IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedaer/y2006iq3p1-20nv.91no.3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

One proxy at a time : pursuing social change through shareholder proposals

Author

Listed:
  • Paula A. Tkac

Abstract

Traditional economic wisdom holds that a corporation?s sole goal should be to maximize shareholder wealth. But some investors believe that firms should also act as agents for social change. Activist investors use their shareholder rights to place socially responsible resolutions on corporate proxy statements to be voted on by all shareholders. ; This article examines the controversy behind corporate social responsibility (CSR) and identifies and categorizes activist investors, their objectives, and the firms they target. Using data from the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC) on 2,829 CSR shareholder proposals from 1992 to 2002, the author finds that religious organizations and individuals made the largest number of proposals, but in 2000 proposals by socially responsible mutual funds began to outnumber those by individuals. The three most common proposal topics were international conduct, environmental issues, and antidiscrimination. ; Of the 566 different corporations targeted, seventy-three were targeted ten times or more. Larger, economically powerful firms?especially those that value consumer goodwill and have the ?name? to aid in social change?were most often targeted. ; Because a withdrawn resolution usually signals an action by the corporation?dialogue, agreement to resolution, or some other compromise?the author argues that withdrawn proposals can be used as measure of activism?s success. The IRRC data and her own extensive research on the outcome of withdrawn proposals support this argument.

