IFin Seminar, Renée Adams, University of Oxford
Institute of Finance
Date: 9 October 2020 / 12:25 - 13:40
Speaker: Renée Adams, University of Oxford
Title: "Shareholders and Stakeholders around the World: The Role of Values, Culture, and Law in Directors’ Decisions"
Date: October 9, 2020
Time: 12:25 - 13:40
Room: virtual
Lugano Campus
Abstract:
We present evidence on the way personal and institutional factors guide public company directors in decision-making concerning shareholders and stakeholders. In a sample comprising more than nine hundred directors from over fifty countries of origin, we confirm that directors hold a principled, quasi-ideological stance towards shareholders and stakeholders, called shareholderism. Directors’ shareholderism correlates with personal values, but also with cultural norms that are consistent with entrepreneurship. Among legal factors, only creditor protection exhibits a negative correlation with shareholderism, while general legal origin and proxies for shareholder and employee protection are unrelated to it.
