Stockholder Activism at DuPont: A Conflict of Interest for Management

In American corporate governance law, the business judgment rule gives management expertise the benefit of the doubt over stockholder proposals. Compared with executive skill, they look rather populist and thus potentially irrational in nature. Nevertheless, with the rule chaffing up against the property-rights foundation of corporate capitalism, the managerial prerogative can be said to be dubious. Indeed, a strict private-property basis justifies displacing the default profit-maximization mission for a given corporation. Alternatively, stockholders may want to use their concentrated, collective wealth for other purposes, such as to alleviate hunger. Once enough profit has been made for the business to be sustained for another year or two, any additional surplus would be spent on food pantries, for example, rather than going out as dividends or being retained by the corporation. Because managerial skill is premised on the profit-maximization goal and its associated strategies, corporate executives intrinsically resist alternatives proposed by stockholders. The managers face a conflict of interest in providing their recommendation for stockholders. Even when the proposal assumes profit-maximization but differs from a current strategy (i.e., adopted by management), a conflict of interest exists should the management seek to provide a recommendation for the stockholders.


The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.