Do stakeholders matter for corporate governance? Behavior and performance of Norwegian banks 1985-2002

Abstract

The distribution of formal control rights among the firm’s stakeholders (such as stockholders, creditors, employees, politicians, and customers) attracts considerable public attention in many countries. For instance, a common view in the UK and the US is that firms should have profit maximization as their only objective, and that stockholders should be the dominant stakeholder in corporate governance. In contrast, conventional wisdom in Continental Europe and Japan is that firms should have multiple objectives and allocate formal power to more stakeholder types than just stockholders. The politics of corporate governance addresses this issue by regulating the owners’ ability to control the corporation. This report addresses this issue empirically by trying to answer two questions. First, what relationship do we actually observe between stakeholder structure and corporate behavior? For instance, do firms take less risk when stockholders share control rights with employees, customers, and politicians? Second, what is the real-world link between stakeholder structure and economic performance? For instance, do ownerless firms have lower returns to capital invested than firms owned by stockholders?