The significance of boring FinTech: technology imaginaries and value vernaculars in established banks

ABSTRACT

How do financial professionals work with technological visions of the future of banking? Such visions are prompted by the technology sub-sector known as FinTech, a broad phenomenon of start-ups and technological innovations aimed at financial services markets, characterised by claims that banking could be radically different. Drawing on pragmatic studies of finance and Cornelius Castoriadis’s theory of creative imagination, this paper explores the imaginative limits of technology innovation in established banks. Through analysis of semi-structured interviews with banking and FinTech professionals, observations at industry events, and analysis of documents obtained from banks, the findings highlight an interplay between dominant vernaculars of ‘strategic value’ and organisational imaginaries of traditional banking. This interplay delimits the boundaries of technological imagination through reshaping the moral and temporal claims of FinTech disruption discourse. This entails a move from the moral modality of what should be, found in FinTech disruption narratives, to a modality of what can be; a shift from the dramatic narratives of changing powerful structures, drawing on the discursive repertoires of social movements and religious myths, to the non-heroic, pragmatic expectations of the art of the possible.

KEYWORDS:

• Disruption
• imaginaries
• value creation
• fintech
• expectations
• innovation

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the JCE editorial team and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments throughout the review process. He is also very grateful to Ursula Plesner, José Ossandón, Lise Justesen, and the participants of the EGOS 2020 Conference subtheme ‘The Politics and Ethics of Digitalizing Organizations’ for valuable comments on previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Castoriadis explores this notion with diverse examples including early Christian imaginaries of God and the institution of Abrahamic laws, as well as examining imaginaries tied to modern bureaucratic institutions.

2 Castoriadis conceptualises this through the notion of ‘social imaginary significations,’ a process through which the already ‘instituted’ forms existing in a society are in a dynamic relation with new ‘instituting’ forms, they are inextricably entwined and it is only through established forms that the radically transformative potential of creative imagination exist and ‘gains flesh’ (Castoriadis 1987, p. 163).

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Spar Nord Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Jack Kværnø-Jones

Jack Kværnø-Jones is a PhD Fellow at Copenhagen Business School. His research explores the imaginaries, discourses, and material infrastructures constituting the FinTech sector in Denmark, opening the concept of disruption to the complexities of these empirical contexts. Jack's research lies at the intersection of science and technology studies, organisation studies, and anthropology.