Dr Philip Roscoe

BA, MPhil, PhD

Lecturer in Management

Director of Postgraduate Research
Chair of School Ethics Committee

Contact details

Tel: +44 (0)1334 461973
Fax: +44 (0)1334 462812

Teaching 2012/2013

• MN3102 Organisation Studies
• MN4236 Sociology of Finance
• MN5513 Ethics, Organisations and Management

Biography

My research focuses on the formation and arrangement of markets. I am particularly interested in the increasing use of markets and market-style arrangements for the allocation of traditionally market-alien goods. Most recently I have been investigating the creation of market arrangements for 'love' in the consumer-facing market of online dating, and for transplant organs in the managerial setting of health service bureaucracy. I am increasingly motivated by an investigation of the taken-for-granted assumptions of markets and those who arrange them, and by the ethical relativism presupposed in much of the current literature on market formation and the valuation of goods.

My theoretical position combines insights from philosophy, from the science and technology-inspired social studies of markets, and from organisational theory to develop a critical and thoughtful response to novel markets. I am interested in the claim that economic theory constitutes large areas of our social world. I am working to critically develop and refine this thesis within the context of market and organisation studies, and to develop normative accounts of practice in an applied context.

I joined the faculty at St Andrews in 2009, moving from Sup de Co Montpellier, where I was assistant professor of management. I hold a doctorate in management from Lancaster University, where I also worked as a post-doctoral researcher. Prior to this, I studied theology in Leeds and medieval Arabic thought at Oxford. My MPhil thesis was an edition and translation of, and commentary on 'Abd al-Lati^f ibn Yu^suf al-Baghdadi^s epitome of On Providence by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Before starting my doctorate I spent six years working in financial journalism.

Knowledge transfer and media engagement

I was one of the 10 finalists of the AHRC BBC Radio Three "New Generation Thinkers" scheme, run in 2011 to discover academics keen to disseminate their work to a wider audience through the broadcast media. The scheme received considerable press coverage. Some was positive, which you can read here in Mark Brown's Guardian article, and some less so, here in The Telegraph.

I have since enjoyed making a number of contributions, both in live debates and recorded pieces, to BBC Radio Three's Nightwaves programme. The New Generation Thinkers scheme culminated with an Essay, broadcast on Radio 3 on 16 January 2012, and available on BBC iPlayer here. Its title: The Entrepreneur.

As my interests and skills in academic communication develop further I am working on a book for a non-academic audience, offering an accessible account of the social studies of markets project and at the same time reflecting my own concerns about the colonisation of market alien goods by economic values. Provisionally entitled 'I Spend therefore I Am: How we all became Economic' it will be published in the spring of 2014 by Penguin (Viking) in the UK, Random House in Canada, and Hanser in Germany, with more territories to follow.

I am organising, for December 2012, a two-day workshop entitled 'What price creativity? A workshop on the valuing of social/public goods'. Previously, I organised another: "What should we do about transplant organs? An interdisciplinary workshop on the ethics and economics of a medical crisis," held in St Andrews, 30 June 2010. The workshop, which examined the possibility of organ markets and related issues, was attended by academics, healthcare practitioners and representatives of a major national bioethics think tank.

I am an occasional contributor to the blog "Socialising Finance", http://socfinance.wordpress.com/

Selected Publications

Roscoe, Philip, 'A moral economy of transplantation: Competing regimes of value in the allocation of transplant organs' in Heglesson, Lee and Dussange (eds) Value Practices in Life Sciences, Oxford University Press, (forthcoming)

Roscoe, Philip, (2013) 'On the possibility of organ markets and the performativity of economics', Journal of Cultural Economy, forthcoming (Autumn 2013, vol. 6.3)

Roscoe, Philip, (2013) 'Economic embeddedness and materiality in a financial market setting', The Sociological Review, forthcoming, Spring (2013)

Roscoe, Philip, Allan Discua, and Carole Howorth, (2012) 'A material account of entrepreneurial opportunity', Business History
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076791.2012.687540

Roscoe, Philip (2011) 'The unbearable emptiness of entrepreneurship', Ephemera, volume 11 (3)
www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/11-3/11-3roscoe.pdf

Roscoe, Philip and Carole Howorth (2009). 'Identification through Technical Analysis: A Study of the Investment Behaviour of UK Non-Professional Investors', Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34, 206-221
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368208000354

Roscoe, Philip (2008) Review of Entrepreneurship, cooperation and the ¿rm: the emergence and survival of high-technology ventures in Europe ed. Jan Uljin, Dominique Drillon and Frank Lasch, Business History 50(8), 822-824

Invited presentations

The organisation of fairness: engineering organ allocation protocols in the United Kingdom, The Moral Economy of Life Science, Vadstena, Sweden April 2011

Selected Conference Papers

Roscoe, Philip (2012) Can a market for marriage be moral? A philosophical and organizational problem, EIASM 2nd Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop, Howth, Ireland

Roscoe, Philip and Shiona Chillas (2011), Economizing on love: does economics perform online dating? The Seventh International Critical Management Studies Conference, Naples, July

Roscoe, Philip (2010) Calculation and compassion: economics and the problem of transplant organs, Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2010, Montreal, Canada, August

Roscoe, Philip (2010) On the possibility of organ markets and the performativity of economics, EIASM 1st Interdisciplinary market studies workshop, Sigtuna, Sweden, June

Roscoe, Philip, Allan Discua, and Carole Howorth (2009). 'Materiality and felicitous opportunity', Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2009, Chicago, USA

Roscoe, Philip, Allan Discua, and Carole Howorth (2009). 'Materialization of opportunity by families in business', EIASM 5th Workshop on Family Firms Management Research, Hasselt, Belgium

Roscoe, Philip (2009) 'Not as dumb as they seem: making uneconomic men in the financial markets', The state of things: towards a political economy of artifice and artifact, University of Leicester Management School, Leicester, United Kingdom

Roscoe, Philip and Carole Howorth (2008) 'Elephants can't gallop: a qualitative study of investors in smaller quoted companies', RENT XII, Covilha, Portugal

Roscoe, Philip (2008) 'What does it mean to say that financial markets are embedded?', Annual Meeting of The American Sociological Association, Boston, USA

Roscoe, Philip (2006). 'How to Get Yourself in the Papers', Knowledge Transfer, PhD conference, Manchester University, Manchester, UK

Roscoe, Philip (2006). 'The Problem of Embeddedness in the New Financial Markets', workshop: Metatheorising the Knowledge Economy, Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Roscoe, Philip and Carole Howorth (2006). 'Chart Appeal: Private Investment in Smaller Company Markets', International Conference on Financing of SMEs in Developed Countries, University of Warwick, Coventry