Diversity, Contestation and Critical Performativity in the UK Financial Services Sector

Abstract

Taking three UK-based financial organizations as the empirical focus of our investigation, this paper contributes to debates around the explanatory and critical significance of ‘alternative’ practices. We build on, and extend, a growing body of work on alternative organizations and critical performativity, arguing that a ‘nodal approach’ can address a number of deficits characterizing such studies: a ‘normative deficit’ and an ‘operationalization deficit’. A nodal approach advances a fine-grained conceptual framework that facilitates ‘a reading for difference’, enabling comparisons to be made across and within alternative organizations. Using the three cases as our main empirical referent, we explore a range of concrete nodal constellations, foregrounding resultant tensions and contradictions. In doing so we open up avenues for closer examination of the normative dimension of alternative practices, including those situated within 'mainstream' organizations.