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Moll Flanders and the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street Projects of a Projecting Age Valerie Hamilton Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Warwick Business School March 2013 1 Moll Flanders and The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street – Projects of a Projecting Age ‘as is not seldom the case with projectors, by insensible gradations proceeding from comparatively pigmy aims to titanic ones, the original scheme had, in its anticipated eventualities, at last attained to an unheard-of degree of daring.’ (From short story ‘The Bell-Tower’ by Herman Melville.) 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements Pg 6 Abstract Pg 7 Chapter One Projects and Projecting Pg 8-43 1 Prelude 8 1.1 Beginnings 10 2 The Project Outline 11 2.1 The use of the metaphor of the project & definitions 12 2.2 The dark arts of projecting 15 2.3 The Project of the Thesis 16 2.4 The Choice and Outline of the Project of Moll Flanders 18 2.5 The Choice and Outline of the Bank of England 20 3 Approach 22 3.1 Disciplining the Project 22 3.2 Assumptions: Moll Flanders - early English novel 30 3.3 Bank of England - early modern English organization 33 4 Conclusion 43 Chapter Two The Space of Composition Pg 44-75 1 The Projecting Age 44 1.1 Space of Composition 46 1.2 The Projecting Humour 51 1.3 Finance and Fiction 53 1.4 Projecting 54 2 Tricks of the Trade of projecting 55 2.1 The deceit of Moll Flanders 55 2.2 Spin the tale 58 2.3 Naming 59 2.4 The deceit of the Bank 60 2.5 Naming 62 2.6 Spin the tale 63 3 The Promise of the Bank and Moll 65 4 The Bank and Moll as managers of risk 68 5 Conclusion 75 3 Chapter Three A Revolutionary Space of Composition Pg 76-108 1 The Space of Composition 76 1.1 Moll Flanders as revolutionary 79 1.2 The Bank as revolutionary 82 2 Commercial Enterprises 88 2.1 Moll Flanders as commercial enterprise 88 2.2 The Bank as commercial enterprise 91 3. The Market 92 3.1 The Bank 92 3.2 The Novel 93 4. Coffee Houses 95 5. Reactionary Forces 98 5.1 Gendering 102 5.2 Compromises 107 6. Conclusion 108 Chapter Four Invisible Hands Pg 109-136 1 Valorization of the empirical 110 1.1 Moll Flanders as independent object 110 1.2 Bank of England as independent object 111 2 Death of the Projector 114 2.1 Disappearing Defoe 114 2.2 Disappearing Paterson 115 3 Throwing Forth 119 3.1 Throwing Forth Moll Flanders 120 3.2 Throwing Forth the Bank of England 124 4 Accidental Inevitability and the Uncanny 126 4.1 Accidental inevitability in Moll Flanders 127 4.2 Accidental inevitability in the Bank of England 131 5 Conclusion 136 4 Chapter Five The Projectors Pg 137-171 1 Defoe and Paterson are Co-projectors 137 2 Characteristics shared by Defoe and Paterson 144 2.1 Defoe the dissenter 144 2.2 Paterson the dissenter 146 2.3 Defoe as Outsider 147 2.4 Paterson as Outsider 148 2.5 Upstarts 150 2.6 Novel and Bank as dissenting outsiders 153 2.7 Defoe as high energy, optimistic risk-taker 154 2.8 Paterson as high energy, optimistic risk-taker 156 2.9 Tellers of Tales 159 3 Moll and myself as projectors 161 4 The Figure of the Projector in this thesis 164 4.1 Dark Asides 166 5 The Projected and Projecting Reader 169 6 Conclusion 171 Chapter Six Conclusions Pg 172-187 1 Theoretical so whats 173 1.1 The origins of the modern English organization 173 1.2 Organizations as projections – a new lexis 173 1.3 Fictions, Transparency and Ethics 174 1.4 Emancipatory impetus of impersonal models of the organization 176 1.5 Entrepreneurs 177 1.6 The Novel 179 2 Practical so whats 180 2.1 Managing the Project 180 2.2 Practical implications for the Bank of England 180 2.3 Interdisciplining English Literature and Organization 182 Studies 3 Personal so whats 182 Epilogue Pg 188-193 Appendices & References Appendix 1 Curriculum Vitae Pg 194 Appendix 2 List of Readers Pg 198 Bibliography Works not cited Pg 200 References Works cited Pg 209 5 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many friends, neighbours and colleagues who asked me how it was going and encouraged me to finish the job. Particular thanks go to the people who read all, or parts of the thesis as it progressed and gave me honest feedback. My unreserved thanks go to my supervisors at various stages, Nicholas Royle, Dorothea Noble and Martin Parker. A former student has already recognised Martin Parker as his own Captain Jack Sparrow, a sentiment I can only echo. Martin dared me to deliver. 