Shareholder Activism and Alienation

Moving Beyond Profit: Expanding Research to Better Understand Business Environmental Management

“…Perhaps the primary contribution of this literature synthesis is that it supports positions earlier advanced by Simon, 1993 [20]: first, individuals matter, and second, individuals-and, by extension the organizations which they manage-are not necessarily a homogenous, profit-seeking group, which some strands of literature have traditionally held them to be [19,51]. Scholars from various disciplines have questioned the use of models that assume strict profit-seeking behavior, pointing out that both literature and real-world outcomes (i.e., poor market performance over the past ten years) have demonstrated the need for revised frameworks [13,19].…”

“…One theory for this association is that shareholders urge companies to avoid the financial liabilities associated with environmental risk, possibly because they view themselves as "not simply token" owners-risking reputational damage when the companies they invest in cause environmental harm [44,51]. Barnea and Rubin, 2010 [52] argue and show that managers may seek to overinvest in corporate social responsibility out of self-interest (e.g., to improve their own reputations) if they have an equity stake in the company.…”

“…These companies had greater leverage with debt markets more willing to provide financing. Other authors cite increasing environmental screening in investment funds and increased involvement in policy development by social investment groups as further evidence of investor pressure for reduced environmental risk [15,51].…”

Translating ‘Sustainability’ in Hawai'i: The Utility of Semiotic Transformation in the Transmission of Culture

“…The term has travelled far across the globe from Brazil (Duarte 2010), Indonesia (Welker 2009) and Papua New Guinea (Coumans 2011) to South Africa (Rajak 2011), reshaping everyday practices across supply-chains, industries and the general stakeholder publics (Kirsch 2010;Partridge 2011;Welker and Wood 2011). Similar to the closely associated term 'social responsibility', the proliferation of sustainability has involved the active engagement of corporate, governmental, multilateral and non-governmental organisations (Kidd 1992;SustainAbility, Ketchum, and UNEP 2002).…”

Imagining Corporate Personhood

“…Recent attention to corporate personhood is closely related to the growing significance of branding in contemporary capitalism (Foster ; Manning ). Branding no longer focuses primarily on the relationship between consumers and commodities, but increasingly addresses the relationship between corporations and shareholders (Bashkow ; Foster ; Welker and Wood ). In the era of shareholder capitalism, corporate reputations have become a valuable asset.…”