'Imagineering' Asian emerging markets: Financial knowledge networks in the fund management industry

This paper examines knowledge production networks in the fund management industry. Focusing on Asian emerging markets (EMs), I explore how fund managers, brokers and research analysts utilise a combination of texts, analytical structures, codified procedures, and social networks to generate interpretations and perspectives on Asian EMs. Utilising a process-based approach, I investigate how 'EMs' as an investment category is imagined and practiced by those in the fund management industry through knowledge networks and how such networks are produced and maintained. Discussions are drawn from interviews conducted with 22 EMs specialists in Singapore and London. I argue that Asian EMs have distinct characteristics that are acted upon and reproduced by finance workers in particular ways and that the acquisition and transfer of tacit knowledge takes on increased significance when codified knowledge structures are lacking. Actors in Singapore and London are also embedded in different knowledge networks, which offer different strategic advantages but, when taken together, form a complex and multi-layered knowledge production network of 'imagineering' Asian EMs from both within and outside of Asia.