Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Master's Theses Theses and Dissertations 2017 The Devil's in the Emails: A Sociological Examination of Organizational Failure William Howard Burr Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Burr, William Howard, "The Devil's in the Emails: A Sociological Examination of Organizational Failure" (2017). Master's Theses. 3666. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/3666 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2017 William Howard Burr LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO THE DEVIL’S IN THE EMAILS: A SOCIOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL FAILURE A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS PROGRAM IN SOCIOLOGY BY WILLIAM HOWARD BURR CHICAGO, IL AUGUST 2017 Copyright by William Howard Burr, 2017 All rights reserved Considered the largest casualty of the subprime mortgage crisis, Lehman Brothers began issuing subprime home loans in 2000 (Williams 2010). By 2006, Lehman, together with its subsidiaries, was originating nearly $50 billion in new real estate loans each month (Williams 2010). Like other Wall Street banks, Lehman sold AAA-rated collateralized debt obligations to pension funds and endowments while maintaining large positions in lower-rated, but higher yielding tranches of these same securities (McLean and Nocera 2010).