Dirty Hands and Dirty Money: Towards a Framework for Fighting Pollution in Finance
Author:
Mar Pérezts
Edition:
5th edition (2014/2015)
Keywords:
Compliance / Corruption
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Whenever I tell people that my research focuses on ethics in ban-king and finance (Pérezts, 2012, Pé-rezts, Bouilloud & Gaulejac, 2011; Pérezts & Picard 2014; Pérezts, Faÿ & Picard, 2015) I usually get a cy-nical grin followed by “Ethics in banking? Ha! Haven’t you read the newspapers lately?” As if banking and finance were inherently immoral or at least a-moral, and I was wasting my time (Pérezts, 2014).
But despite the persistent irony, a certain societal fascination for these issues seems equally persistent. Sin-ce the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2007, no fewer than seven major films have been released whichques-tion the ethics of the financial world: Capitalism, a love story by M. Moore in 2009, Wall Street 2: money never sleeps by O. Stone in 2010, Krach, by F. Genestal in 2010, Cleveland vs. Wall Street by J.S. Bron in 2010; Insi-de Job by Charles Fergusson in 2010, Margin Call by J.C. Chandor in 2011, and The Wolf of Wall Street, by M. Scorsese in 2013. This is but one manifestation of the media frenzy around this subject, which can also be found in cartoons, television se-ries and comedy sketches, somewhat revealing our fascination (or maybe obsession) with ethical issues in bu-siness in general (Trevino & Nelson, 2007) and in finance in particular (cf. Godechot 2011b).