Ethics Events and Conditions of Possibility: How Sell-Side Financial Analysts Became Involved in Corporate Governance

Abstract

Mobilizing Foucault’s genealogy, this article investigates how an “ethics event”—the involvement by some sell-side financial analysts in the United States and United Kingdom across the past two decades in corporate governance—emerged. It is found that the complex relations formed between specific historical precedents, normative discourses, and fields of power rendered certain issues in financial markets morally problematic and constructed analysts’ corporate governance work as a potential solution. Contributing to research in finance ethics, this article develops a novel perspective to conceptualize the rise of ethically relevant practices in financial markets, focusing on how ethical problems and their solutions are outcomes of discursive construction and power relations. This article also revises our understanding of the boundary between technical norms and moral norms in financial markets. When ethical crises occur, it is argued, transforming technical practices and revising the technical norms adopted by financial professionals has the potential to tackle ethical concerns.