IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhb/sicgwp/2010_008.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Influence Strategies in Shareholder Engagement: A Case Study of Five Swedish National Pension Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Hamilton , Ian

    (Umeå School of Business at Umeå University)

  • Eriksson, Jessica

    (Umeaå School of Business at Umeå University)

Abstract

Investors spend money and resources trying to reduce the environmental, social, and governance risks in companies they own. If unattended, these risks may cause reputational damage not only to the portfolio firm, but also to its owner. In this paper, we study five Swedish national pension funds and the influence strategies used in shareholder engagement. Knowledge about influence strategies is important because successful shareholder engagements can lead to more sustainable corporate behaviour and a lower risk to the investor. Our findings show that, besides traditional power and legitimacy dependencies which have been reported as influential in deciding stakeholder salience, we present five additional factors in determining influence strategies in shareholder engagement. We provide a conceptual model showing how these factors interlink with choices of influence strategies, offering a practical use of this study. Stakeholder theory has been used as our theoretical frame of reference, based on existing influence strategy literature taken from the stakeholder–firm perspective.

Suggested Citation

  • Hamilton , Ian & Eriksson, Jessica, 2010. "Influence Strategies in Shareholder Engagement: A Case Study of Five Swedish National Pension Funds," Sustainable Investment and Corporate Governance Working Papers 2010/8, Sustainable Investment Research Platform.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhb:sicgwp:2010_008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://sites.google.com/site/climatedeclaration/Home/sirpwp10-08-HamiltonEriksson.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marco Becht & Julian Franks & Colin Mayer & Stefano Rossi, 2010. "Returns to Shareholder Activism: Evidence from a Clinical Study of the Hermes UK Focus Fund," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(3), pages 3093-3129, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Szilagyi, P.G., 2009. "Shareholder Activism through the Proxy Process," Other publications TiSEM cc25d736-2965-4511-b100-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Jacob Oded & Yu Wang, 2010. "On the different styles of large shareholders’ activism," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 229-267, June.
    3. Peter Cziraki & Luc Renneboog & Peter G. Szilagyi, 2010. "Shareholder Activism through Proxy Proposals: The European Perspective," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 16(5), pages 738-777, November.
    4. Dasgupta, Amil & Fos, Vyacheslav & Sautner, Zacharias, 2021. "Institutional investors and corporate governance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112114, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Shackleton, Mark & Yan, Jiali & Yao, Yaqiong, 2022. "What drives a firm's ES performance? Evidence from stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    6. Khan, Zazy, 2015. "Activist Hedge Funds: Evidence from the Recent Financial Crisis," MPRA Paper 72025, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 27 May 2016.
    7. Marco BECHT & Julian FRANKS & MIYAJIMA Hideaki & SUZUKI Kazunori, 2021. "Outsourcing Active Ownership in Japan," Discussion papers 21051, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    8. Hamao, Yasushi & Matos, Pedro, 2018. "U.S.-style investor activism in Japan: The first ten years?," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 29-54.
    9. Campbell, Kevin & Tabner, Isaac T., 2014. "Bonding and the agency risk premium: An analysis of migrations between the AIM and the Official List of the London Stock Exchange," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 1-20.
    10. Marco Becht & Patrick Bolton & Ailsa Röell, 2011. "Why bank governance is different," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 27(3), pages 437-463.
    11. Cantillo, Miguel, 2016. "Villains or Heroes? Private Banks and Railroads after the Sherman Act," MPRA Paper 79354, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Tamas Barko & Martijn Cremers & Luc Renneboog, 2022. "Shareholder Engagement on Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(2), pages 777-812, October.
    13. Feito-Ruiz, Isabel & Renneboog, Luc, 2017. "Takeovers and (excess) CEO compensation," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 156-181.
    14. Bruno, Valentina & Claessens, Stijn, 2010. "Corporate governance and regulation: Can there be too much of a good thing?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 461-482, October.
    15. Greenwood, Robin & Schor, Michael, 2009. "Investor activism and takeovers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 362-375, June.
    16. Camila Yamahaki & Catherine Marchewitz, 2023. "Collaborative Investor Engagement with Policymakers: Changing the Rules of the Game?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2051, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    17. Cronqvist, Henrik & Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger, 2013. "CEO contract design: How do strong principals do it?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 659-674.
    18. Gur Aminadav & Elias Papaioannou, 2020. "Corporate Control around the World," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 1191-1246, June.
    19. Siala Bouaziz Souha & Jarboui Anis & David McMillan, 2016. "Corporate governance and firm characteristics as explanatory factors of shareholder activism: Validation through the French context," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 1150407-115, December.
    20. Jiang, George J. & Liu, Chang, 2021. "Getting on board: The monitoring effect of institutional directors," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    case study; ESG directive; influence strategy; pension funds; reputation risk; responsible investment; shareholder engagement; shareholder salience; stakeholder theory;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhb:sicgwp:2010_008. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Pontus Cerin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iikthse.html .

    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.