding, significantly, to the terms of the discussion. Commenting on the problems that confront those who would proffer new forms of narrative understanding, Llewellyn (1999) is, plainly, aware of this issue. Observing the entrenched power of ‘orthodox’ narratives in the field of accounting and management she notes that comic and tragic narratives–in Gabriel’s sense of these terms–may do very little to rearrange the terms of debate since these may be easily incorporated within rather conservative agendas. Indeed she observes that ‘[t]ragic or comic plots are useful in management research as precursors to the main theme’ (226) of heroic management endeavour at its ‘steady progression towards a pre-defined objective’ (226). The critical review of the ‘turnaround’ of Sear Roebuck and Company undertaken by Collins and Rainwater (2005) offers a concrete example of this tendency. Thus Collins and Rainwater demonstrate that the Harvard Business Review (see Rucci et al., 1998) establishes the ‘heroic’ nature of this tale by casting the Chief Executive of Sears as a single-minded and determined leader who has dedicated himself to reversing the sad decline of a key American institution.

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Recognising the prevalence and the entrenchment of such conservative tendencies we propose that our renderings of the FSA should be read together and, as far as possible, all-at-once. For when we place our postcards together they change character. In this form, viewed within a single frame they constitute a ‘signal’ rather than just ‘noise’. Of course the narratives do continue to produce some ‘noise’ insofar as they act to make us aware of the dissent and ambiguity that suffuses the actions of the regulator. Yet our postcards also add to the terms of the debate in a qualitative sense because the engagement we seek with the FSA through the juxtaposition of texts is ironic (Grant et al., 2004; Llewellyn, 1999) rather than, simply, magisterial. In this regard our postcards from the front-line of financial services transgress the everyday conventions of academic writing and the familiar problematics of orthodox management and accounting research. Indeed they block and divert the search for a solution, as this is commonly understood, for they have been designed to reveal the fluxing nature of organization and the creative ways in which authors, nevertheless, act to fix actors, actions and understanding through and within their texts. Consequently our ‘changing narratives’ have been constructed to demonstrate the political and poetical choices that structure our identification of ‘problems’, our promotion of solutions and our diagnosis of the contexts within which these facets of organized life co-exist. Taken as a whole, therefore, we hope that our analysis of context, metaphor and narrative might encourage further reflection on the choices that inform and yet deform our writing even as we seek a discursive relationship with the worlds and experiences of others. 1.9. Concluding comments Readers of academic texts are, typically, interested in narratives that reflect a concern with ideas, concepts and processes that have currency and which excite controversy (Collins, 2007). Recognising this our narrative has been constructed to reflect these features. We have, therefore, placed the FSA at the centre of our methodological reflection because it stands within the hub of an unprecedented financial crisis. Yet, as we have attempted to make sense of this crisis, a problem, which we have cast as productive of controversy, has emerged: What is the FSA? What is it for and to what does it relate? In attempting to respond to these questions we turned to ‘narratology’ (Brown, 2006) and to Shotter’s (2002) call for a ‘within’ style of academic writing since we recognise the essential fluidity of social organization and the processes of filtration and censorship that tend to occur when academics seek to account for the worlds and experiences of others. In principle Shotter offers an outline manifesto to those who would essay a narrative rapprochement with ‘the field’. Yet his manifesto, while seductive, remains incomplete since it offers the jobbing fieldworker little guidance on how to write from within processes for those who remain without. To illustrate the unacknowledged methodological problems thrown up by Shotter’s advice we have shown the ways in which those who have attempted to employ narrative approaches to ‘get beneath the skin’ of the organizational processes revealed through their ‘primary’ research have, often quite inadvertently, produced ‘ostensive’ accounts of context, which clash with their ‘counternarrative’ sensibilities. To highlight the fabricated nature of context, and to demonstrate the manner in which these constructions establish ‘conditions of possibility’ (Foucault, 1977; Llewellyn, 1999; 229) we have sought an ironic engagement with the FSA, which we hope might stimulate further methodological reflection and development in accounting and management research. Thus we have reproduced renderings of the FSA in three contexts, which reflect Schön’s (1979) and Young’s (2001) analyses of the consequences of linguistic choices and literary flourishes. These ironic little proto-essays do not, of course, exhaust our contextual options for the FSA. They are, however, designed to highlight the authorial options, orientations and, indeed, the censorship processes that can persist within, both, ostensive and narrative reports from the front-line of organization. Yet having highlighted the methodological issues which academics face as they narrate the stories of others we do not pretend to offer any glib, or clear-cut, solutions. We are, however, keen to ensure that, that which is currently viewed as unorthodox does not come to be labelled as, merely, heterodox. Accordingly we have one, modest, suggestion that might, at least, prolong a conversation in this arena. Schön (1979), as we have seen, has argued that thought and action are, inescapably, shaped by metaphor. Yet he insists that thought and action need not be subservient to metaphor in this relationship. Indeed he suggests that a critical awareness of the generative nature of metaphor might be used to facilitate a form of ‘reciprocal inquiry’ that would meet the requirements of the approach laid down by Shotter (2002). Thus we suggest that a critical account of metaphor and narrative should be used to facilitate a mode of research wherein reciprocating rights and responsibilities are cultivated across perspectives; among researchers and between researchers and researched. And to this end we propose that a small volume of papers, each essaying the FSA from within a different realisation of context should be commissioned. Such a volume would, we hope, encourage authors (a) to reflect upon the difficulties associated with applying narrative perspectives ‘in the field’ and (b) to realise and to discuss, openly, the poetic and political preferences that shape their renderings of the FSA. In summary, therefore, we hope that our analysis of the ‘front-line’ of financial services might be read as an attempt to engender further public reflection on the current banking crisis; on the nature of the FSA; on the explanatory power of context; and on the craft(iness) of academic reportage.

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