Download This PaperCorporate Governance Gaming: The Collective Power of Retail Investors
48 Pages Posted: 8 Apr 2021 Last revised: 11 Aug 2023
Date Written: March 29, 2021
Abstract
The GameStop saga and meme stock frenzy have shown the pathway to the most disruptive revolution in corporate governance of the millennium. New generations of retail investors use technologies, online forums, and gaming dynamics to coordinate their actions and obtain unprecedented results. Signals indicate that these investors, whom we can dub wireless investors, are currently expanding their actions to corporate governance. Wireless investors’ generational characteristics suggest that they will use corporate governance to pursue social and environmental causes. In fact, wireless investors can set in motion a social movement able to bring business corporations to serve their original partly-private-partly-public purpose. This Article discusses premises, architecture, and characteristics of the movement that would cause business corporations to re-marry their partly-private-partly-public purpose. If such a movement proves successful, the paradigm shift that finally makes corporations serve the welfare of a broader range of stakeholders would happen at the hands of shareholders.
Keywords: corporate governance, ESG, corporate purpose, retail investors, institutional investors, gaming, WallStreetBets, social movement, diffusion, stakeholders
JEL Classification: K2, K20, K22
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Christina M. Sautter (Contact Author)
Southern Methodist University - Dedman School of Law ( email )
P.O. Box 750116
Dallas, TX 75275
United States
HOME PAGE: http://www.smu.edu/Law/Faculty/Profiles/Sautter-Christina