Finding friends : Collaboration and dialogue as tools for change On the financial practices of institutional investors

• There has been a shift in ownership on the worlds financial markets, where institutions - such as mutual funds, insurance companies and, not least, pension funds - during the past three decades have emerged as major actors and now dominate corporate ownership world wide. Due to their sheer size public and private pension funds are considered to be the most important and powerful institutional actors on financial markets.The fiduciary duties of an institution, - i.e. a responsibility to manage economic assets on behalf of others – sets it apart from individual investors both large and small. In their role as shareholders that manage money on behalf of others, institutional owners work to shape market actors, both corporations in which they invest and other shareholders, and consequently the financial market in a normative way. The active ownership of institutional investors opens up a space where financial actors must consider issues other than the strictly economic ones. This study examines the contours and contents of such a space. By way of ethnographic research the object here is to begin to discern the boundaries; possibilities and limitations of what institutions do, say the do, can and cannot do as powerful actors on the global financial markets. 

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

anthropology of finance

organizational anthropology

institutional investors

pension funds

socialantropologi

Social Anthropology

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)