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Following the traditions of stakeholder salience theory, this paper aims to contend that some institutional investor activists and tactics have more power, legitimacy and urgency than others.

The author undertakes an empirical test of a saliency table looking at the effects of institutional investor heterogeneity on portfolio firm responses using ordinal logistic regression.

This study found heterogeneity for institutional investor type to drive firm responses but not tactic type raising the importance of the attributes of each type of investor activist. The author found a rank ordering of public pension plans, hedge funds and then private multiemployer funds in saliency to portfolio firms. In addition, the use of proxy-based tactics did not help or hurt each investor type. Both findings challenge prior empirical work.

The rank ordering based upon the heterogeneity of institutional investor activists and their tactical interactions are tested providing empirical evidence of the most influential activist investors and tactics in one study, which is rare in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate institutional shareholder activism in Nigeria. It addresses the paucity of empirical research on institutional shareholder activism in sub-Saharan Africa.

This study uses agency theory to understand the institutional shareholder approach to shareholder activism in Nigeria. The data are collected through qualitative interviews with expert representatives from financial institutions.

The findings indicate evidence of low-level shareholder activism in Nigeria. The study provides empirical insight into the reasons why institutional shareholders might adopt an active or passive approach to shareholder activism. The findings suggest the pension structure involving two types of pension institutions affects the ability to engage in shareholder activism.

The research study advances our understanding of the status quo of institutional shareholder activism in an African context such as Nigeria.

The paper makes a practical contribution by highlighting that regulators need to consider how the financial market conditions and characteristics affect effective promotion of better governance practices and performance through shareholder activism.

This study draws attention to the implication for shareholder activism of complexities associated with an institutional arrangement where two types of financial institutions are expected to operate and manage the private pension funds in a country.

Purpose – This chapter presents the results of an exploratory study carried out on activist institutional investor strategies. It aims to identify the way in which different types of institutional investors are reacting to new institutional pressures in the French context.

Design/methodology/approach – Our methodology is based on a series of semi-directive interviews, combined with additional relevant data.

Findings – The interpretation of results makes use of institutional theory, more specifically the work of Oliver (1991). Our study shows that active institutional investors may opt for different responses when confronted with new institutional pressures, and that these responses would seem to depend on antecedents underlined by Ryan and Schneider (2002), which in turn depend on the nature of their business relationships with the firm in which they invest. Whereas pressure-sensitive investors (such as banks and insurance companies) generally adopt acquiescence responses, pressure-resistant investors (such as pension funds and investment funds) pursue joint strategies of co-optation, influence or control with key actors such as local and international proxy advisors and French investor associations. Acting conjointly, certain pressure-resistant investors are often considered as institutional entrepreneurs in that they initiate changes and actively participate in the implementation of new norms in the field of shareholder activism in the French context. In parallel to this ongoing professionalization, other pressure-resistant investors such as activist hedge funds seem to lack sufficient legitimate power to be effective.

Originality/value – This chapter illustrates that the level of institutional investor activism depends largely on the relevant national legal framework. It also shows how institutional investor coalitions take advantage of new institutional pressures to enhance their legitimacy or increase the effectiveness of their action.

This paper aims to demonstrate that state shareholders are confronted with contradictory logics leading to institutional contradictions that activist shareholders can exploit. The competing logics of the state as shareholder and their impact on corporate governance and shareholder activism offer fertile grounds for research advances in Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs).

Through an extensive literature review of state ownership, institutional contradictions and shareholder activism, this paper analyzes two case studies involving the French State as shareholder.

In the French context, these two cases illustrate how institutional contradictions result in opportunities for shareholder activism. By focusing on the institutional contradictions of the state shareholder, this investigation suggests a need for experimental research to observe how shareholder activists adapt to each institutional change in CMEs. This experimentation can help policymakers to avoid creating additional conditions that shareholder activists can exploit.

This focuses only on France and its state shareholdings. To generalize results, studies of other CMEs and state shareholders are needed.

Policymakers should consider all legislative proposals for their potential to deviate from corporate governance practice by experimenting with them in a laboratory setting. Shareholder activists can compare state shareholders’ actions against the state’s legislation to emphasize institutional contradictions that counter minority shareholders’ rights.

This research is the first to analyze how the state as shareholder can exploit its competing logics to resist against shareholder activism and support management or to become itself a shareholder activist.

This study aims to foster a deeper understanding of socio-ethical shareholder activism by outlining the corporate campaigning strategies of a UK-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) and by assessing their impact on both institutional investors and the practices of two multinational companies. As we move into a world where shareholder ownership is becoming more democratised, shareholder activism is gaining prominence in the USA, Europe and Asia, opening new avenues for participation in corporate governance by stakeholders such as NGOs who have traditionally been uninvolved in corporate decisions.

The article adopts a qualitative methodology and case study research design. It relies on semi-structured interviews, analysis of documents and participant observation.

First, the study sheds light into the ways in which NGOs are connecting themselves to the financial sector. It argues that they can pursue their political goals by framing their arguments in a way that emphasises the short-term financial risks/benefits for investors. Secondly, it demystifies the term “shareholder activism”, transforming it from an action tool belonging only to big and powerful institutions, to a tool which gives other stakeholders such as NGOs and ordinary people a real stake in companies’ affairs. What is more, the study highlights the divergent nature of institutional shareholder activist intervention in the USA and the UK.

Given the generally long-term nature of shareholder campaigns, which can sometimes span over several years, it could be beneficial to adopt a longitudinal research design. Future research can endeavour to focus on a number of different campaigns over a period that exceeds three years.

The research has implications for NGOs adopting a shareholder activist campaigning model and for policy makers aiming to encourage investor stewardship.

