The Language of Ownership and the Rise of Shareholder Value: the Corporate Governance Discourse, 1980-1999

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the changing discourse on corporate governance
\nin the USA during the last two decades of the 20th century, with a focus on persuasive strategies
\nand linguistic choices. A detailed qualitative study, using critical discourse analysis, is conducted
\nof a selection of six speeches of SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) Commissioners who
\nserved during the period in question, as well as of Milton Friedman’s 1970 New York Times article
\non the social responsibility of corporations. This is accompanied by quantitative analysis, using
\nthe tools of corpus linguistics, of three corpora of texts: the entire set of speeches of SEC
\nCommissioners over the period, and samples of articles from the New York Times and Wall Street
\nJournal. The three corpora together comprise over 14 million words.
\nThis dissertation represents an original contribution to knowledge in several ways. First, fresh
\ninsights are added to existing research on the decisive break in the discourse on corporate
\ngovernance that took place during the 1980s. By systematically analysing collocations and
\nconcordance lines, new light is shed on the contexts in which terms such as shareholder value and
\ncorporate governance are used. Secondly, the progression of the dominant themes in the discourse
\non corporate governance such as takeovers, compensation, and institutional investors over the 20-
\nyear period is explored. Thirdly, this research establishes how the different narratives, or stories,
\ntold by the SEC commissioners evolved and the extent to which these narratives are mirrored in
\npress coverage of corporate affairs.
\nFourthly, this dissertation shows how the representations of the key groups of actors in the arena
\nof corporate control, namely managers, directors and shareholders, developed over the period both
\nin the speeches analysed and the three corpora. Fifthly, the way in which the notion that
\nshareholders own the corporation has been used over the period to support different argument
\nstrategies is critically examined. The accentuation of only one element of ownership, namely the
\nrights of owners, was pivotal in establishing shareholder primacy as a dominant paradigm of
\ncorporate governance. Finally, this research includes a systematic examination of Milton
\nFriedman’s 1970 NYT article on corporate social responsibility which is a classic statement of the
\ncase for shareholder value in the public discourse.