Quantitative technologies and reflexivity: The role of tools and their layouts in the case of credit risk management

Abstract

The development of quantitative technologies is increasingly challenging professional practices and raises questions about whether and how organizations may foster plural and reflexive practices. In this paper, we outline the role played by tools and their layouts in this process. Tools can sustain the enactment of plural views, logics and evaluative principles. However, it is not clear why, in some cases, designing or using these tools triggers intractable conflicts instead of helping to sustain reflexivity in a “productive” way. To address this issue, we explore the case of a French bank that introduced in its credit management processes a new statistical approach of risk management, which conflicted with the professional approach that prevailed at the time. Relying on Boltanski’s (2011) work on critique, we highlight how “productive” reflexivity emerges, not only from critique, but from a dynamic relationship between critique, confirmation and practical action. This framework allows us to bring a fresh look at the layouts identified in the literature as able to sustain pluralism by exposing their differences regarding whether and how they may contribute to trigger reflexivity. We especially show that, when quantitative technologies are involved, the creation of compromising accounts may prompt dynamics of escalating conflict, while combinations may help organising a pluralism of modes of evaluation that nurtures reflexivity without inhibiting action. Moreover, our study shows how, in credit risk management, quantitative technologies can be implemented, even in the most operational processes, without bringing about an unreflexive “illusion” of control.