Cooking the Books? Four Manuscripts on Wall Street Management and Mismanagement

As much as financial markets are nowadays dominated by institutions such as banks, funds, exchanges, or central banks, the management literature has lacked a direct focus on the organizational dimension of financial markets. As a result, there is unique potential for new management analyses of Wall Street that draw on management constructs and traditions such as sensemaking, institutional theory, practice theory, and materiality. We believe that management scholars can provide important insights into the ‘grand challenge’ of making financial organizations a force for good. The present symposium aims to advance along this path by showcasing the potential for management scholars to make a central contribution to our understanding of the financial sector. All four selected contributors build on the core idea that finance is comprised by organizations and thus shaped by organizational processes and practices — hence, worthy of being explored by management scholars. The symposium introduces a key novelty in its format. All four research projects showcased in it are related to books, whether in the form of monographs or edited volumes. The decision to bring together four book authors stems from a growing interest in research books in management. Thus, in this symposium, we also invite a reflection on the distinct advantages and possibilities of research monographs as scholarly outlets.