Date of Award
2017
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Sociology
Abstract
It is often argued that the market, with its "invisible hand," displays an inherent bent towards maximizing utility and delivering the "greatest good to the greatest number." Faith in the market to act as benevolent overlord is not only misguided but, as revealed during the Great Recession, a fantasy. Analyzing emails made public following the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, this paper considers the organizational culture within Lehman Brothers leading up to history's largest bankruptcy in order to emphasize the role of interaction within an outcome otherwise uncritically categorized as the unavoidable product of market fluctuations. Demonstrating how Lehman employees adopted the institutional myth of market efficiency and inhabited it with a distinct organizational arrogance, this paper challenges readers to reimagine the Lehman Bankruptcy not as an inevitable collapse ordained by "market efficiency," but as the result of individuals collectively enacting organizational modifications of a well known and widely accepted institutional myth.
Recommended Citation
Burr, William Howard, "The Devil's in the Emails: A Sociological Examination of Organizational Failure" (2017). Master's Theses. 3666.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/3666
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2017 William Howard Burr
