About "Bullish on Uncertainty"

At a time when interest in the corporate cultures of investment banks has never been higher, comes a book that helps explain how their business practices can shape their employees' behavior. 

Bullish on Uncertainty provides rare insight into the highly influential and highly secretive world of Wall Street finance, which has modeled new business practices for other organizations in dynamic and complex environments. The book studies how two 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.

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.

Publication Information
Cambridge University Press
November 2008
Hardcover ISBN 978-0-5218-6996-6, $75.00     ORDER
Softcover ISBN 978-0-5216-9019-5, $27.99      ORDER
280 pages