Author: Mark FreemanPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226261875
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
And as they became more prevalent, the issue of internal governance became more pressing.
Shareholder Democracies?
Author: Mark FreemanPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226261875
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
And as they became more prevalent, the issue of internal governance became more pressing.
Shareholder Democracy
Author: Lisa M. FairfaxPublisher:
ISBN: 9781594609190
Category : Corporate governance
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This book offers a succinct, practical guide for understanding what some have referred to as shareholder democracy--efforts to facilitate and increase shareholder voting power within the corporation. In the past few years there has been a surge in shareholder activism that has had a profound impact on the corporation. Shareholders and other activists have sought to increase shareholders' voting power within the corporation based largely on the belief that increasing shareholder power will increase director and officer accountability, thereby helping to curb corporate misconduct and improve corporate performance. However, there is intense debate regarding whether increased shareholder power can achieve such objectives and whether increased shareholder power will negatively impact the corporation. This book is the first to provide a concise, but comprehensive look at the various ways in which shareholders have sought to enhance their voting power and influence within the corporation. In addition to examining shareholder activism, this book highlights and analyzes the debate regarding the propriety of increased shareholder power. This book also analyzes the impact of recent developments aimed at facilitating shareholder power such as majority voting, say on pay, and proxy access. This book will serve as a useful tool not only for those who desire a straight-forward analysis of shareholder rights and activism, but also for those seeking a reference guide on an issue of growing importance to corporate law and corporate governance.
Shareholder Democracy
Author: Mieke OlaertsPublisher: Eleven International Publishing
ISBN: 9789490947552
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Shareholders have important rights, which they can exercise democratically at a company's general meeting, such as the power to control and supervise management of the company. The term 'shareholder democracy' relates to the different ways in which shareholders can influence or even determine a company's course of life. One of the disadvantages of shareholder democracy is a risk that most democratic systems face - it can lead to opportunistic behavior of, in this case, influential shareholders with personal interests which are not in line with the interest of the company. Globalizing financial markets call for a general debate of this topic in an international context. Shareholder democracy does not only play a part in takeover situations, it touches the very core of every company law system. The position of shareholders within the company model, for example, influences the corporate interest definition, which in turn has significant consequences for the position of the board of directors. This book places the topic of shareholder democracy in an international context and deals with the topic from a comparative point of view. It contains contributions from authors from various legal systems discussing the issue of shareholder democracy within their own jurisdiction. The book covers, among other topics, the power of shareholders in Germany, the UK, South Africa, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Shareholder Democracy
Author: Frank D. EmersonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Shareholder Democracy
Author: Frank D. EmersonDemocratic Governance and Economic Performance
Author: Dino FalaschettiPublisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387787070
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
Conventional wisdom warns that unaccountable political and business agents can enrich a few at the expense of many. But logically extending this wisdom implies that associated principals – voters, consumers, shareholders – will favor themselves over the greater good when ‘rules of the game’ instead create too much accountability. Democratic Governance and Economic Performance rigorously develops this hypothesis, and finds statistical evidence and case study illustrations that democratic institutions at various governance levels (e.g., federal, state, corporation) have facilitated opportunistic gains for electoral, consumer, and shareholder principals. To be sure, this conclusion does not dismiss the potential for democratic governance to productively reduce agency costs. Rather, it suggests that policy makers, lawyers, and managers can improve governance by weighing the agency benefits of increased accountability against the distributional costs of favoring principal stakeholders over more general economic opportunities. Carefully considering the fundamentals that give rise to this tradeoff should interest students and scholars working at the intersection of social science and the law, and can help professionals improve their own performance in policy, legal, and business settings.
Democracy, the Market, and the Firm
Author: Hervé CrèsPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192894730
Category : Collective behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 181
Book Description
This book investigates the assumptions that allow shareholders to align in voting decisions even in a context of severe market failures. The authors argue that the invisible hand of the market and the active hand of democracy can jointly bring about positive outcomes.
Managers Vs. Owners
Author: Allen KaufmanPublisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195098600
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Book Description
Managers vs. Owners: The Struggle for Corporate Control in American Democracy deals with a subject of profound importance: understanding the place of the modern corporation in a democratic society. This latest volume in the acclaimed Ruffin Series in Business Ethics describes how the balance between corporate power and government regulation has changed with the interests of society as a whole. The first section examines the debates over the rules that individuals or organized groups would agree to follow in their interactions to accrue social advantages. The second section looks at management's point of view and tells how law promotes the need for managerial collective action and provides a vocabulary for articulating management as a profession. The authors conclude by looking at the impact of collective investor action - especially institutional investors - on the efforts by managers to preserve their autonomy. This examination of the inherent conflicts between the interests of corporate owners, the interests of the larger society, and the interests of managers who run corporations will be essential reading for students, scholars, and professionals concerned with the place of the large corporation in a democratic society.
The Divine Right of Capital
Author: Marjorie KellyPublisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 160994545X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Book Description
Why “wealth bias” is a holdover from a pre-democratic past—and how to restore a healthier balance of power: “Thought-provoking . . . well-documented and readable.” —Library Journal Wealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are symptoms—the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness, says Business Ethics magazine founder Marjorie Kelly, is shareholder primacy: the corporate drive to make profits for shareholders no matter who pays the cost. In The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly argues that focusing on the interests of stockholders to the exclusion of everyone else’s interests is a form of discrimination based on property or wealth. She shows how this bias is held by our institutional structures, much as they once held biases against African Americans and women. The Divine Right of Capital exposes six aristocratic principles that corporations are built on, principles that we would never accept in our modern democratic society but which we accept unquestioningly in our economy. Wealth bias is a holdover from our pre-democratic past. It has enabled shareholders to become a kind of economic aristocracy. Kelly shows how to design more equitable alternatives—new property rights, new forms of corporate governance, new ways of looking at corporate performance—that build on both free-market and democratic principles. We think of shareholder primacy as the natural law of the free market, much as our forebears thought of monarchy as the most natural form of government. But in The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly brilliantly demonstrates that it is no more “natural” than any other human creation. People designed this system and people can change it. We need a change of mind as profound as that of the American Revolution—and this book provides practical guidance to help employees and communities change corporate governance and unfetter the genius of the free market.
The Seductive Comparison of Shareholder and Civic Democracy
Author: Usha RodriguesPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32
Book Description
This Comment briefly describes democracy in the political and corporate world, and goes on to discuss how seemingly similar kinds of democracies exist in both spheres. It then takes the common comparison of shareholder democracy and political democracy in a new direction by exploring the parallels between the Electoral College and the board of directors, examining both institutions in light of the differences between nation and corporation and their contrasting histories. Both are quot;once removedquot; representative democracies: both systems only give voters the right to vote for representatives who then select the individuals who actually govern. The Comment then steps back from this analogy and argues that comparisons between the corporate and civic polities, while intellectually tempting, ultimately falter because participation in a corporation fundamentally differs from participation in a nation. It concludes that the Electoral College/board of directors comparison, like the comparison of the two democracies, is tantalizing but ultimately of limited value given the distinctive roles that each institution, and each polity, play in the modern world.