Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Scheduled Schmoozing: Notes on Interludal Practices at Responsible Investors’ Conferences

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover Ethnographies of Conferences and Trade Fairs

Abstract

Anette Nyqvist analyzes responsible investment conferences as important meeting grounds for institutional investors, such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies. At responsible investment conferences institutional investors not only seek new knowledge about the responsible investment industry, but they also look for opportunities for collaboration. Based on fieldwork conducted in New York and Paris this chapter deals with increased importance of socializing at industry conferences. It sheds light on the practice of networking and shows how this activity is now recognized as significant and organized elements of the industry conference, equal to the paper presentation or panel discussion.

This chapter draws on research conducted within projects funded by: The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, The Swedish Research Council, The Wenner-Gren Foundations and The Sweden-America Foundation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Meaning companies in which the institutional investors are shareholders.

  2. 2.

    Copy of e-mail held by author.

  3. 3.

    Copy of catalogue held by author.

  4. 4.

    A piece of hot dog wrapped in dough.

  5. 5.

    My selection of RI industry conferences to attend had an economic rationale. Several of the other major annual gatherings proved to be too costly for me to go to. It is not unusual for a conference registration fee within this industry to be anything from $1000 and up. I have over the years downloaded enough conference agendas and attendance lists to note that the key actors in the industry typically attend both the costly and the not so expensive gatherings, and the agendas are organized in similar ways.

  6. 6.

    I have in earlier work on methodology and the topic of access made use of and discussed this same conceptualization of Erving Goffman’s, see (Nyqvist 2013: 98–99).

References

  • Aspers, Patrik, and Asaf Darr. 2011. “Trade Shows and the Creation of Market and Industry.” The Sociological Review 59(4): 758–778.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, Gordon L. 2000. Pension Fund Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahlén, Tommy. 1997. Among the Interculturalists. An Emergent Profession and Its Packaging of Knowledge. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, 38. Stockholm: Stockholm University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drucker, Peter F. 1993. Post-Capitalist Society. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Entwistle, Joanne, and Agnés Rocamora. 2006. “The Field of Fashion Materialized: A Study of London Fashion Week.” Sociology 40(4): 735–751.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. 2005. A Legal Framework for the Integration of Environmental, Social and Governance Issues Into Institutional Investment. UNEP Finance Initiative. October 2005. Genève, Switzerland: United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garsten, Christina. 2013. “All About Ties. Think Tanks and the Economy of Connections.” In Organisational Anthropology: Doing Anthropology in and Among Complex Organisations, eds. C. Garsten and A. Nyqvist. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gold, Martin. 2010. Fiduciary Finance. Investment Funds and the Crisis in Financial Markets. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hannerz, Ulf. 2003. “Being There…and There…and There!: Reflections on Multi-Site Ethnography.” Ethnography 4(2): 201–216.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hawley, James P., and Andrew T. Williams 2000. The Rise of Fiduciary Capitalism. How Institutional Investors Can Make Corporate America More Democratic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lampel, Joseph, and Alan D. Meyer 2008. “Field-Configuring Events as Structuring Mechanisms: How Conferences, Ceremonies, and Trade Shows Constitute New Technologies, Industries, and Markets.” Journal of Management Studies 45(6): 1025–1035.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marcus, George E. 1995. “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary. 2016. “Schmooze.” Merriam-Webster.com http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schmooze (accessed October 13, 2016).

  • Moeran, Brian. 2013. “Working Connections, Helping Friends. Fieldwork, Organizations and Cultural Styles.” In Organisational Anthropology: Doing Anthropology in and Among Complex Organisations, eds. C. Garsten and A. Nyqvist. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyqvist, Anette. 2013. “Access to All Stages? Studying Through Policy in a Culture of Accessibility.” In Organisational Anthropology: Doing Anthropology in and Among Complex Organisations, eds. C. Garsten and A. Nyqvist. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyqvist, Anette. 2015a. Ombudskapitalisterna. Institutionella ägares röst och roll. Stockholm: Liber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyqvist, Anette. 2015b. “The Corporation Performed. Minutes from the Rituals of Annual General Meetings.” Journal of Organizational Ethnography 4(3): 341–355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nyqvist, Anette. 2016. Reform and Responsibility in the Remaking of the Swedish National Pension System. Opening the Orange Envelope. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyqvist, Anette. 2017. “Talking Like an Institutional Investor. On the Gentle Voices of Financial Giants.” In Politics and the Corporate World, eds. C. Garsten and A. Sörbom. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schüssler, Elke, Charles-Clemens Rüling, and Bettina B. F. Wittneben. 2014. “On Melting Summits: The Limitations of Field-Configuring Events as Catalysts of Change in Transnational Climate Policy.” Academy of Management Journal 57(1): 140–171.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • UNEPFI. 2009. Fiduciary Responsibility. Legal and Practical Aspects of Integrating Environmental, Social and Governance Issues Into Institutional Investment. A Report by the Asset Management Working Group of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative. July 2009. Genève, Switzerland: United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

    Google Scholar 

  • Webster’s Dictionary. 1977. “Interlude.” Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary Unabridged, 2nd ed.. Cleveland, OH: Collins World Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Welker, Marina. 2014. Enacting the Corporation. An American Mining Firm in Post- Authoritarian Indonesia. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Welker, Marina, and David Wood. 2011. “Shareholder Activism and Alienation.” Current Anthropology 52(3): 57–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, Harrison. 1981. “Where do Markets Come From?” The American Journal of Sociology 87(3): 517–547.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, Harrison. 1993. “Markets in Production Networks.” In Explorations in Economic Sociology, ed. R. Swedberg. New York: Russel Sage Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Anette Nyqvist

Authors
  1. Anette Nyqvist
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Hege Høyer Leivestad

  2. Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Anette Nyqvist

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Nyqvist, A. (2017). Scheduled Schmoozing: Notes on Interludal Practices at Responsible Investors’ Conferences. In: Høyer Leivestad, H., Nyqvist, A. (eds) Ethnographies of Conferences and Trade Fairs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53097-0_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53097-0_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53096-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53097-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation