Organizational tensions arising from mandatory data exchange between the private and public sector: The case of financial services

This paper examines the organizational tensions arising from mandatory data exchange initiatives between private and public organizations. The focus is the UK financial services sector, which is required to monitor and report on customer identities and transactions under the country's Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Terrorist Finance (AML/CTF) regulations. The transferred data are generated from existing organizational activities, systems, processes and working patterns; we examine how government demands for such data affect commercial priorities, customer relationships and working patterns in the sector. We adopt an exploratory approach to investigate this phenomenon, consisting of 16 in-depth interviews, analysis of documents and two case studies. Three contributions are made. First, we use remediation theory to show that existing organizational arrangements are reconfigured at multiple analytical levels, creating tensions between the organizations’ commercial and compliance roles. Second, we establish the information flow as an appropriate unit of analysis in the study of data exchange mechanisms and reveal the flows that characterise AML/CTF compliance for financial services organizations. Finally, we adopt a ‘set theoretic’ perspective on multi-level organizational research, to argue that the multi-level effects of this regulation can be examined in parallel.

Anti-money laundering, Counter-terrorist finance, Data exchange mechanisms, Financial services, information flows, Multi-level analysis, Remediation

10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119996

0040-1625

Ball, Kirstie

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Canhoto, Ana

80f5ac44-3efa-405c-a9aa-316d21e0b5bc

Daniels, Elizabeth

1cf51187-36bd-49e0-a8e8-358318f70636

Dibb, Sally

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Meadows, Maureen

84aebb38-2b28-4521-80b4-49d11038cf6b

Spiller, Keith

d0ea9172-6ef6-4f80-9f34-2285b41ab237

June 2020

Ball, Kirstie

af8ba32e-659b-4e69-b41b-1e869dbdeb54

Canhoto, Ana

80f5ac44-3efa-405c-a9aa-316d21e0b5bc

Daniels, Elizabeth

1cf51187-36bd-49e0-a8e8-358318f70636

Dibb, Sally

9ab07d67-cb2d-4cd7-8030-f626757c158b

Meadows, Maureen

84aebb38-2b28-4521-80b4-49d11038cf6b

Spiller, Keith

d0ea9172-6ef6-4f80-9f34-2285b41ab237

Ball, Kirstie, Canhoto, Ana, Daniels, Elizabeth, Dibb, Sally, Meadows, Maureen and Spiller, Keith (2020) Organizational tensions arising from mandatory data exchange between the private and public sector: The case of financial services. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 155, [119996]. (doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119996).

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TFSC remediation paper accepted Final with author information - Accepted Manuscript

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Submitted date: 4 January 2020

Accepted/In Press date: 4 January 2020

e-pub ahead of print date: 16 March 2020

Published date: June 2020

Additional Information: Funding Information: Kirstie Ball is Professor in Management at the University of St Andrews where she is director and founder of CRISP, the center for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy. She is Research Fellow at the Surveillance Studies centre, Queen's University, Canada and Visiting Professor at the centre for Business in Society at Coventry University. Her research focuses on surveillance in and around organizations and her work has been funded by ESRC , EPSRC , SSHRC (Canada), The Leverhulme Trust and the European Framework Programme. She co-edits the Routledge Studies in Surveillance book series and co-founded the journal Surveillance and Society. Funding Information: Sally Dibb is Professor of Marketing and Society at Coventry University. She has visiting posts at The Open University, Warwick Business School and University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on the role of data in addressing societal challenges and supporting strategic decision making. Sally has received funding from the ESRC, InnovateUK, European FP7 and EU KIC programmes, The Leverhulme Trust, Academic of Marketing, amongst others. She has served twice as a panel member for the UK Research Excellence Framework and as international panel member for the Norwegian Research Council. Publisher Copyright: © 2020

Keywords: Anti-money laundering, Counter-terrorist finance, Data exchange mechanisms, Financial services, information flows, Multi-level analysis, Remediation