ABSTRACT
Despite numerous signs of imminent disaster at the turn of the century, the global banking crisis of 2007-08 can be traced to the collapse of the wholesale market for credit once Lehman Brothers led the largest bankruptcy in US history (Li et al., 2012; Knights and McCabe, 2015). No doubt, the crisis and the enormity of the government bailout for what previously were mighty corporations shocked the world, as its global impact and severity was felt on post-war, taken-for-granted, auent livelihoods. Ordinarily this would result in radical departures from the conditions of life that made such painful traumas possible. However, this seems not to have happened several years after the events of 2007-08, for the sector including its governmental guardians/regulators remains in denial about the scale of the ethical transformations that are needed. Many of the conditions that made the crisis possible were the neoliberal culture/ ideology and its faith in ‘free markets’, economic growth and heroic leaders. This combination of beliefs set the scene for the economic deregulations of the 1970s and 1980s that were perceived as the catalyst for unleashing a proliferation of entrepreneurial creativity, imagination and leadership.
