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A Desk on the 20th Floor: Survival and Sense-Making in a Trading Room

This online paper may be quoted under fair use and academic conventions. This paper may not be published elsewhere in any form (including e-mail lists and electronic bulletin boards) without the author's express permission. How does an organization cope with extreme uncertainty? In this paper we study the case of a Wall Street investment bank that lost its entire office and trading technology in the terrorist attack of September 11 th. The traders survived, but were forced into a mandatory exile to a makeshift trading room in the suburbs. In the six months the traders spent there, they had to navigate successive waves of uncertainty, including existential anxiety (will I die in the next attack?), questions of professional identity (what does it mean to be a Wall Street trader outside Wall Street?), uncertainty about the future of the firm (will it fold?), and ambiguities about the future re-location of the firm. In contrast with the well-studied strategic challenge of dealing with uncertainty in the environment, the company had to deal with fears and insecurities inside as well as outside it. To overcome then, it took care to help traders maintain their identities and ability to engage in sense-making by restoring the network of people, tools, and places that constituted them.