Rationales for a stakeholder model of corporate governance are based on enlightened self-interest, moral imperative, and/or externalities. Of these, the externalities rationale holds the most promise to justify a stakeholder...
Major index fund operators have been criticized as ineffective stewards of the firms in which they are now the largest shareholders. While scholars debate whether this passivity is a serious problem, index funds’ generally docile...
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the incorporation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations into corporate management, financial decision making, and investors’ portfolio decisions....
Business history and theory reflect a tension between public and private conceptions of the corporation. This tension and conceptual ambiguity lay close to the surface of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, in which Berle and...
We study the relative effectiveness of exit (divestment and boycott) and voice (engagement) strategies in promoting socially desirable outcomes in companies. We show that in a competitive world exit is less effective...
Two prominent progressive senators, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have recently proposed that employees should be allowed to elect 40 to 45 percent of the directors of large corporations. If implemented, such a reform would...
Is coronavirus accelerating the future? Will the crisis provide a tipping point that encourages corporations to promote socially desirable values? Will there be a wider recognition that a sole focus on profits and investors...
This paper reports the findings of a recent survey of 1019 individuals to learn about their commitment to and perceived value from personal and organizational higher purpose, and examines the implications of the findings for corporate...
This paper critiques an assessment by Bebchuk and Tallarita (BT) of the relative merits of shareholder and stakeholder governance. BT’s paper argues that stakeholder governance is either nothing more than enlightened shareholder...
The hot topic in corporate governance is the debate over corporate purpose and, in particular, whether corporations should shift their purpose from the pursuit of shareholder wealth to pursuing a broader conception of stakeholder or...
This study investigates whether and how firms’ stakeholder orientation affects their inventory efficiency as well as financial performance. Using U.S. state legislatures’ staggered adoption of constituency statutes over a...
Previous research shows that incentives to increase earnings-per-share cause firm to increase stock repurchases and reduce investment and employment. It is natural to expect firms to cut less productive investment and employment...