Corporate management shifted from ignoring to obsessing over stock prices

Evidence

Between the 1950s and the 1990s, the attention paid by corporations to financial markets greatly increased, above all in the United States and the United Kingdom, but increasingly in other countries too. Corporate leaders for whom the financial markets were one concern among many Roger Lowenstein points out that Alfred P. Sloan Jr., who headed General Motors for four decades, never mentions in his autobiography the price of its stock “as a factor in his decision making” (Lowenstein 2004, p. 29) were replaced by a generation for whom their corporations’ stock prices were an obsession. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1170

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s financialization interests: this is the shareholder-value revolution, complementing John Kay, William Lazonick, or David Gelles’s work on corporate purpose. — connects to: Managerial displacement of owners was once seen as progressive insulation from profit pressures — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 130; Takeover markets and institutional investors drove shareholder-value restructuring of corporations. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 31; Hostile takeovers in the 1980s drove the financialization of corporations — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 49 (+1 more)
• SHARE: The Sloan detail — four decades as GM head, never once considering his stock price in decisions — is a perfect antidote to shareholder-primacy dogma, worth sending to anyone working in corporate governance.

Broader Connections

• Managerial displacement of owners was once seen as progressive insulation from profit pressures #contradicts (0.82) — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 130
• Hostile takeovers in the 1980s drove the financialization of corporations #corroborates (0.80) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 49
• Takeover markets and institutional investors drove shareholder-value restructuring of corporations. #expands (0.75) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 31
• Financialization fragments corporate, state, and individual horizons into short-termism #expands (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 138