Insider Information: The Ethicality of the High Frequency Trading Industry
通过访谈高频交易行业员工，发现法规和公司规则无法解答其伦理疑问，员工依赖利益相关者群体判断伦理性，且感知差异大，表明金融行业可能缺乏道德领导力。
Abstract This study explores the ethical perceptions of employees in the financial industry. Focusing on the high frequency trading (HFT) industry, it analyses a series of interviews with HFT employees (managers, computer programmers and traders). It shows that regulations and firm rules profoundly affect HFT practices. However, they do not provide employees with answers for their ethical questions. To judge the ethicality of HFT, employees choose reference stakeholder groups and assess the way HFT impacts them. The perception that HFT has a positive effect on stakeholder groups is associated with moral satisfaction, whereas the perception that it has a negative effect is related to emotional detachment, sense of meaninglessness and turnover intent. The high variance in employees’ choices of stakeholder reference groups emphasizes the subjectivity and uncertainty that HFT ethicality entails. Therefore, this study suggests that the financial industry may lack moral leadership. It makes empirical and theoretical contributions to the ‘business ethics as practice’ theory and examines management and regulatory applications.