Per Åhblom

This book is about the question of how financial numbers become meaningful. This is one of the most central questions for companies and organisations active on capital markets around the globe because the understanding of these numbers is the basis for capital-allocation decisions that can both make or break the real economy.A conceptual starting point for asking this question has been that meaning is not an inherent quality of accounting and financial numbers, nor simply a consequence of perspectives taken by different people. This book rather sees meaning as an interactive social process, through which financial numbers are made meaningful.To investigate this research issue, the book reports on a collective case study of the corporate investor relations unit in three large, listed Swedish companies, followed over the course of one and a half years by the author. It studies how the meaning of key financial numbers in the companies was articulated and developed in three different arenas of company-capital market interaction. It shows how the key financial numbers took on particular meanings resulting from the interaction in situations at the company-capital market interface, such as investor meetings at international roadshows, presentations at capital market days, and quarterly financial reporting.