IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jsustf/v1y2011i3-4p180-194.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Shareholder passivity: a viable explanation for corporate governance failures at NewsCorp?

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel A. Huppé
  • Priya Bala-Miller

Abstract

Why would shareholders remain passive despite economic incentives to address corporate governance failings at the company level? In crafting a response to this question, our article addresses contemporary debates on the monitoring role of investors in ensuring the companies they own maximize shareholder value and adhere to high standards of corporate governance. Although rich, the existing literature primarily addresses the normative issue of whether shareholders should take on oversight functions, rather than factors that may induce or inhibit oversight. Responding to this gap in the literature, we examine shareholder passivity through a qualitative case analysis of the behaviour of NewsCorp investors. We argue that the corporate governance failures at NewsCorp resulted not just from absent internal controls at the Board level, but also from the failure of available external governance mechanisms. Our findings show that agency-level, structural and cultural barriers stymied the efforts of activist investors seeking corporate governance reform at NewsCorp. We draw the insights of investors together within a set of policy recommendations that could mitigate shareholder passivity. In keeping with our exploratory focus, we propose promising theoretical trajectories for advancing the related research programme through approaches that better account for the interplay between structure, agency and culture.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel A. Huppé & Priya Bala-Miller, 2011. "Shareholder passivity: a viable explanation for corporate governance failures at NewsCorp?," Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(3-4), pages 180-194, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jsustf:v:1:y:2011:i:3-4:p:180-194
    DOI: 10.1080/20430795.2012.656474
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20430795.2012.656474
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/20430795.2012.656474?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:taf:jsustf:v:1:y:2011:i:3-4:p:180-194. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TSFI20 .

    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.