Emma Sjöström

Financial market actors are subject to mounting demands to integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into financial analysis. To make non-financial issues “work with” the existing modus and format of financial analysis has however turned out to be something of a struggle. In this paper, we explore how financial actors cope with ESG integration, and in particular the financialization of ESG. More generally we seek to better understand how existing calculative practices accommodate new “frames” (Callon, 1998). To do this, we draw on the notion of sociomaterial assemblages i.e. the arrangements of human beings and material entities, and examine existing and ESG-oriented assemblages in the Swedish financial market. We propose a sociomaterial process model of calculability for how new frames are introduced, in four parts. We find that central to this process is bricolage, which contributes to the reframing process and to a better appropriation of new frames by existing assemblages.