Search results

This paper aims to explain the de-risking phenomenon through Luhmann’s risk/danger model and demonstrate that de-risking should be facilitated and encouraged.

The paper applies Luhmann’s system theory and more specifically his risk/danger model to describe the de-risking phenomenon and identify recommendations to address its consequences.

The paper finds that re-defining risk and the anti-money laundering (AML)’s community’s understanding of it can support key stakeholders’ understanding of money laundering (ML) risk and the way to better address consequences of AML decisions.

The paper has implications for the banking and regulatory community in relation to the interpretation of de-risking. As systems aim to minimise their exposure to risk, they should not be prevented from de-risking.

This paper aims to move away from a narrative description of AML phenomena and presents a theoretical foundation for the analysis of ML risk. The current response to de-risking which demonises it and aims to prevent it is deconstructed through this theoretical lens.

The aim of this paper is to argue that the need for strategy is overstated and that organizations should celebrate short‐term thinking.

The paper presents a case study of a medium‐sized software company in Canada, followed by an analysis in terms of the history of strategy and Ciborra's work on organizational change.

The study finds that strategy and structure are taken‐for‐granted assumptions that are not always appropriate. While strategy is important for contemporary business, it has overstepped its relevance and has been become the dominant organizing myth of modern management. Such a myth has become an obsession that quite often constrains the variety of organizational responses. The notion of strategy has become an “iron cage” which constrains manoeuvrability.

Short‐term thinking has tremendous benefits and should be embraced.

The paper provides a useful insight into the benefits of short‐term thinking.

This paper seeks to deconstruct the proposed risk‐based approach to anti‐money laundering (AML) and to relate it to the text of the European Union's 3rd Directive. The paper also aims to discuss a variety of risk‐related aspects and how they have come to be constructed on the sociological perspective of risk and subsequently to examine the relation of risk elements to AML.

The theoretical approach of the paper is based on the tradition of second‐order cybernetics and on many of the theoretical concepts discussed by Niklas Luhmann, as well as his work on the sociology of risk.

The implications for the risk‐based approach on AML are discussed on the basis of how risk can be represented and categorized, and the paradoxes behind various such risk‐classifications are analysed, thus offering a critique on the oversimplification with which risk has been appropriated within AML.

The practical implications of this paper relate to how risk should be considered within the domain of AML and how financial institutions and financial intelligence units should mostly focus on re‐constructing the aspects surrounding risk‐communication.

The originality of this paper lies in its unique treatment of risk within the context of AML, while clearly exposing the unavoidable observational paradoxes that the concept of risk induces, as well as examining the consequences on the risk‐based approach for dealing with AML.

Describes some aspects of money laundering through the lens of systems terminology. Claims that this approach can give insights beyond those of the conventional “linear” methodologies, and gives the American dominance of the Financial Action Task Force as an example. Sees money laundering and anti‐money laundering as coupled activities, subsystems each of which stimulates the other to expand its own powers within its particular domain, so that the harder that anti‐money laundering pushes, money laundering pushes back. Relates this to how the suspicious transaction reporting system works in the Greek context and recommends improvements. Argues that anti‐money laundering is not a “solution” to the “problem” of money laundering, and that there can be no solution: money laundering is as old as money itself.

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the problem of data growth as a complex contemporary phenomenon and discuss its implications for the domains of anti‐money laundering (AML) and anti‐terrorist financing (ATF).

The theoretical approach of the paper is based upon an examination of the fundamental ideas around information growth, along with the tradition of systems theory and is based upon many of the theoretical concepts discussed by Niklas Luhmann. The concept of distinction is used throughout the paper to discuss technological consequences.

The volume of data for manipulation and its implications on profiling AML and ATF are discussed while the issue data growth are presented as an elemental and core issue within the paper.

The practical implications of this paper relate to how technology should be appropriated within financial and other institutions and how the decision‐making processes of traditional bureaucracies surrounding AML/ATF should reflect on their utilization of technology.

The originality of this paper lies in its unique dealing of the problem of data growth through its implications and a new theoretical concept is introduced, the concept of electreaucracy to denote the systemic technological interference in bureaucratic conditions and how these influence AML/ATF.

The paper seeks to analyse the systemic effects of AML‐technologies and regulations, at both national and organizational levels.

It focuses the power of systems theory, particularly the insights about self‐referential systems, to describe the organizational and bureaucratic phenomena that have emerged from the introduction of technology in the AML domain.

The paper confronts the technological instrumentalism both prevalent in the AML community and implied by the actions of regulators. It demonstrates the many false assumptions being made, and calls on the whole AML community to re‐think and clarify its position.

This is the second paper describing an ongoing research project that focuses theory on the phenomena occurring when information and computer technologies are applied in the AML arena. The project is experimental and in its early stages, and so is necessarily limited in scale, but not in scope. The objective is to invite the AML community into a hermeneutic debate of the ideas, thereby informing AML policy decisions.

The paper calls for a reconsideration of the underlying assumptions within which AML‐related technology is appropriated by financial institutions. It demonstrates how this technology creates multiple complex systemic phenomena that often act contrary to initial intentions. This complexity is generated not only by data mining and/or profiling technologies, but also by peripheral technologies as they interact with human activity systems in the AML domain.

The paper is one of the relatively few that moves away from narrative description of AML phenomena, to present an academically legitimate theoretical foundation for analysis.