On the Fundamental Significance of Violations of Norms Financial Activities

Abstract

The financial theory describes the norms of financial activity without regard to their practical realization. The activity approach at the early stages of its development was based on the paired concept of «norm — realization». This pair is the basis of the scheme of cultural norms-ways of activity transmission and their practical realization in social situations. This scheme began to set the ontological principle of any activity, including financial activity: it was believed that if norms are not implemented somewhere, then there is no activity, but social behavior. V.Ya. Dubrovsky was the first methodologist working in the activity approach to draw attention to the problematic point of the above scheme: in it, the norms of activity must also be 100 % fulfilled. In other words, the scheme of activity reproduction had an ideal character. And since in practice there are numerous violations of norms, including financial ones, of activity (unintentional errors, intentional fraud, corruption, etc.), therefore the concept of activity required ontological elaboration of the real plan of activity. The article shows two principal points of such refinement: 1) the concept of «norm of activity» is extended to the concept of «standard of activity», which should include typical violations of norms and sanctions to their violators; 2) in the situations of standards implementation the activity positions of social control over compliance with the standards of activity are highlighted. The contribution of the authors of the article consists in the interpretation of these two points in relation to financial activity, which is institutional in nature. The article shows the directions of further financial research and development.