Strong Managers, Weak Owners

In this reinterpretation of the evolution of the American corporation, the author demonstrates that the ownership structure of large US firms owes its distinctive character as much to politics as to economics and technology. His provocative examination addresses essential issues facing American businesses today as they compete in the new international marketplace. Why are large American corporations owned by hundreds of relatively small stockholders, while a handful of stockholders control big blocks of stock in German and Japanese corporations? Why are banks and other potentially large investors restricted by law from owning controlling interests in American corporations? Why are senior managers of US firms so powerful, while the actual owners are frequently far removed from day-to-day business, even when they are large financial institutions? These questions are debated regularly in both popular and scholarly media. This book provides the historical background to the discussion. This text offers a new perspective on the corporate upheavals of the 1980s and 1990s, when relationships among shareholders, boardrooms, and senior managers were thrown into upheaval.
Numerous proposals are debated daily in the business press about how the relationships among these three groups should change to make corporations more productive and more effective competitors in the world market. Roe argues that lasting change will be difficult to achieve without understanding how political and social forces created and shaped the modern American corporation.