When accounts become information: A study of investors’ ESG analysis practice

• The process through which accounts become identified as information is analysed.
• Using the empirical case of investor analysts and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.
• To explain how accounts are identified as information one needs to take into account how the ones searching for information have defined what they search for.
• The process of identifying accounts as information is characterised by ways of discarding accounts.
• The identification of accounts is also the story of how what is absent is identified.

SummaryThe present study investigates how accounts are identified as information. A precondition for the interpretation and use of information is that it is identified as potential information. How does this happen? Using the empirical case of investor analysts and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, the study finds that to be able to distinguish information from irrelevant accounts, the analysts specify what they want knowledge about, the epistemic object. In fact, how the epistemic object is defined strongly influences which accounts are regarded as information. Still, the linking between accounts and what they are believed to reflect requires an interpretation. This effort is particularly visible when the ‘fit’ is lacking. Studying and reflecting on their informing process, the analysts acquire knowledge of what is captured but should not be and what is not captured but should be. Hence, the identification of accounts is not only the story of how available accounts are identified as information but also of how information is identified in its absence.