Special Issue on 'Shareholder Activism'
Corporate Governance: An International Review
Submissions: March 31, 2009

Corporate Governance: An International Review invites paper submissions for a special issue on shareholder activism.  Whereas the phenomenon of activist shareholders has a rather long tradition in Anglo-Saxon countries, shareholder activism has become more prevalent in other governance environments, too. 

The popular business press extensively discusses the pros and cons of shareholder activism, but scholarly thought has yet to weigh in substantively.  In particular, we are interested in learning more about the antecedents and effects of shareholder activism, as well as more in-depth understanding of the various forms and features of this phenomenon. 

Research questions that are of particular interest include the following:

1. Do corporate governance proposals advanced by institutional investors lead to better corporate governance and/or enhanced firm performance? 
   
2. Do other shareholders and/or stakeholders get ignored when activist investors become more influential?  What are the fiduciary duties of activist investors?
   
3. How do shareholder activists pick and influence their targets?
   
4. How do boards, and how should boards, respond to activist shareholders?
   
5. Is shareholder activism more effective than traditional governance mechanisms such as involved and independent boards or formal rules and regulations? 
   
6. How do the laws vary from nation to nation regarding shareholder activism? 

It is the tradition of CGIR to welcome a wide variety of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.  Since the overarching mission of the journal is to develop a global theory of corporate governance, international comparative studies are especially welcome. 

Both national and international topics are appropriate for consideration, but priority is given to research which spans multiple governance environments.  We also invite papers dealing with different types of activist shareholders such as pension funds, (socially responsible) mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign funds, and private equity investors. This list of topics is suggestive rather than exhaustive. 

We are open to a wide range of approaches from different disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., finance, management, economics, or sociology).  Both theoretical and empirical work will be considered.  In accordance with CGIR's mission, we seek for research that is both rigorously done and relevant to practitioners and/or policy-makers.

Papers must be submitted via the CGIR website (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/corg) and should indicate that the manuscript is intended for this special issue.  Contributors should follow the CGIR Author Guidelines (which can be found at www.cgir.org).  The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2009.  Papers will be subject to our standard double-blind reviewing process.  It is anticipated that papers accepted for this special issue will be published in the last issue of 2009 or the first issue in 2010. 

For queries about this special issue, please feel free to contact the special issue guest editors:

• Huimin Chung, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan (chunghui@mail.nctu.edu.tw)
  
• Till Talaulicar, Technical University of Berlin, Germany (t.talaulicar@ww.tu-berlin.de)