Vocabularies of Motive and Temporal Perspectives: Examples of Pension Fund Engagement and Disengagement
基于35场深度访谈和圆桌讨论，研究养老基金从业者如何用不同的词汇和时间视角来解释参与或退出公司治理，揭示这些表述反映的不仅是个人动机，更是金融市场中的社会规范。
Prior research on institutional investors’ role in corporate governance draws a distinction between engaged and disengaged pension funds. The aim of this study was to shed more light on how pension fund practitioners talk about engagement and disengagement. Using insights from 35 in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews and round‐table discussions with pension fund trustees, executives, investment officers and financial intermediaries, we identify different types of vocabularies and temporal perspectives used to account for different stances towards engagement. We highlight a tension between a seemingly causal relationship between accounts and future behaviour and argue that these ‘accounts’, ‘vocabularies’ and ‘uses of the past’ in themselves need to be treated as an object of study because they may represent not simply the individual motivations but rather the expressions of extant norms in the broader social context of financial markets. An important policy implication is that perceived realities of investment are unlikely to cause a change in pension fund behaviour because participants seem to decouple their view of the world from their impact on the world.