Cedric the Pig: Annual General Meetings and Corporate Governance in the UK

Abstract

There has been increasing engagement with Annual General Meetings (AGMs) in the UK during the past decade by both private investors and protesters. At the same time, proposals have been mooted to allow companies to not hold such meetings. When examined from an agency theory perspective, AGMs appear largely redundant. This paper reports a qualitative investigation of such meetings and considers their relevance both as sites for the expression of stakeholder issues and also as a means for management to (re)confirm their power and status. The paper utilises Lukes (1974) three‐dimensional model of power as an alternative to the conceptualisation of power inherent in agency theory as a means of analysing the dynamics of power at AGMs

Citation

Apostolides, N. and Boden, R. (2005), "Cedric the Pig: Annual General Meetings and Corporate Governance in the UK", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1/2, pp. 53-62. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045795