Characteristics of Companies Targeted by Social Proxies: An Empirical Analysis in the Context of the United States

In: Business and Society Review, Band 117, Heft 4, S. 515-534

Abstract

AbstractWe compare the traits of companies receiving social policy shareholder resolutions with those of a set of matching firms. We show that targeted firms tend to be much larger and riskier, less profitable and less socially performing than their counterparts. The five largest investors in firms receiving social proxies tend to hold a lower stake in those firms vis‐à‐vis the matching firms. Firms in both samples, however, are not statistically different in terms of percentages of shares held by institutional and insider investors. We provide possible explanations for our results.