Enacting Stock Markets

Abstract

How do investment banking practices contribute to shaping stock markets and, by extension, the financial markets at large? To answer this question, we go beyond the inter- and intra-professional interactions discussed in Chapter 9 to discuss how the expert practices of investment banking and the construction of share identities affect other actors. Eccles and Crane (1988:53) stress that investment banks are ‘managed from the outside in’; that they are organized to handle the external network of investors, corporations and competitors that forms as a consequence of the intermediating functions performed by the expert groups. While we acknowledge the porous boundaries of investment banking organizations and their close links to these groups of actors, we emphasize how investment banking practices drive, rather than are driven by, such external constituents (Folkman et al., 2007).