Mapping the cultural grammar of reflexivity: the case of the Enron scandal

Abstract

Theorists of political economy, institutional sociology and late modernity have recently embraced ‘reflexivity’ as a pivotal concept in their accounts of change in capitalist society and institutions. Despite significant differences between them, these theorists jointly promote an image of reflexivity as a culturally unstructured or disembedded reflection upon problematized conventions and beliefs. The paper turns this joint theoretical image into an empirical question. Focusing on the reflexive discourse sparked by the Enron scandal, it offers a grounded analysis of Enron-related articles published in the popular American BusinessWeek in 1997–2007. The analysis examines the rise and fall of the Enron icon and the sense-making process that followed its bankruptcy which, at that time, was the biggest in history. It shows that reflexivity had an underlying cultural grammar that paralleled that pertaining to the management of money. Its four primary principles were: minimizing ‘costs’ entailing loss of discursive status or persuasive effect; maximizing the use-value of a core truism; quantitatively cueing morality; and conducting discursive competitions. Capitalist reflexivity, the case study proposes, is based on an underlying grammar cast in the shape of its own beliefs.

Keywords:

• reflexivity
• Enron
• capitalist culture
• financial scandals

Acknowledgements

I thank Economy and Society's anonymous reviewers for their comments. I also thank Michael Shalev, Gideon Kunda and Daniella Arieli for their suggestions. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 568/08).

Notes

1. By ‘discourse’ I refer to a particular way of defining, describing and narrating both events and knowledge about events. The concept of ‘culture’ is related to that of ‘discourse’, although as they are used here the latter is more directly concerned with the content of meaning, the former with its underlying patterning and organization.

2. This analysis includes content selected by an academic computerized search engine. Note that until 2005 BusinessWeek customized its domestic edition for Europe and Asia. Articles referenced by the search engine as belonging to these customized English-language editions are included in the analysis (less than 10 per cent of the total amount of articles, some of which were also published, often with slight changes, in the domestic edition). The analysis does not cover BusinessWeek Online and the local language editions that were published with regional partners since 2005.

3. http://finance.google.com/finance?q=business+week&hl=en (22 June 2009).

4. http://onlinepresrom.net/businessweek/ (25 June 2009)

5. This study does not examine BusinessWeek itself, the way it functions or the way its audience receives it. Nor does it examine actual Enron events as existing outside their media representation.

6. Different search engines select slightly different numbers of articles in this date range. I began the analysis with one search engine and then updated the dataset according to the larger citations list (consisting of 1118 items) of LexisNexis. The difference was approximately eighty items. Note, that data did not include ‘readers’ reports’. The databases used for referencing are Gale Academic Onefile and LexisNexis.

7. The Californian crisis regained attention months later, when evidence was found indicating that Enron (and other traders) manipulated its deregulated market. Thus the crisis returned to centre stage as a means for augmenting the sense of Enron's deviancy, after it was possible to use it as such.

8. This discussion does not concern ‘actual’ blame but blame discourse. For example, when claiming that the articles repeatedly directed blame discussions away from the market, I am not debating whether or not market blame existed, but pointing out that the discourse always tended to evolve this way.

9. It is interesting to note that a rare pro-regulation article sustained this basic blame construct, sanctifying market ideals by posing Enron as an ‘assault on the very heart of capitalism’ (4 February 2002b).