Stanley, Liz and MacKenzie Davey, Kate and Symon, Gillian (2014) Exploring media construction of investment banking as dirty work. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management 9 (3), pp. 270-287. ISSN 1746-5648.
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Abstract
Purpose - To explore how two kinds of UK-based media positioned investment banking as dirty work during the financial crisis, thereby engaging in moral enterprise (Becker 1963) and contributing to the shaping of society’s normative contours (Cohen 1972). - Design/methodology - We employ rhetorical analysis to explore how newspaper editorials and an online blog portray investment banking as tainted between April 2008 and October 2009. - Findings – These media sources construct the values and behaviours of investment bankers, rather than the tasks of their occupation, as morally tainted. Through specific rhetorical strategies they advance three key arguments: bankers are morally tainted because their wealth is excessive; because their wealth is not earned; and because they are selfish and materialist. - Originality/value – In investigating media designations of investment banking as dirty work, the paper addresses two aspects of dirty work which are underexplored. Firstly it examines a high-prestige occupation and secondly investigates the construction and attribution of taint to a previously untainted occupation. It makes two methodological contributions to the literature: contributing to the nascent interest in the media’s construction of dirty work (for example, Grandy and Mavin 2012); and using rhetorical analysis to study the construction of taint.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | Dirty work, rhetoric, media, stigmatisation, bankers, financial crisis |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School |
| Depositing User: | Kate Mackenzie-Davey |
| Date Deposited: | 18 Sep 2014 10:14 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:11 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/10042 |
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