Акционерлік құндылық: Тарихы мен дамуы

Business term
Shareholder value is a business term, sometimes phrased as shareholder value maximization. It became prominent during the 1980s and 1990s along with the management principle value based management or "managing for value".

During the 1970s, there was an economic crisis caused by stagflation. The stock market had been flat for nearly 12 years and inflation levels had reached double digits. The Japanese had taken the top spot as the dominant force in auto and high technology manufacturing, a title historically held by American companies. This, coupled with the economic changes noted by Mizruchi and Kimeldorf, brought about the question as to how to fix the current model of management. Though there were contending solutions to resolve these problems (e. g. Theodore Levitt's focus on customer value creation and R. Edward Feeman's stakeholder management framework), the winner was the Agency Theory developed by Jensen and Meckling. Mark Mizruchi and Howard Kimeldorf offer an explanation of the rise in prominence of institutional investors and securities analysts as a function of the changing political economy throughout the late 20th century. The crux of their argument is based upon one main idea. The rise in prominence of institutional investors can be credited to three significant forces, namely organized labor, the state and the banks. The roles of these three forces shifted, or were abdicated, in an effort to keep corporate abuse in check. However, “without the internal discipline provided by the banks and external discipline provided by the state and labor, the corporate world has been left to the professionals who have the ability to manipulate the vital information about corporate performance on which investors depend”. This allowed institutional investors and securities analysts from the outside to manipulate information for their own benefit rather than for that of the corporation as a whole. Though Ashan and Kimeldorf (1990) admit that their analysis of what historically led to the shareholder value model is speculative, their work is well regarded and is built upon the works of some of the premier scholars in the field, namely Frank Dobbin and Dirk Zorn. As a result of the political and economic changes of the late 20th century, the balance of power in the economy began to shift. Today, " power depends on the capacity of one group of business experts to alter the incentives of another, and on the capacity of one group to define the interests of another". As stated earlier, what made the shift to the shareholder value model unique was the ability of those outside the firm to influence the perceived interests of corporate managers and shareholders. However, Dobbin and Zorn argue that those outside the firm were not operating with malicious intentions. "They conned themselves first and foremost. Takeover specialists convinced themselves that they were ousting inept CEOs. Institutional investors convinced themselves that CEOs should be paid for performance. Analysts convinced themselves that forecasts were a better metric for judging stock price than current profits". Overall, it was the political and economic landscape of the time that offered the perfect opportunity for professionals outside of firms to gain power and exert their influence in order to drastically change corporate strategy.

Agency theory is the study of problems characterized by disconnects between two cooperating parties: a principal and an agent. Agency problems arise in situations where there is a division of labor, a physical or temporal disconnect separating the two parties, or when the principal hires an agent for specialized expertise. In these circumstances, the principal takes on the agent to delegate responsibility to him. Theorists have described the problem as one of “separation and control”: agents cannot be monitored perfectly by the principal, so they may shirk their responsibilities or act out of sync with the principal's goals. The information gap and the misalignment of goals between the two parties results in agency costs, which are the sum of the costs to the principal of monitoring, the costs to the agent of bonding with the principal, and the residual loss due to the disconnect between the principal's interests and agent's decisions. Lastly, the shareholder value theory seeks to reform the governance of publicly owned firms in order to decrease the principal agent information gap. The model calls for firms’ boards to be independent from their corporate executives, specifically, for the head of the board to be someone other than the CEO and for the board to be independently chosen. An independent board can best objectively monitor CEO undertakings and risk. Shareholder value also argues in favor of increased financial transparency. By making firms’ finances available to scrutiny, shareholders become more aware of the agent's behavior and can make informed choices about with whom to invest.

The sole concentration on shareholder value has been widely criticized, particularly after the late 2000s financial crisis. While a focus on shareholder value can benefit the owners of a corporation financially, it does not provide a clear measure of social issues like employment, environmental issues, or ethical business practices. A management decision can maximize shareholder value while lowering the welfare of third parties. Shareholder value coupled with short termism has also been criticized as lowering the overall rate of economic growth due to reduced business capital accumulation. It can also disadvantage other stakeholders such as customers. For example, a company may, in the interests of enhancing shareholder value, cease to provide support for old, or even relatively new, products. Additionally, short term focus on shareholder value can be detrimental to long term shareholder value; the expense of gimmicks that briefly boost a stocks value can have negative impacts on its long term value. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, said that “[ ] the obsession with maximizing profits for shareholders has brought us: terrible economic, racial and health inequalities; the catastrophe of climate change.” According to critics, oversimplifying the corporation's role has neglected the imperfect world we live in.

