Bullish on Uncertainty

Bullish on Uncertainty provides rare insight into the secretive world of Wall Street high finance, which has shaped influential business, governmental, and cultural leaders and keeps supplying new business practices to other organizations in dynamic and complex environments. The book studies how two highly successful Wall Street investment banks managed the uncertainty of their high-velocity environment through different work practices. One bank chose the familiar route of decreasing bankers' uncertainty. The other bank used the novel and effective practice of increasing bankers' uncertainty to make them more alert to new situations and more likely to draw on the bank's entire range of resources. The book explains why the two banks differed in their ability to notice market changes and adapt to them. It thereby illuminates current events in the financial markets. Through vivid accounts of newcomers during their first two years, the book traces how the two banks' initially similar participants were transformed into fundamentally different kinds of persons by the different kinds of work practices in which they participated.

Author: Alexandra Michel, Stanton Wortham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/10/2008
Pages: 278
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780521869966

About the Author
Michel, Alexandra: - Alexandra Michel is assistant professor in the Department of Management and Organization at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Before receiving a Ph.D. from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania and beginning her academic career, she worked as an investment banker in Goldman Sachs' mergers and acquisitions department, and she worked under Goldman's Chief of Staff, helping the firm implement a new approach to executive education, with topics that included leadership, banker development, and building client relationships. Her interdisciplinary publication record includes such journals as Administrative Science Quarterly, Theory and Psychology, and Learning Inquiry.Wortham, Stanton: - Stanton Wortham is the Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Learning Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2006).