CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 1,970Corporate Finance and GovernanceHousing, Finance, and NeoliberalismCorporate Governance and Financial Management

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Maximizing shareholder value: a new ideology for corporate governance

Lazonick, William, O'Sullivan, Mary·2000·Economy and Society
DOI 10.1080/030851400360541
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The decade-long boom in the US stock market and the more recent boom in the US economy have fostered widespread belief in the economic benefits of the maximization of shareholder value as a principle of corporate governance. In this paper, we provide an historical analysis of the rise of shareholder value as a principle of corporate governance in the United States, tracing the transformation of US corporate strategy from an orientation towards retention of corporate earnings and reinvestment in corporate growth through the 1970s to one of downsizing of corporate labour forces and distribution of corporate earnings to shareholders over the past two decades. We then consider the recent performance of the US economy, and raise questions about the relation between the maximization of shareholder value and the sustainability of economic prosperity.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/030851400360541

Cites

2 of 2 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 2 references

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. London: Penguin.
  2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  3. Washington, DC: AEI Press.
  4. American Economic Review 63: 134-9.
  5. Accounts, Flows and Outstandings, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. US Bureau of Labor Statistics (various years) Employment and Earnings, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. US Bureau of the Census (1976) Historical Statistics of the United States from the Colonial Times to the Present, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. US Congress (various years) Economic Report of the President, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. US Department of Commerce (various years) Statistical Abstract of the United States, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Weinstein, M. and Kochan, T. (1995) ‘The limits of diffusion: recent developments in industrial relations and human resource practices’, in R. Locke, T. Kochan and M. Piore (eds) Employment Relations in a Changing World, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 501–600 of 999

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Lazonick, W., & O'Sullivan, M.
ORCID
Lazonick, William
Venue
Economy and Society
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2000-01
Volume
29
Issue
1
Pages
13-35
ISSN
  • 0308-5147 (ISSN-L)
  • 1469-5766
DOI
10.1080/030851400360541
OpenAlex
W4254928272
Semantic Scholar
009bf76a12cc7f138e729ae38b96c780398d3920
Cited by
1,970
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 96 · 2025: 88 · 2024: 130 · 2023: 132 · 2022: 124 · 2021: 171 · 2020: 128 · 2019: 152 · 2018: 121 · 2017: 127 · 2016: 85 · 2015: 78 · 2014: 62 · 2013: 66 · 2012: 56
FWCI
85.97
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Economy and Society (publishedVersion)
Funders
European Commission
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Finance › Corporate Finance and Governance
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Finance › Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Corporate Governance and Financial Management
Keywords
shareholder wealth maximization, corporate governance, business strategy, earnings retention, reinvestment, downsizing, stock market boom, economic prosperity, sustainability of economic growth, United States

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review