How Shareholder Litigation Risk Influences Firm Orientation Toward Stakeholders.

This is an empirical study exploring the priorities of top managers in U.S. publicly held corporations, focusing on the shareholder primacy and stakeholder perspectives. My coauthors and I examine which of these perspectives is being enacted in practice. Our study looks at whether decreased shareholder litigation risk prompts a shift from shareholder-centric to broader stakeholder considerations. Additionally, we analyze how firm ownership and governance traits impact these managerial trends, and if self-serving motives play a role in the shift towards stakeholder approaches.

Don Lange is a professor of management and entrepreneurship and the Lincoln Professor of Management Ethics at Arizona State University (ASU). He holds a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as an MBA from Suffolk University and an MSW from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been with ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business since getting his Ph.D. in 2006 where he teaches managerial ethics in the MBA program and organization theory in the Ph.D. program. His research interests include bad behavior within organizations, corporate social (ir)responsibility, organizational reputation, and stakeholder strategy. His published work appears in top academic management journals including Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, and Personnel Psychology. He has served as Associate Editor at Academy of Management Review and as Program Chair of the Stakeholder Strategy Interest Group at the Strategic Management Society. Prior to joining academia, Don worked as a top manager in the not-for-profit sector.