Suggested Citation

  • Paula A. Tkac, 2006. "One proxy at a time : pursuing social change through shareholder proposals," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 91(Q 3), pages 1-20.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedaer:y:2006:i:q3:p:1-20:n:v.91no.3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.frbatlanta.org/-/media/documents/research/publications/economic-review/2006/vol91no3_tkac.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roberta Romano, 2000. "Less Is More: Making Shareholder Activism A Valued Mechanism Of Corporate Governance," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm140, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Nov 2001.
    2. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:4:p:1335-1362 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Roberta Romano, 2001. "Less is More: Making Shareholder Activism a Valuable Mechanism of Corporate Governance," CeRP Working Papers 12, Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bambang Rudito & Melia Famiola & Prameshwara Anggahegari, 2022. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Capital: Journey of Community Engagement toward Community Empowerment Program in Developing Country," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.
    2. Jennifer Goodman & Céline Louche & Katinka Cranenburgh & Daniel Arenas, 2014. "Social Shareholder Engagement: The Dynamics of Voice and Exit," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 125(2), pages 193-210, December.
    3. Grewal, Jody & Serafeim, George, 2020. "Research on Corporate Sustainability: Review and Directions for Future Research," Foundations and Trends(R) in Accounting, now publishers, vol. 14(2), pages 73-127, September.
    4. Emma Sjöström, 2008. "Shareholder activism for corporate social responsibility: what do we know?," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 141-154.
    5. Michelon, Giovanna & Rodrigue, Michelle & Trevisan, Elisabetta, 2020. "The marketization of a social movement: Activists, shareholders and CSR disclosure," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    6. Erwin Eding & Bert Scholtens, 2017. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Shareholder Proposals," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(6), pages 648-660, November.
    7. Rastad, Mahdi & Dobson, John, 2022. "Gender diversity on corporate boards: Evaluating the effectiveness of shareholder activism," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 446-461.
    8. Emma Sjöström, 2010. "Shareholders as Norm Entrepreneurs for Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 94(2), pages 177-191, June.
    9. Vanessa Serret & Sylvie Berthelot, 2013. "Activisme Actionnarial Et Responsabilite Sociale Des Entreprises Au Canada : Analyse Des Resolutions Soumises Par Les Actionnaires Entre 2000 Et 2011," Post-Print hal-01002373, HAL.
    10. Hadani, Michael & Doh, Jonathan P. & Schneider, Marguerite, 2019. "Social movements and corporate political activity: Managerial responses to socially oriented shareholder activism," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 156-170.
    11. Stuart L. Gillan & Laura T. Starks, 2007. "The Evolution of Shareholder Activism in the United States," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 19(1), pages 55-73, January.
    12. Abhijith G. Acharya & David Gras & Ryan Krause, 2022. "Socially Oriented Shareholder Activism Targets: Explaining Activists’ Corporate Target Selection Using Corporate Opportunity Structures," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(2), pages 307-323, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Szilagyi, P.G., 2009. "Shareholder Activism through the Proxy Process," Other publications TiSEM cc25d736-2965-4511-b100-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Khan, Zazy, 2015. "Activist Hedge Funds: Evidence from the Recent Financial Crisis," MPRA Paper 72025, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 27 May 2016.
    3. Sanghoon Lee, 2008. "Ownership Structure and Financial Performance: Evidence from Panel Data of South Korea," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2008_17, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    4. Greenwood, Robin & Schor, Michael, 2009. "Investor activism and takeovers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 362-375, June.
    5. Vicente Cuñat & Mireia Gine & Maria Guadalupe, 2012. "The Vote Is Cast: The Effect of Corporate Governance on Shareholder Value," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(5), pages 1943-1977, October.
    6. Roberta Romano, 2002. "Does Confidential Proxy Voting Matter?," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm300, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Feb 2003.
    7. Bhattacharya, Abhi & Sardashti, Hanieh, 2022. "The differential effect of new product preannouncements in driving institutional and individual investor ownership," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 811-823.
    8. Thomas Smythe & Chris McNeil & Philip English, 2015. "When does CalPERS’ activism add value?," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 39(4), pages 641-660, October.
    9. Jean-Sebastien Lantz & Sophie Montandrau & Jean-Michel Sahut, 2014. "Activism of Institutional Investors, Corporate Governance Alerts and Financial Performance," Working Papers 2014-353, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    10. Sergakis Konstantinos, 2015. "Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the “Comply or Explain” Principle in EU Capital Markets," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 233-288, November.
    11. Erenburg, Grigori & Smith, Janet Kiholm & Smith, Richard, 2016. "Which institutional investors matter for firm survival and performance?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 348-373.
    12. Adegbite, Emmanuel, 2015. "Good corporate governance in Nigeria: Antecedents, propositions and peculiarities," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 319-330.
    13. Foley, Maggie & Cebula, Richard & Jun, Chulhee, 2013. "An Analysis of Withdrawn Shareholder Proposals," MPRA Paper 55422, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Maria Goranova & Lori Verstegen Ryan, 2022. "The Corporate Objective Revisited: The Shareholder Perspective," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 526-554, March.
    15. Matsusaka, John G. & Ozbas, Oguzhan & Yi, Irene, 2017. "Why Do Managers Fight Shareholder Proposals? Evidence from SEC No-Action Letter Decisions," Working Papers 262, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    16. Martijn Cremers & Roberta Romano, 2007. "Institutional Investors and Proxy Voting: The Impact of the 2003 Mutual Fund Voting Disclosure Regulation," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2660, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Jan 2008.
    17. Bajo, Emanuele & Barbi, Massimiliano & Bigelli, Marco & Hillier, David, 2013. "The role of institutional investors in public-to-private transactions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4327-4336.
    18. Albert Irawan, 2014. "Factors that Determines the Success of Business Demon Value Added Management," Business and Economic Research, Macrothink Institute, vol. 4(1), pages 319-350, June.
    19. Abe Jong & Gerard Mertens & Peter Roosenboom, 2006. "Shareholders’ Voting at General Meetings: Evidence from the Netherlands," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 10(4), pages 353-380, November.
    20. Christian Pieter Hoffmann & Peggy Simcic Brønn & Christian Fieseler, 2016. "A Good Reputation: Protection against Shareholder Activism," Corporate Reputation Review, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(1), pages 35-46, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedaer:y:2006:i:q3:p:1-20:n:v.91no.3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Meredith Rector (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbatus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.