6 Abstract A novel and an organization would generally be regarded as polar opposites: one deals in fiction, the other in economic realities. This thesis explores the proposition that the novel and the organization share fundamental characteristics of form, function and technique: they work in the same way. The proposition is explored by comparing the emergence of an early English novel, Moll Flanders (1722), and an early English modern organization, the Bank of England (1694). Moll is recognised as significant in the process of the beginning of the form of the English novel; I argue that the Bank can be approached as a primary model of the form of the organization. Building upon Timothy Clark’s exploration of the nature of inspiration1, the thesis argues that ‘the space of composition’, the period from which they emerged, sometimes called the Age of Projects (1680-1720), is inherent in, and inherited by the form of the novel and the organization respectively. They are projects of a projecting age. The metaphor of the project is taken from Defoe’s Essay Upon Projects (1697) and is used as an interdisciplinary lens through which to reconstitute an intimate relationship between the novel and the organization. The thesis is itself understood as a project bringing a reflexive and experiential dimension to the narrative. 7 Chapter One Introduction – Projects and Projecting 1. Prelude2 This thesis emerges from my professional training and experience. Originally a teacher and lecturer in English Literature, for the last twenty years I have provided consultancy in personal and organization development for large commercial organizations usually in the Financial or Legal sectors. A background in English Literature is an asset in understanding organizations but this is usually denied by my own practice, by organizations and by the academic community. I, for example, claim entry to organizations via my M.Sc. in Organization Development; HR and personnel ask me not to mention English Literature when meeting senior managers in organizations but to stick to my FTSE 100 experience; and many in the academic community seek accreditation for organization studies as a science. I wish to challenge this denial and articulate an intimate relationship between the study of Literature, in this case the novel, and the study of organizations. This is not a new cause. Gareth Morgan’s seminal text Images of Organization (1986) explored the use of metaphor in shaping organizations and our understanding of them, and inspired a number of investigations relating the study of literature to the study of organizations.3 Yiannis Gabriel codified storytelling in organizations.4Dorothea Noble, in conjunction with the Complexity and Management Centre at the University of Hertfordshire Business school, experimented with incorporating storytelling into the understanding of organizations, and doctoral theses. Barbara Czarniawska combined anthropology, literary theory and institutionalism in an approach to understanding the narratives of organizations.5 Good Novels, Better Management exhorted managers to read good novels in order to improve their performance.6 8 Critical Theorists have experimented with the use of literary theory. Robert Cooper and Campbell Jones have brought Derrida to bear on organization studies.7 Martin Parker has explored the fiction in management and the management in fiction.8 Christian de Cock and Christopher Land have examined the seam between Literature, in its widest sense, and Organization studies.9 Many of these investigations, although not all, have tended towards the instrumental; literature and literary methods are seen as tools to unlock insights to organizational life, insights which are usually psychological, emotional, or less commonly, linguistic, in nature. Gabriel is representative when he argues, convincingly, that ‘stories open valuable windows into the emotional, political and symbolic lives of organizations, offering researchers a powerful instrument for carrying out research’.10 I have been concerned not to use literature as an instrument but to place literature and literary theory beside organizations and organization theory in order to show that they are more similar than would generally be assumed, and so challenge the artificial boundaries of discipline which assign one to the arts and one, largely, to the sciences. As Wordsworth declared: In weakness we create distinctions, then Believe that all our puny boundaries are things Which we perceive and not which we have made.