The financialization of non-financial firms: The case of South Korea, 1997–2015

Sociologists have been investigating financialization over the past two decades. Shareholder value orientation has been named as one of the central driving forces for financialization in the US. However, financialization also takes place in countries that do not have a strong shareholder value orientation. What drives financialization in these countries? In this article the authors analyze data for Korea, where the power of shareholders is particularly subdued, and present two findings. First, financialization is an unintended consequence of the state’s pressure on family-owned conglomerates to comply with the Western standard imposed by the IMF during the economic crisis. In the absence of strong shareholders, it was the interplay between the state’s demand to modernize corporate funding practices and the conglomerates’ apparent compliance while minimizing their financial liability. Second, the authors investigate the role powerful unions have in financialization. Previous studies have theorized that unions would have negative effects on financialization, only to come up with mixed results. Using Korean data, this article reveals that in a setting where the political and organizational power of unions is strong, unions have clear negative effects on financialization. The authors suggest that the standard story of financialization, according to which the mighty shareholders push firms to pursue short-term profit, is only one of many possible paths toward it.