IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/entsoc/v24y2023i3p866-890_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dividends, Efficiency, or Safety? Governance Choices at Corn Products Refining

Author

Listed:
  • Clarke, Sally H.

Abstract

At Corn Products Refining (CPR), stockholders so disagreed with one another that they threatened to undermine the merger itself. Its predecessor, Corn Products (1902–1906), nearly failed, and so might have CPR. For several years, from its organization in 1906 to perhaps 1915, CPR’s owners weighed paying dividends against funding factories. Because paying dividends chanced syphoning off sums needed for plants, this might cause facilities to deteriorate and workers to face threats like factory fires that often set off explosions. CPR President E. T. Bedford managed this test and strove to upgrade facilities, which, by design or not, helped improve safety. His efforts almost came to naught given CPR’s anticompetitive tactics, yet the court’s antitrust decision—although highly critical—inadvertently gave the merger the chance to enhance profits and safety.

Suggested Citation

  • Clarke, Sally H., 2023. "Dividends, Efficiency, or Safety? Governance Choices at Corn Products Refining," Enterprise & Society, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 866-890, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:24:y:2023:i:3:p:866-890_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1467222722000180/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:24:y:2023:i:3:p:866-890_9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/eso .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.