Shareholders and Stakeholders around the World: The Role of Values, Culture, and Law in Directors’ Decisions

Abstract

We present theory and evidence on the way personal and institutional factors could together guide public company directors in decision-making concerning shareholders and stakeholders. We theorize that in addition to personal values and other attributes at the individual level, directors’ stances towards shareholders and stakeholders are guided by cultural norms and laws at the institutional level. In a sample comprising more than nine hundred directors originating from over fifty countries and serving in firms from twenty three countries, we confirm that directors around the world hold such a principled stance, called shareholderism, on which they vary in line with their personal values. We further find that directors’ shareholderism level associates with cultural norms that are conducive to 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.

Date and time: 
Monday 12 September 2022, 16:00 - 17:30
Organisation: 
National Bank of Belgium
Speaker(s): 
Renée Adams (University of Oxford - Saïd Business School)
Venue: 
Meeting Room 10 of the National Bank of Belgium, boulevard de Berlaimont 14, 1000 Brussels.
Entrance fee: 
free