Shareholder value is assumed to be the ruling idea in Anglo-American corporate governance. This paper first reviews the historical origins of the idea of shareholder value in the UK and the particular theoretical assumptions about the company which underpin it. It assesses the reasons why it was subjected to so little subsequent political challenge, and contrasts this with US experience. This historical and theoretical context is then used to explore the current debate on stakeholding in the UK, whether the UK system of corporate governance needs reform, and if so in which direction. Four main positions on stakeholding are identified ± property rights, enlightened managerialism, active shareholders, and corporate pluralism. The paper concludes with an assessment of the political and legal pressures for reform of the UK model of corporate governance and the prospects for any significant change.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. 16. Slightly after daybreak, and heralded by a thick succession of fiercely shaken thunderbolts, the solidity of the whole earth was made to shake and shudder, and the sea was driven away, its waves were rolled back, and it disappeared, so that the abyss of the depths was uncovered and many-shaped varieties of sea-creatures were seen stuck in the slime; the great wastes of those valleys and mountains, which the very creation had dismissed beneath the vast whirlpools, at that moment, as it was given to be believed, looked up at the sun's rays. 17. Many ships, then, were stranded as if on dry land, and people wandered at will about the paltry remains of the waters to collect fish and the like in their hands; then the roaring sea as if insulted by its repulse rises back in turn, and through the teeming shoals dashed itself violently on islands and extensive tracts of the mainland, and flattened innumerable buildings in towns or wherever they were found. Thus in the raging conflict of the elements, the face of the earth was changed to reveal wondrous sights. Whilst Ammianus' description is that of an observant and well-informed contemporary, and he neither refers directly to nor has even demonstrably read any of the other, mainly Christian, sources which survive (most are in any case of a later date), his relationship to those sources deserves more attention than a passing 'cf.'. He may not allude to any other extant accounts, but he does allude both to stories and to particular providentialist interpretations found more expressly in those other texts. Ammianus' narrative is not merely distinct but consciously differentiated from these, and the passage provides a visible example of the manipulative fashion in which Ammianus alludes to his sources. I shall propose that Ammianus alludes to fabulous stories which are now preserved only in two ninth-century authors, Theophanes and Georgius Monachus (George the Monk).' Whether or not my proposal that Ammianus was aware of their original common source is accepted, it will be seen that the greater authority of his performance comes from eschewing or toning down the more incredible details of other accounts. This is not to say that Ammianus does not make the tsunami a metaphor for human events: the tsunami has plausibly been identified as a portent for the Gothic invasions which reached their climax at the Battle of Adrianople in A.D. 378 and ended Ammianus' history.8 Moreover, I believe that he alludes to and corrects the tendency of other, Christian, texts to see the disaster as a divine response to the reign of Julian the Apostate. But the universalizing nature of his treatment makes the metaphor at once less blatant and more satisfying...
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