The fact that the research field of NGO socio-ethical shareholder activism is relatively new and under-explored by academia, coupled with the growing incidence of the phenomenon in the UK and across the world, as well as its potential benefits for society as a whole, renders further investigation into the topic necessary.

This paper aims to analyse whether and how different types of institutional investors influence shareholder proposal initiations, say-on-pay (SOP) votes and management compensation from a sustainability perspective.

Based on the principal-agent theory, the authors conduct a structured literature review and evaluate 40 empirical-quantitative studies on that topic.

The traditional assumption of homogeneity within institutional investors, which is in line with the principal–agent theory, has to be questioned. Only special types of investors (e.g. with long-term and non-financial orientations and active institutions) run an intensive monitoring strategy, and thus initiate shareholder proposals, discipline managers by higher SOP dissents and prevent excessive management compensation.

A detailed analysis of institutional investor types is needed in future empirical analyses. In view of the current debate on climate change policy, future research could analyse in more detail the impact of institutional investor types on proxy voting, SOP and (sustainable) management compensation.

With regard to the increased shareholder activism and regulations on SOP and management compensation since the 2007/2008 financial crisis, firms should be aware of the monitoring role of institutional investors and should analyse their specific ownership nature (time- and content-driven and as well as range of activity).

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review with a clear focus on institutional investor range and nature, shareholder proposal initiation, SOP and management compensation (reporting) from a sustainability viewpoint. The authors explain the main variables that have been included in research, stress the limitations of this work and offer useful recommendations for future research studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the propensity of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) for shareholder activism and their potential impact on corporate governance.

The study highlights the relationships between SWFs and corporate governance and also applies eight antecedents/determinants of institutional activism to analyze whether SWFs have a predisposition for shareholder activism.

The study only finds two instances of SWF activism. Additionally, it finds that despite their mostly passive investments, SWFs possess a natural tendency toward shareholder activism. Some are more likely to engage in activism than others, however. SWFs with a higher proportion of their assets invested in equities, those with portfolios fully or partially constructed to emulate the broader financial markets through indexing, and those that depend less on external fund managers are the likeliest candidates for activism. The study also finds that the regulatory environment can curb the natural SWF inclination for activist behavior.

Due to the lack of transparency within the SWF universe, this study largely depends on the limited data available for sovereign wealth funds.

Given the growing importance of SWFs, managers, directors, and policymakers must assess SWF activism, its influence on corporate governance, and its implications for public policy deliberations.

This project, to the best of the author's knowledge, is the first study that applies tested financial models to SWFs in order to determine if they have inherent activist tendencies.

“Shareholder activism works when shareholders understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn’t”. As complex the term shareholder activism may seem, it demonstrates a very simple phenomenon of how shareholder take control of a situation to turn it in their favor. The whole world has taken an activism “twist” where every person has a word to say. The same characteristic of the society is showcased in this paper where engagement of shareholder is questioned whether it helps to promote effective corporate governance. Given the fact that Mauritius has a rather low shareholder activism framework, this research aims to depict the international picture of the issue at different levels to reach a consensus with the local market. It was a major challenge as very little research has been conducted to accurately contrast shareholder activism with corporate governance. However, the international standards aim at giving a clear picture of how the shareholder activism actually functions.

The research has adopted a black letter approach by analyzing relevant laws and legislations governing corporate governance matters in Mauritius and the USA, Malaysia, France and South Africa. Thereafter, a comparative analysis was made between Mauritius laws and the aforementioned countries. Recommendations were then put forward on the subject matter which is shareholder activism.

Research has shown development in corporate governance alongside the increase in shareholder activism. However, these research studies fail to prove that the development is because of shareholder activism itself. In fact, it could be because of increase in corporate intellects, removal of trade barriers, sustainable corporate practices and many such changes that have affected the corporate market somehow. Hence, it is difficult to conclude, with certainty, that the driver of good corporate governance is, in particular, the phenomenon of shareholder activism. Nevertheless, many result of shareholder activism has demonstrated a rather positive impact on the ongoing of the corporate dealings and on a personal note, it can be said that shareholder activism is a domain where much research and development should be effected as it represents a promising improvement in the way corporations are governed.

The concept of shareholder activism is quite new to the Mauritius legislation. There has not been research done on whether shareholder activism, particularly, is the reason for corporate success or failure. In this light, this paper aims to analyze shareholder activism practices in other countries and puts forward recommendation in the Mauritius context which may be of use to stakeholders concerned.

We investigate whether limited investor attention is a factor in the effectiveness of institutional shareholder activism. Prior research has shown that an inability of market participants to allocate sufficient intellectual effort to the investment decision can have an impact on market price and volume behavior. We extend this research in an applied setting by considering the effectiveness of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) focus list, whose aim is to improve the performance and corporate governance of target firms. We find that the share price and volume response to being included in the focus list is a function of the investor attention in a stock, which in turn has an impact on the subsequent managerial response. This suggests that when attention is a scarce cognitive resource, the proactive exploitation of news signals can be an efficient activism strategy.

In this paper the authors aim to examine whether shareholder activism is associated with accounting reporting complexity (ARC).

The authors employ ordinary least squares (OLS) and a sample of 19,530 firm-year observations (representing 3,377 unique firms) over the 2010–2019 period to test the prediction.

The authors find that firms with shareholder activism provide more complex accounting reporting. Further, both types of activism (including Concern & Dispute and Control & Discussion) are positively associated with ARC. The authors also find that the association between shareholder activism and ARC is more pronounced when the firms have a higher level of litigation risk and a higher proportion of institutional ownership. Collectively, the findings suggest that firms with shareholder activism may be under more pressure to disclose more accounting items, leading to more complex accounting reporting.

The study may be informative to regulators considering the costs and benefits of shareholder activism in financial reporting.