Hardback
Beyond Shareholder Value
A Framework for Stakeholder Governance
9781800375765 Edward Elgar Publishing
This timely and engaging book examines how maximizing shareholder value has played a dominant role in corporate governance over recent decades, and analyzes the resulting effect on share prices in the stock markets. Alongside the rise in corporate power and deepening economic inequality, the author investigates corporate law reform as a corrective remedy.
More Information
Critical Acclaim
Contents
More Information
This timely and engaging book examines how maximizing shareholder value has played a dominant role in corporate governance over recent decades, and analyzes the resulting effect on share prices in the stock markets. Alongside the rise in corporate power and deepening economic inequality, the author investigates corporate law reform as a corrective remedy.
Beyond Shareholder Value offers an astute analysis of key topics such as corporate incentive structures that reward executives for delivering shareholder value and permissive rules that enable companies to issue shares at will at rising valuations. P.M. Vasudev explores the laws intended to protect stakeholders and deftly unpacks the shortcomings in employment-related laws and antitrust enforcement. Demonstrating how alternative dispute resolution can be used to promote stakeholder governance, the book explains how the overly broad business judgment rule impedes effective adjudication of complex stakeholder disputes.
This insightful book offers a new perspective on stakeholder governance, and will prove indispensable reading for academics and legal researchers working in the field of corporate law and governance. Its innovative approach will also benefit practitioners and policy makers alike.
Beyond Shareholder Value offers an astute analysis of key topics such as corporate incentive structures that reward executives for delivering shareholder value and permissive rules that enable companies to issue shares at will at rising valuations. P.M. Vasudev explores the laws intended to protect stakeholders and deftly unpacks the shortcomings in employment-related laws and antitrust enforcement. Demonstrating how alternative dispute resolution can be used to promote stakeholder governance, the book explains how the overly broad business judgment rule impedes effective adjudication of complex stakeholder disputes.
This insightful book offers a new perspective on stakeholder governance, and will prove indispensable reading for academics and legal researchers working in the field of corporate law and governance. Its innovative approach will also benefit practitioners and policy makers alike.
Critical Acclaim
‘Professor Vasudev’s contribution is both timely and important. In identifying the normative tensions that mark the journey of the corporation until this very day, he is able to convincingly argue for a complex and long-term oriented understanding of business corporations and their place in changing political economies. Rather than being a mere investment vehicle that prioritizes and serves a limited set of interests, the corporation reemerges as a site of social transformation, innovation and sustainable planning. This excellent study is an inspiring and highly rewarding reading for anyone with a “stake” in reflecting on the blind spots of contemporary corporate governance.’
– Peer Zumbansen, McGill University, Canada
‘This new work by Professor P.M. Vasudev is a welcome addition to the largely economic literature on shareholder value. It considers the legal idea and its link with shareholder primacy and democratic legitimacy and compares it with stakeholder theory which the author favours. The book goes on to makes interesting comparisons between US and Canadian corporate laws.’
– John Farrar, Bond University, Australia
‘An important intervention in the ongoing debate over the purposes of the corporation and the goals of corporate law.’
– Daniel Crane, University of Michigan, US
‘How corporations are to be managed and for what purpose has been a matter of debate for the past 100 years and while much has been written on the subject there is more to be said. This book provides a good contribution to the literature in that it provides the fruit of broad research that engages with the past but considers what the future could be like. Unlike much of the literature on stakeholderism it seeks to go beyond the theory and provide an examination of what governance for stakeholders could look like.’
– Andrew Keay, University of Leeds, UK
‘P.M. Vasudev advances our understanding of the vituperative battling over the purpose of the corporation between shareholder and stakeholder primacists, toggling back and forth between Canada and the U.S. to find useful lessons for each country from the other. It is comparative corporate law at its best.’
– Donald Langevoort, Georgetown Law, Washington DC, US
– Peer Zumbansen, McGill University, Canada
‘This new work by Professor P.M. Vasudev is a welcome addition to the largely economic literature on shareholder value. It considers the legal idea and its link with shareholder primacy and democratic legitimacy and compares it with stakeholder theory which the author favours. The book goes on to makes interesting comparisons between US and Canadian corporate laws.’
– John Farrar, Bond University, Australia
‘An important intervention in the ongoing debate over the purposes of the corporation and the goals of corporate law.’
– Daniel Crane, University of Michigan, US
‘How corporations are to be managed and for what purpose has been a matter of debate for the past 100 years and while much has been written on the subject there is more to be said. This book provides a good contribution to the literature in that it provides the fruit of broad research that engages with the past but considers what the future could be like. Unlike much of the literature on stakeholderism it seeks to go beyond the theory and provide an examination of what governance for stakeholders could look like.’
– Andrew Keay, University of Leeds, UK
‘P.M. Vasudev advances our understanding of the vituperative battling over the purpose of the corporation between shareholder and stakeholder primacists, toggling back and forth between Canada and the U.S. to find useful lessons for each country from the other. It is comparative corporate law at its best.’
– Donald Langevoort, Georgetown Law, Washington DC, US
Contents
Contents: Introduction PART I SHAREHOLDER VALUE AND ITS DISCONTENTS 1. Shareholder value – conception and execution 2. Shareholder value – delivery and outcomes 3. Impact on corporate governance and enterprise management PART II SHAREHOLDER VALUE AS LAW 4. Shareholder value becomes law 5. Shareholder primacy – the original sin? 6. The anatomy of shareholder value – shares unleashed 7. Corporate law and its making – the question of democratic legitimacy PART III STAKEHOLDER VISION – THE JOURNEY SO FAR AND THE FUTURE 8. The stakeholder journey – so far 9. Stakeholder governance – a framework for the present and the future References Index
