The Multiple Logics of Conformity and Contrarianism: The Problem With Investment Banks and Bankers

Abstract

The pressures of conformity within a highly institutionalized organizational field such as corporate and investment banking in the United States are formidable. Coercive, cognitive, and normative pressures often move the herd in the same direction. Paradoxically, each firm believes it is unique and can manage future strategic actions, as it collectively runs off a cliff. This process is not bound in time or space, as researchers grounded in experience have suggested that costly financial bubbles have been common to banking organizational fields in both recent and ancient history. This override of learning may possibly be explained by mutually reinforcing institutional and organizational logics and processes. The author also argues that an awareness of the underlying conformist logics of financial mania, institutional, and configuration theory may explain why some organizations manage to be nonconformist or contrarian. These different firms observe this reliance on powerful multiple logics of conformity and resist them intendedly and unintendedly. The author calls this process contrarianism.