Campbell, Karen Tracey; (2024) The Taming of the Shrewd: An Investigation of Investor Stewardship. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University of London).

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Abstract

In the face of recent process models of social activism (Goranova and Ryan 2014, McNulty and Nordberg 2016 and Cundill et al 2018), this study provides a critical re-examination of Gifford’s (2010) model of social activism centred on shareholder salience to develop a situated understanding of responsible investment practice in the UK. It highlights the increased discrimination between non-financial issues addressed through social activism; the relative immaturity of the cognitive landscape of ESG issues; the extent to which shareholder powers in potentia are substantially compromised in practice by external systemic governance forces; and the need to extend theorisation to incorporate private intervention strategies to develop a more nuanced conceptualisation of the process. Emphasising the importance of recognising jurisdiction as a backdrop to understanding rights-based interventions, the study elaborates a domain-specific array of external governance forces to highlight the plural and inter-related nature of the ‘antecedent factors’ noted by process theorists. A model of the issue-recognition process is also proposed, replacing the unsatisfactory issue attribute of urgency in Gifford (2010). Its chief contribution is to shift the perception of investors from protagonists to ‘active interpreters’ of societal demands that are identified by a wide variety of supporting social institutions. This role is contingent upon: the materiality of an issue to the target company; the degree to which the issue is ‘financialised’; the impact of an issue on the investor’s portfolio; plus the internal concerns of the investor as a commercial business. It is argued that, rather than solo investor effort, it is the development of the surrounding issue-specific institutional field (particularly the design of mandates from asset owners) and preferential rights of access to management that deliver the potential for investor influence in what may be a negotiated rather than necessarily combative encounter with a company.

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