Until now, such research has mainly studied the effects of capital market pressures on companies well-established on the stock exchange (Ezzamel et al., 2008). Less attention has been devoted to companies entering on the stock exchange, and to empirical and theoretical analyses of the processes leading to top management focusing on short-term financial results. An exception isRoberts et al. (2006), who conducted a Foucauldian analysis of market discipline to explain the financial focus of top managers. Our paper uses theories of sensemaking and sensegiving to analyze how top managers in four companies that went public became more oriented on the short-term financial performance, and how accounting metrics played important roles in this.