“Agents without Principals” Revisited: Theorizing the Effects of Increased Shareholder Participation in Corporate Governance

The subject of corporate governance—defined by Ryan, Buchholtz, and Kolb as “the roles, responsibilities, and balance of power among executives, directors, and shareholders” (2010: 673)—presents management scholars with a number of vexing problems. These problems have included such issues as executive compensation, the adoption of poison pills, the payment of greenmail, the establishment of golden parachutes, and resistance to many shareholder proposals on annual proxy ballots. While many of these issues are of concern mainly to scholars and shareholder activists, executive compensation, because of the ever-increasing multiple of executive pay to average worker pay (Economic Policy Institute, 2013), also resonates with many members of the general public.