A Skeptical View of Financialized Corporate Governance
质疑金融化治理(如用利润、股价等指标激励经理人)对大多数股东是否有效,并指出其可能损害社会利益,同时揭示企业控制者常逃避责任,呼吁更有效的问责机制。
Managerial compensation typically relies on financial yardsticks, such as profits, stock prices, and return on equity, to achieve alignment between the interests of managers and shareholders. But financialized governance may not actually work well for most shareholders, and even when it does, significant tradeoffs and inefficiencies can arise from the conflict between maximizing financialized measures and society's broader interests. Effective governance requires that those in control are accountable for actions they take. However, those who control and benefit most from corporations' success are often able to avoid accountability. The history of corporate governance includes a parade of scandals and crises that have caused significant harm. After each, most key individuals tend to minimize their own culpability. Common claims from executives, boards of directors, auditors, rating agencies, politicians, and regulators include “we just didn't know,” “we couldn't have predicted,” or “it was just a few bad apples.” Economists, as well, may react to corporate scandals and crises with their own version of “we just didn't know,” as their models had ruled out certain possibilities. Effective governance of institutions in the private and public sectors should make it much more difficult for individuals in these institutions to get away with claiming that harm was out of their control when in reality they had encouraged or enabled harmful misconduct, and ought to have taken action to prevent it.