Keywords
capital markets
emerging markets
corporate governance
financial reputation
Abstract
The Investor Relations (IR) function is examined as an institutional coordination infrastructure between firms and markets through an interpretive synthesis of the literature on disclosure, financial reputation, governance, and shareholder activism. The study adopts a systematically guided theoretical review design aimed at integrating dispersed empirical and conceptual contributions, without seeking to estimate causal effects or financial impacts. The analysis identifies four interdependent processual mechanisms: structured listening and strategic-interpretive feedback, discipline of disclosure and informational architecture, cumulative construction of financial reputation, and relational-institutional engagement in contexts of contestation. Through these mechanisms, IR may help organize expectations, reduce frictions in the information environment, limit undesirable interpretive variability, and sustain predictability over time. The discussion is situated in Latin America and uses Brazil as an illustrative institutional reference rather than an empirical case study, given its scale and regulatory density. IR's value is understood primarily in terms of its capacity for institutional coordination and trust building. This perspective treats IR as a capability embedded in governance and a subject for organizational studies and the social sciences in Latin America.
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