Shaping the shareholder activism agenda: institutional investors and global social issues

We examine the issues and actors that have shaped the agenda of shareholder activism on global social issues over the last 35 years. Our analysis of 2158 US shareholders’ proposals on the topics of international human rights and labor standards reveals that a clear agenda has developed, dominated by religious organizations that have sponsored or co-sponsored 1312 of these proposals. Public pension funds entered the field of global social issue activism after religious organizations had already established the legitimacy of the agenda. We suggest that a social movement perspective on shareholder activism best explains these findings. Religious groups framed the ideas that constitute the global social issues shareholder agenda and mobilized support by reaching out to other types of investors. Public pension funds played a secondary, albeit important, role in agenda creation by championing several of the campaigns initiated by religious innovators.