The Big Short!

This paper uses a fictional detour through cinema to explore organizational behavior in crisis situations. The film The Big Short—an adaptation of Michael Lewis' book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine—revisits the subprime mortgage crisis that began in 2007. To what extent do this narrative and its protagonists illuminate the conceptual framework of decision-making in management studies? This analysis unfolds in three acts, each offering a distinct perspective on the film: the first act examines the structure of the narrative; the second focuses on the financial ecosystem and the practices of the protagonists; and the third investigates the artifacts employed by the key actors in their organizations to support their roles and intuitions in the decision-making process.