Research Seminar 14th January

Abstract

Most accounting studies on the emergence or transformation of risk categories focus on the performative theorization of risk categories, i.e., they focus on the specific time-space bound practices of risk management involving different actors and their actions as a source for new risk categories. However, in the last two decades, risk-based regulations in the banking sector have become a prominent source of the transformation of risk categories, representing an ostensive theorization of risk categories. However, despite the growing prominence of risk-based regulations and their ostensive theorization of the existing risk categories devoid of the time-space of practices, actors and their actions; there is a paucity of research on this issue. The few studies that do elaborate on this issues focus on the inherent meaning of control or freedom in the regulations themselves. In the backdrop of this debate, this paper focuses on a central research question: how does the ostensive theorization of a risk category is established during the enactment of risk-based regulations. Following Foucault's (2005) ideas on discontinuity and the sociological studies on the emergence of conceptual categories, we study the Swedish risk-based regulation of short-term liquidity risk and changes in its meaning over the last two decade. Our findings highlight the three different phases through which the existing meaning and calculation approaches of the short-term liquidity risk were developed in its ostensive definitions in the regulatory discourses.

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Vikash Sinha

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