"The Consequences of the Rise of the Market for Institutional Fund Management (1974-1978) for Corporate Governance "

This paper examines the impact of the introduction of performance measurement on the investment policy and corporate governance activities of UK pension funds. The paper focuses on a specific episode, namely, the introduction of performance measurement of pension funds to explain the rise of corporate governance initiatives by pension funds. A structural and constructivist framework relates the introduction of frameworks of performance measurement to shifts in processes of client referral from restricted to generalized exchange and draws out the implications for the development of corporate governance. The emergence of performance measurement of fund management firms is related to the evolution of pension fund financial accounting. I draw on material from multiple archives, including the National Association of Pension Funds to argue that the introduction of financial accounting standards contributed to the changes in corporate governance at the time. The argument that I present also makes links between the history of provision of pensions as a compensation for labour and changes in corporate governance, that are mediated by the introduction of accounting standard setting for occupational pension funds in the mid-1970s. In this respect, my paper continues and develops an account of occupational pension funds in the UK (Avrahampour 2015).