Financialization and the "Down" Side of Shareholder Value. Case Opened: AstraZeneca R&D Södertälje

Abstract: The explicit intrusion of financial markets into corporate governance stretched concerns beyond the traditional product market and brought about an increasingly normalized discourse concerned with "shareholder value" and so a shift in management and strategy. This paper qualitatively investigates how financialization and shareholder value primacy manifest themselves in AstraZeneca's downsizing of its R&D headquarters. The findings suggest the phenomenon represents another step in an overall process instigated by and whose wake mirrors a firming grip of the shareholder value norm as the product market frontier falters. As capital market patience wanes, senior management turns to performatives, manifest primarily in prompt cost recovery endeavors which safeguard returns when the share price disappoints, to pledge the existence of a privileging path to salvation for the shareholding faction of stakeholders in an industry increasingly epitomized by financialization and a beleaguered, disintegrating business model.