“Shareholder value” was the sacred mantra of American business in the 1990s. But creating shareholder value can be a fickle undertaking and corporate executives often followed the lead of their colleagues. The result was a contagion of questionable business practices that resulted in the creation of a corporate bubble—and its implosion.
References
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DavisGerald F.UseemMichael. “Top Management, Company Directors, and Corporate Control.” In Handbook of Strategy and Management edited by PettigrewAndrewThomasHowardWhittingtonRichard. London: Sage, 2002. A critical introduction to the American theory of corporate governance and a review of research on the U.S. and other industrialized economies.
2.
DavisGerald F.YooMinaBakerWayne E.. “The Small World of the American Corporate Elite, 1982–2001.”Strategic Organization, 2003. A description of the surprising stability and influence of the networks among U.S. boards of directors over the past 20 years.
3.
EasterbrookFrank H.FischelDaniel R.. The Economic Structure of Corporate Law.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. An introduction to the law and economics of American corporate governance by influential legal theorists.
4.
RaoHayagreevaGreveHenrich R.DavisGerald F.. “Fool's Gold: Social Proof in the Initiation and Abandonment of Coverage by Wall Street Analysts.”Administrative Science Quarterly46 (2001): 502–526. An examination of the social contagion processes among financial analysts that can promote financial bubbles.
5.
UseemMichael. Investor Capitalism: How Money Managers are Changing the Face of Corporate America.New York: Basic Books, 1996. Useem analyzes the rise of “shareholder capitalism” in the U.S. during the 1980s and 1990s and examines the increasing influence of institutional investors on how corporations were managed during the past decade.
