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This chapter criticizes and extends current shareholder value approaches to CG by highlighting the subjective features of share prices as ‘perceptions of value’, and testing the hypothesis that ‘financial analysts' capacity to influence stock prices induce managers to pursue strategies that analysts prefer, rather than strategies that maximize long-term discounted cash flows’. In substantive terms, this conformism effect is expected to drive managers' choices away from unfamiliar, unique, strategies that may better sustain competitive advantage, and towards more familiar ones. Empirical results do show a negative relationship between the uniqueness of a firm's strategy and the level of analyst coverage, but also indicate the need for further dynamic qualifications in terms of changes in uniqueness and changes in industry structures in altering the scope of analyst coverage.

This chapter deals with the financial analysts’ assumption that companies have a so-called intrinsic value that can be identified and is partly reflected in the stock price. It highlights the role the search for new information plays in the endeavor to define such intrinsic value. In explaining how analysts frame, select, and weight information, it shows that, rather than being a straightforward activity, financial analysis is heavily influenced by what analysts perceive to be valuable information.

This chapter focuses on the role of financial analysts as market intermediaries. It explains how financial analysts interact with other groups that are part of Swiss Bank, as well as with the final recipients of their market forecasts outside the bank. In so doing, the chapter describes how the narratives created circulate between analysts, wealth managers and clients. Also, it describes how wealth managers and clients use the narratives when making investment decisions.

This chapter elaborates on the role of the financial analysts for their host institution. It addresses the fact that, despite usually being presented as neutral observers and interpreters of the market, analysts have an active role in promoting investments. This active role shapes the everyday life of financial analysts and materializes in the way they think about investing activities. Also, in their role as animators, analysts actively influence market volatility and liquidity.

This chapter describes the structure and the people of Swiss Bank, which is the field site of this ethnographic study. It looks at the infrastructure of the financial analysis department, elaborates on the professional networks, and explains what it takes to become a financial analyst. In so doing, it develops and anthropological perspective and the personal and professional lives of financial analysts.

The parties taking an interest in the work of the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) were by divided along the lines of developed versus developing nations, governments versus the private sector, and accountants versus the users and preparers of financial statements. Another line of tension was that between accountancy bodies that were represented on the IASC board and those that were not. This chapter explores the IASC's relationship with other organizations. It deals with the course the IASC tried to steer among these conflicting forces. It is structured around three developments that were closely interconnected: relations with the United Nations (UN), relations with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and attempts to bring IASC under the control of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC).

Financial analysts are important players in the marketplace. Analysts’ reports, which include forecasts of earnings and stock recommendations, move market prices. Investors, both large and small, rely on the information in reports when forming their investment decisions. Given the relevance of financial analysts’ research, understanding whether their reports are biased is important. Despite an increase in market regulation, evidence suggests that analysts’ reports are biased. Research also finds that analysts’ bias increases when information uncertainty is high. Thus, investors should understand the possible dangers in blindly relying on research by financial analysts.

Boards can delegate some of the task of monitoring management to financial analysts, who reduce the asymmetry of information between a firm’s insiders and outside investors, which makes the various tools for reducing manager-shareholder conflict more effective. This chapter uses events at SPX, a mid-western manufacturing firm undergoing explosive growth, to explain the role that financial analysts play in monitoring management. It shows how career concerns can give financial analysts—who typically have little direct exposure to a firm’s share price—a strong incentive to monitor management. It also shows how analysts’ effectiveness as delegated monitors is limited by their own conflicts of interest and how the market’s response to analysts’ recommendations can have unwelcome effects on managers’ behavior.

Revisiting the central concerns of this book, the chapter asks whether the current portrayal of the ‘performativity’ of markets as (partially or fully) built around financial/economic theories—is useful for analyzing business contexts. The chapter rejects the dichotomy in existing literature between implausibly ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ readings of the performativity of such expertise. The (strong) performativity thesis that portrays economic theory as ‘doing things to people’ seems less appropriate in a business setting in which cognitive authority is distributed amongst an array of sceptical and reflexive players. What may be at stake is less the performativity of knowledge than its performance i.e. its generation, circulation, validation, and consumption across a closely interacting network. The chapter argues for more systematic exploration of the epistemic systems of different types of business knowledge as pointers towards a Sociology of Business Knowledge.

This chapter summarizes the ethnography and links it to a broader debate on how the work of financial analysts, while having no legitimacy in economic theory, could be understood from an anthropological perspective. It highlights the importance of narratives in financial market operations and claims that the relevance of financial analysts in financial markets is based on their ability to provide other market participants with such investment narratives.

