Per Åhblom

This paper investigates the work involved in making sense of specific financial numbers within a preparer organization and conveying this understanding at the corporate-capital market interface. An observation-based study was undertaken of the investor relations team’s interactions during the silent period up to the release of the quarterly report for a large Northern European bank. This rare empirical material was used to trace the successive framing (Goffman, 1974) of the Core Tier 1 ratio, a regulated measure of capital adequacy that the case organisation “delivered” on in its quarterly report. We argue, in contrast to prior literature, that preparers of corporate financial reporting are limited in their choices of the economic reality they present by the very process of constructing a meaning of financial numbers. The process of framing involved anchoring specific numerical representations to perceived intraorganizational realities, market audience expectations, as well as past representations of financial performance. We observed how specific interpretations of financial numbers, as expressed in words and phrases that became imbued with meaning, were moved between spatio-temporally separated sites through the circulation of cues. These cues provide a scaffolding for the enactment of interpretational frames within specific situations – and across sites. The development and circulation of cues in interactions between investor relations professionals and numerous other parties at the corporate-capital market interface contribute to making financial numbers meaningfully anchored, widely distributed and influential representations of organizational reality.

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.  

Denna rapport beskriver en undersökning av verksamhetsstyrning inom och av TioHundraprojektet i Norrtälje, med målsättningen att synliggöra hur samordning har underlättats respektive försvårats på operativ nivå och på ledningsnivå. Ett syfte har varit att vetenskapligt undersöka var och hur integrationen mellan ömsesidigt beroende verksamheter kan ske mellan organisationer, och över huvudmannaskapsgränserna.1 Detta är en fråga som har stor praktisk relevans på samtliga områden där offentligt finansierade, komplexa och sammansatta tjänster ska tillhandahållas av olika organisationer.