Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What Is Influencing Financially-Driven Shareholder Activism In The Us And Uk—Principal-Agent Or Principal-Principal Problems?, Maureen I. Muller-Kahle

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Shareholder activism is a response to corporate underperformance by one or more shareholders of the corporation. Classic agency theory suggests that shareholder activism is a mechanism to curb principal-agent problems in the firm. However, the principal-principal perspective suggests that shareholder activism is a mechanism for dominant shareholders to extract resources from the firm. This dissertation extends the current research by developing and testing competing hypotheses to examine the antecedents of financially driven shareholder activism in the United States and the United Kingdom. The extant literature on financially driven shareholder activism (FDSA) is reviewed, research gaps in the literature identified and …