This Spring marks the fourteenth consecutive year that public interest resolutions have appeared on the proxy statements of American corporations. The author of Lobbying the Corporation examines the evolution and the effects of politically oriented shareholder activism, focusing on the years since 1977, and also assesses how it has been affected by changes in business-government relations.
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References
1.
VogelDavid, Lobbying the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1978). All material on developments prior to 1978 not otherwise cited is drawn from this study.
2.
For a more detailed account and explanation of the fall and rise of the political influence of business between the midsixties and the late seventies, see VogelDavid, “How Business Responds to Opposition: Corporate Political Strategies During the 1970s,” presented to the 1979 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, and idem, “The Inadequacy of Contemporary Opposition to Business,”Daedalus (Summer 1980).
3.
Information on shareholder proposals prior to 1975 is based on the annual reports of the Council on Economic Priorities, Minding the Corporate Conscience. All the statistical information on public interest proxy proposals between 1975 and 1980 contained in this paper is drawn from the report, How Institutions Voted on Shareholder Resolutions, published annually by the Investor Responsibility Research Center.
4.
This account of conservative shareholder activism is drawn from MillerJudith, “Proxy Resolutions, Conservative, Too,”New York Times (22 February 1980), pp. D1, D4; and the various reports and news releases published by Carl Olsen, P.O. Box 140, Woodland, CA, 91365. See also News for Investors, vol. VII, no. 1 (January 1980), pp. 15–22.
5.
The paragraph is based on Ann Crittendon, “Lone Ranger for Corporate Philanthropy,”New York Times (15 March 1980), pp. 25, 27.
6.
Quoted in Vogel, Lobbying, p. 118.
7.
News for Investors, vol. IV, no. 5 (May 1977), p. 88.
8.
Taken from News for Investors, vol. IV, no. 8 (September 1977).
9.
Ibid.
10.
Ibid.
11.
News for Investors, vol. V., no. 11 (December 1978), pp. 213–220.
12.
See News for Investors, vol. V., no. 7 (July/August 1978), pp. 133–136; and “SEC Is Proposing New Proxy Rules to Aid Holders,”Wall Street Journal (8 August 1979), p. 3, for the original proposals. For the version actually adopted, see News for Investors, vol. VI, no. 11 (December 1979), pp. 221–224.
13.
“A Victory for Dissident Shareholders” (22 February 1978), sec. 3, p. 15.
14.
This paragraph and the subsequent one are based on News for Investors, vol. VII, no. 10 (November 1980), pp. 193–205. For the full report, see Staff Report on Corporate Accountability, Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Government Printing Office (4 September 1980).
15.
PurcellTheodore, “Management and the ‘Ethical’ Investors,”Harvard Business Review (September/October 1979), p. 7. This article is, on balance, a relatively sympathetic account of public interest proxy proposals. Purcell concludes that “the ethical investor movement can improve two-way communication. It can give a new source for the legitimacy-accountability base of the corporation.”
16.
NickelHerman, “The Corporation Haters,”Fortune (16 June 1980), p. 126.
17.
KirchhoffD.J., “Antibusiness Radicals in Clerical Garb,”Business and Society Review, no. 32 (Winter 1979–1980), pp. 55–58. Strikingly, most of the business responses to Purcell's article (see ref. 15)—summarized in a subsequent piece, “Reprise of the ‘Ethical Investor,’”Harvard Business Review (March/April 1980)—were highly critical of the use of the proxy mechanism for social criticism of business.
18.
Kirchhoff, op. cit., p. 164.
19.
Purcell, op. cit., p. 5. The remainder of the quotations in this paragraph are from News for Investors, vol. VII, No. 8 (September 1980), p. 161.
20.
Quoted in Vogel, Lobbying, p. 162.
21.
Ibid., p. 131.
22.
The most complete and up-to-date account of university disinvestments is contained in MyersDesaixIII, U.S. Business in South Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), Appendix F, pp. 363–373. For divestments by clerical institutions, see The Corporate Examiner (September 1980, July 1980, March 1980, April 1980); BriggsKenneth, “Seminary Cutting Investments over Apartheid,”New York Times (7 February 1979), p. B3; and DuganGeorge, “Church Group Acts over South Africa,”New York Times (11 November 1977), p. A6.
23.
Vogel, Lobbying, p. 216.
24.
The following discussion of the corporate campaign against Stevens is drawn from CookDaniel, “Is Labor's Money a Threat to Business?”Industry Week (16 April 1979), pp. 61–66; News for Investors, vol. V, no. 4 (April 1978), pp. 72–74; News for Investors, vol. VII, no. 10 (November 1980), pp. 205–6; RobinsonGail, “Short-Sheeting J.P. Stevens,”Environmental Action (1 July 1978), pp. 10–13; RaskinA. H., “The Stevens Settlement,”New York Times (21 October 1980), p. A19.
25.
RifkinJeremyBarberRandy, The North Will Rise Again (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978).
26.
News for Investors, vol. VI, no. 9 (October 1979), pp. 181–83. For the full report, see Pension Investments: A Social Audit (New York: Corporate Data Exchange, 1979).
27.
See RaskinA. H., “Pension Funds Could Be the Unions' Secret Weapon,”Fortune (31 December 1979), pp. 64–67; and “The New Strategies Unions Are Trying,”Business Week (4 December 1978), pp. 63, 64, 67.
28.
News for Investors, vol. VII, no. 7 (July/August 1980), pp. 133–135.
