How ‘matter matters’ for morality: The case of a stock exchange

Abstract

While matter clearly matters to organization theory, its absence from the study of organizational ethics is striking. Despite the obdurate materiality of the workplace, critical scholarship on organizations and morality sees ethics as interpersonal, subjective and embodied. Organizations, meanwhile, are characterized by moral anomie and dysfunction. This article advances our understanding of the material entanglements of organizational morality, drawing on the science and technology studies inflected study of markets to show how moral orders arise in dialectic between the social and the material. It argues that moral orders are entangled in the material infrastructures of organizations. Its empirical case is the founding and development of a small-company focused stock exchange, OFEX, launched in London in 1995, accessed through elite interviews and documentary work. The article seeks to develop our understanding of morality in critical organization studies, to further defend the Weberian notion of ‘ethics of office’ by emphasizing the sociomaterial dimension of organizational morality, and to contribute to an ongoing renaissance of the study of morality as a sociological phenomenon. There are implications for managers and engaged scholars alike.

In the Name of Transparency: Organizing European pharmaceutical markets through struggles over transparency devices

“…Governors of markets have had a longstanding interest in transparency both as a ‘disciplinary’ and ‘enabling’ tool – to restrict their own influence in market affairs and to simultaneously hold market actors accountable (Grossman, Luque, & Muniesa, 2008). Yet, far from being a natural corollary of a well-designed market, transparency has to be carefully worked into it – even in those markets said to be ‘liquid’ (Roscoe, 2022). From this viewpoint, opacity and transparency do not designate qualities of markets themselves, but different ‘transparencies’ become congealed in specific market configurations that have material consequences on the distribution and enactment of market power.…”

“…We highlight that visions of transparency are materialized through what Harvey, Reeves and Ruppert (2013) called transparency devices, and we investigate the role that these devices play in the organization of markets. Our study contributes to research that moves beyond normative views of market transparency (Roscoe, 2022; Roscoe & Willman, 2021) by analysing the struggles that occur around competing visions of transparency and, crucially, by tracing how these struggles shape markets.…”

Making Markets Material: Enactments, Resistances, and Erasures of Materiality in the Graduate Labour Market

“…Globalfinco’s hackathon is a complex human and non-human assemblage and, like all such assemblages, is freighted with norms and politics (Roscoe, 2022). Shorn of its original subversive associations with illicit cyber-activity, it is a culturally mainstream event, one of many organised and sponsored by private firms, governments and civil society organisations.…”

The Effect Of Tax Rates And Dividend Policy On Share Price In The Banking Sector Listed On The Indonesia Stock Exchange For The 2017-2019 Period

“…If the personal tax rate for income received in the form of dividends is greater than the personal income tax rate for capital gains, then shareholders will prefer the company not to pay dividends. They will be more profitable if the funds remaining with the company are paid for through repurchases of outstanding shares (Jamei, 2017;Jongadsayakul, 2021;Nurohman et al, 2016;Roscoe, 2022;Widuri et al, 2019). A company's stock repurchase can be seen as another form of dividend, because both are the company's main way of distributing the cash it already has.…”