The Antecedents of Institutional Investor Activism

Abstract

The fledgling literature concerning institutional investors' impact on U.S. corporations has been plagued by mixed results. We argue that an improved understanding of an intervening variable—investor activism—may help to clarify future studies. In this article we synthesize the financial, legal, and management literature to arrive at an integrated model of twelve key variables that may lead to variations in these investors' levels of activism and, hence, their impact on firm behavior.