This chapter examines the notion of graduate occupations and examines how occupational boundaries are structured within the four occupations. Various existing analytical approaches link graduate occupations to skills use or requirements, high autonomy, or the prevalence of degree holders. These classifications cannot deal very well with the fact that what counts as graduate labour in a graduatizing and competitive labour market is symbolically negotiated (and therefore socially constructed). On top of this, substantive differences in skill requirements and job tasks make the use of existing classifications for distinguishing the graduate and non-graduate occupations challenging. The chapter also shows that many graduate occupations may lack the organizational power, occupational identity, or knowledge base for professionalization to develop.

The chapter conceptualizes this novel form of expertise through drawing upon the Sociology of Professions, the Sociology of Science and its extension into the Sociology of Markets. The chapter shows how the initial ideas underpinning the industry analyst role drew upon, but also differed from, various models of technical expertise such as market research, investment analysts, management consultants and journalism. Though drawing parallels with traditional professional (e.g. scientific) expertise (involving a ‘truth element’) analysts describe their work as differing from it (‘pseudo-academic’). The chapter shows that industry analysts, like management consultants, did not need to pursue a professionalization strategy to validate their knowledge but instead use the ‘brand’ of established firms as a guarantor of the quality and reliability of their expertise. However they differ from management consultants (who they portray as users of their research) in that they seek ‘cognitive authority’ over technical fields.

This chapter gives an overview of the history of Swiss banking, of how Zurich became a financial center and of how the social role of the Swiss banker emerged over time. It introduces how financial analysts present themselves as a group and how they distinguish themselves from other groups in banking. It shows that, to become influential, analysts depend heavily on the notion that bankers are not a homogeneous group but a conglomerate of various sub-professional groups with diverging self-ascriptions that are in ongoing competition for legitimacy and influence.

This chapter examines the notion of graduate skills. The graduate labour market is often understood as that part of the labour market characterized by high skills and high knowledge intensity and that is perceived to be needed and used in an increasingly complex economy. Higher education is understood as the developer of these advanced skills. The chapter shows that in all four occupations a mixture of soft and hard skills is required to perform the roles. Most skills in graduate work are not associated with higher education and within the job setting, there is limited space to use the hard skills graduates have developed during higher education.

This chapter assesses whether higher education within the four occupations performs as assumed according to the dominant discourse on graduate labour. The chapter aims to elucidate what the meaning and value of graduate education and university qualifications are within the four graduate occupations under investigation. The chapter examines how we can describe the meaning that higher education has within these occupations, whether the university degree functions as a credential, and to what extent higher education drives career progression. It shows that the significance of higher education differs between the occupations and tends to be overstated. Within a mass system of higher education, university credentials lose much of their value to employers and employees alike, certainly several years after graduation.

This chapter examines the notion of graduate careers. By examining the career of graduate workers in the four occupations, it argues that university education does not tend to be the direct driving force within the careers of graduates. There is nothing intrinsic about the graduate labour force that warrants set career paths. Characterizations such as the ‘boundaryless career’ can be associated with some graduate workers but it would be hard to associate the concept with graduate work or graduate occupations that graduates perform. Boundaries still shape graduate careers. There also exists great heterogeneity between and within occupations in terms of security and predictability.

This introductory chapter argues that most financial analysts have been inclined to downplay the concept of risk in financial markets. Analysts are drawn to persuade investors and regulators that risks are under control; however, market results are often times different from their analysis. Despite their knowledge about financial risks, losses breach extremes far more frequently than standard models suggest. The book argues that belittling uncertainty has created a rift between financial theory and practice and within finance theory itself, misdirecting regulation and stoking huge financial imbalances. The text then reminds professional analysts that uncertainty is core to finance, and not peripheral.

This chapter examines the recruitment and selection process in four graduate occupations (scientists, software engineers, financial analysts, and press officers). How do graduate workers access jobs? Who is eligible to enter graduate roles and why? What does it take to be recruited and selected in both entry-level and more senior roles? This chapter shows that recruiting and selecting suitable candidates is a deeply contextualized, situational, and occupation-dependent process. The hard skills and knowledge skills often identified to distinguish graduates from non-graduates do not have a privileged status in it. The chapter shows that despite the differences between occupations, sectors, and positions there are indeed few general principles that define the recruitment and selection process for graduate workers.