In Milton Friedman’s seminal piece advocating for shareholder value titled “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” makes the argument that the business of business is its business. Friedman’s postulation suggests that if social responsibility and profit run counterintuitive, pick the latter. By prioritizing the accumulation of wealth by all means, it uncomplicated other responsibilities that may have a hindrance to achieving this goal. Some responsibilities include, but are not limited to: community development, employee investment, worker benefits, research and development, and more. These responsibilities are attributed to being long term and do not immediately satisfy the short term and mainstream interpretation of shareholder value. Drucker's argument is expanded upon by anthropologist Karen Ho, who notes that in the immediate period following the second world war, the corporation existed primarily as a social institution which largely accepted its responsibilities to those involved in its operations outside of shareholders, concerning itself with the longevity and well being of the corporation as an institution even if this meant undertaking actions that may run counter to the immediate concerns of the corporation's shareholders. This status as a shareholder comes with an assumed legal claim of all profits after contractual obligations have been fulfilled and that they have the ability to decide the structure of the corporation on the board level however they want.

In the shareholder value model, companies often take on much more risk than they otherwise would. The acquisition of debt makes the company unstable and at risk of bankruptcy. Plentiful debt is conducive to increasing share value because the company has greater potential to increase value when starting at a lower baseline. This however is a detrimental to the stability of the company.

Debt financing, or the purposeful acquisition of debt, causes the debt to equity ratio of the company to rise. Without shareholder value, this would normally be considered negative because it means that the company is not making money. In the shareholder value system, high debt to equity ratios are considered an indicator that the company has confidence to make money in the future. Therefore, debt is not something to avoid but rather something to embrace and having debt will actually gain the company investors. Taking on large risk attracts investors and increases potential value gain, but puts the company in danger of bankruptcy and collapse.

In order to facilitate an incentive structure that supports shareholder value, the method of executive compensation has changed toward making a large portion of C suite pay come from stock. The reasoning behind this decision was that it would bring the interests of CEOs in line with those of shareholders. As a result of this decision, executive compensation has skyrocketed, quadrupling from the rate of compensation in the early 1970s. This change has also shifted the motivations of C suite managers in the direction of increasing share price over everything else, leaving other goals like long term growth and stakeholders like employees and customers behind.

The short term nature of shareholder value theory is one of the features focused on by critics. They argue that this fixation on the short term leads to neglect of more profitable long term strategies. In this way, shareholder value fails to attain the level of overall capital growth that might otherwise be expected. Given the emphasis on stock price inherent to shareholder value, incentives are created for corporations to inflate their stock price before its value becomes critical for assessment. One such incentive is that the compensation of executives and managers is increasingly tied to stock value through executive bonuses and stock options. In addition to reduced growth, critics also point to reduced productivity. Shareholder value can have a negative effect on employee morale as the entire mission of the corporation becomes the generation of wealth for shareholders. Because of this reduction of motivation, corporations need to engage in more top down and control oriented management strategies, one such example being the massive rise in the use of non compete agreements. Despite such efforts (or because of them), low employee morale has negative effects on business. Less motivated employees are less energetic and produce less and are less likely to innovate. Despite its high potential social benefit, this concept is difficult to implement in practice because of the difficulty of determining equivalent measures for usefulness to society and satisfaction of employees. For instance, how much additional "usefulness to society" should shareholders expect if they were to give up $100 million in shareholder return? In response to this criticism, defenders of the stakeholder value concept argue that employee satisfaction and usefulness to society will ultimately translate into shareholder value. Another related criticism is that it is difficult to determine how to equitably distribute value to stakeholders. The question of "who deserves what and how much" is a difficult one to answer.

A company may choose to disregard shareholders completely. A social enterprise instead focuses its objectives on goals other than the profitability of its owners; indeed, the legal body of a social enterprise often precludes issuing dividends to shareholders. Social enterprises require significant investment in financial stability and long term profitability, in the meantime taking very little risk. Social enterprises manifest themselves in the UK as community interest companies or limited by guarantee. In the United States, California allows companies to incorporate as flexible purpose corporations.