La oralidad en el nuevo proceso laboral peruano

As described in Chapter Five, institutions consist of fragmented and contested parts (see also Townley, 1993) but have an appearance of linear evolution (Foucault, 2002) that makes it possible to study them from the purposive (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006) or

constructed (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008) actions of the seemingly independent individuals (Meyer & Jepperson, 2000). The purposive or constructed action strands in institutional theory, as argued in Chapter Four, see institutions as if they exist a-priori with set boundaries that somehow embed in them opportunities for the actions of the individuals to limit and expand these boundaries. In other words, within these strands institutions are presented to us as if they “are fixed, essentialist, pre-political and unique” (Peci et al., 2009, p. 87) and they are created, maintained and disrupted in the favour of the agents who work for their benefits (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). The exaggerated role of the individuals in the process of institutionalization is argued by Gutting (1989, pp. 229-230), while discussion on the history of ideas in an archaeological analysis comes from the discourses which place individuals at the centre of the history, individuals without whom the process could not be actualized nor the history completed. Such a conceptualization of the historical role of individuals limits the analytical capabilities. The history established through such an analysis will require us to locate and demonstrate these individuals as the “means of transmission.” A history of institution, established under the assumption, will read as if “there is a development of an author from work to work, the influence of one author on another, and that generalized influence of all on all that is called the spirit of an age”(Gutting, 1989, pp. 230, emphasis in

original). A power/knowledge perspective challenges such a conception of an institution and its history and locates the constitution and limitations therein by emphasising the power relations in existence in the wider context of the society (Friedland & Alford, 1991) where the role of individual is not as individual but a subject of the institutions that exists across the Space, Text and Practice of an order.

Institutions, as argued earlier in Chapter Four, guide the subject towards an

appropriate set of actions within their domain through three facets, Space, Text and Practice. In this thesis, I argue that by looking at these three facets of the discourse we can produce an account of the characteristics of the subject position being promulgated by an institution, and tracing the subject position through its history we can understand both the process of change within an institution as well as the creation of it. Institutions, as argued earlier, are created and changed through constant and continuous interactions between different subject positions, originating from competing and collaborating institutions. These subject positions

form new understandings which provide the opportunity for the creation of an institution as well as for deinstitutionalizing old methods of doing within an institution to provide an opening for alternative methods. Institutions once created/changed provide an understanding of its subject by disseminating a certain set of actions. This disseminated set of actions, however, as explained earlier in Chapter Four, can only elicit, promote or attribute the qualities it seeks to incorporate in its subject and as such stays different from the actual

action of the subject (Dean, 1999), which makes it possible for further change in institutionalized ways of doing things.

Thus as argued earlier, we can obtain a detailed analysis of the process of change by looking at the three facets of discourse i.e. Space, Text and Practice. Dividing the discourse into its facets allows us to contextualize the relations between competing and collaborating discourses through which we can identify the conditions of possibilities for alternative claims 146

to truth to institutionalize. In terms of the Text facet of the discourse of academic finance, studied here through an institutional analysis of EMH, we can identify the following key Space, Text and Practice aspects from a reading of the standard history developed earlier.

6.3.1 Space

Space, as described earlier, can be defined as the facet of discourse that is associated with location. It thereby consists of discourses related to political identity, religion, economic orientations, family structure, gender relations etc. For the purposes of this chapter, in terms of Space we can identify American business schools, specifically the University of Chicago and GSIA, as the place where EMH originated. In addition to the schools, the data used and empirical studies carried out to test and evaluate EMH were from stock exchanges and other financial markets located in America. I discussed the discourses related to business schools in the previous chapter in detail and provided an explanation as to the conditions of possibility for modern finance. Here my main emphasis will be on regulatory and legal as well as the practitioner aspects of financial markets.

6.3.2 Text

Text is the facet of discourse that outlines the norms and standards for interactions and can be both written and unwritten. As outlined earlier in Chapter Five, the Text for academic inquiry of the time was guided by scienticism. From the standard history we can locate that at the time of origin of EMH, the dominant academic understanding of the price movement was considered to be random and most of the scientific evidence was suggesting that prices move in accordance with Brownian motion. As argued earlier, for a Text to institutionalize it usually builds upon and couples with other texts of the time. With that in mind I will also discuss how other theories of the time helped, and were in turn assisted by

EMH leading to its institutionalization as the dominant theoretical base that guides our corporate and market governance and regulations.

6.3.3 Practice

Practice is the facet of discourse that defines the response for a subject position within the Space of an institution based on the Text. In terms of practice, we can see that EMH and its rhetoric presented a direct challenge to the investment practice of the time. While investment managers and brokers of the time were of the opinion that they could outsmart the market and make profits by utilizing their skills, EMH provided an opposite view and argued that investment managers cannot outsmart the market but maybe they are lucky in earning more than the market. Specifically I will be concentrating on how EMH led to a criteria that could be used to judge the investment manager performance and how the same criteria became the basis of the index funds.

The remaining of this chapter expands on the themes presented in this section and develops an institutional analysis.