ABSTRACT
Our research is directed at the question of why senior, intelligent and respected leaders from all sides of the finance industry failed to prevent a crisis that some had predicted years in advance. We are interested in knowing more about the dynamic influences – personal and global – on the thinking of industry leaders. Here, ‘thinking’ is considered alongside ‘not thinking’, the ‘inability to think’ and ‘hatred of thinking’. We therefore created a set of open-ended questions designed to elicit ‘thinking’. As we conducted our interviews with about thirty senior figures, we noted our reactions to our interviewees as a way of deepening our understanding of their experiences of the crisis from their roles.
