When capital market actors reduce the complexity of corporate personnel and work environment information

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how capital market actors deal with information on personnel and work environment.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a qualitative research approach involving interviews with 14 fund managers and two bankers in Stockholm. The empirical analysis is influenced by a combination of system and network theories where social networks are imposed on capital market actors, when they observe corporate information vis‐à‐vis personnel and work environment.FindingsCapital market actors are influenced by social forces when they reduce the complexity of information on corporate personnel and work environment. Four themes emerged in this study concerning emergent paradoxes which results from such a reduction. First, capital market actors seem to regard personnel in a variety of ways: sometimes as a resource, and sometimes as a risk or a non‐flexible cost problem. Second, they tend to reduce the complexity of information by depending on having the right management in organisations. Third, capital market actors refer to work environment matters as things that involve ethics and can affect their own reputation. Finally, they were continuously looking for signs that their initial analyses could be wrong. To various extents, the themes support each other by solving the emergent paradoxes that, according to systems theory, inevitably result from the reduction of external complexity.Originality/valueThis paper argues that the ambivalence and disinterest shown by capital‐market actors concerning information on personnel and work environment could be better understood by referring to how social forces influence capital‐market actors when they reduce the complexity of such information.