The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Mon, 04 May 2026 18:46:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png Political, Social, and Environmental Shareholder Resolutions: Do they Create or Destroy Shareholder Value? – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 Political, Social, and Environmental Shareholder Resolutions: Do they Create or Destroy Shareholder Value? https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/06/17/political-social-and-environmental-shareholder-resolutions-do-they-create-or-destroy-shareholder-value/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=political-social-and-environmental-shareholder-resolutions-do-they-create-or-destroy-shareholder-value https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/06/17/political-social-and-environmental-shareholder-resolutions-do-they-create-or-destroy-shareholder-value/#comments Sun, 17 Jun 2018 15:23:00 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=107897?d=20180617112300EDT Posted by Joseph P. Kalt (Harvard University & Compass Lexecon) and L. Adel Turki (Compass Lexecon), on Sunday, June 17, 2018
Editor's Note:

Joseph P. Kalt is the Ford Foundation Professor (Emeritus) of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and a Senior Economist at Compass Lexecon. L. Adel Turki is a Senior Managing Director of Compass Lexecon. Kenneth W. Grant and Todd D. Kendall are Executive Vice Presidents, and David Molin is Vice President, at Compass Lexecon. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers or the National Association of Manufacturers and/or its members.

The increased use of politically-charged shareholder resolutions has garnered considerable attention in recent years, as shareholder meetings have become venues for discussion and debate regarding corporate positions and actions on issues of the day. Recent proxy seasons have seen corporate management being asked to address issues as diverse as deforestation, corporate clean energy goals, climate change, the uses of antibiotics and pesticides, political contributions, human rights risks through the supply chain, indigenous rights and human trafficking, cybersecurity, the development and reporting of sustainability metrics, and tax fairness. As we show, this change has both expanded the number of resolutions to which a given company may be required to respond and broadened the range of issues that boards and senior managers are being asked to address.

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