The power of banks and other financial institutions
Financial institutions and pension funds are increasingly major shareholders and will endeavour to influence firms, either as shareholders or by having a place on the board of directors. In either case they generally have greater expertise than the average shareholder and are more conversant with company practice and procedures. However, while such institutional investors can certainly act as a break on management they cannot guarantee profit-maximising behaviour.
As noted above (in direct shareholder power), in recent years, major institutional investors have increasingly exerted their influence. To do so, they often act collectively. For example, within the UK, the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), whose members in 2004 jointly controlled about a quarter of the stock market, and the Association of British Insurers (ABI), who effectively control a further quarter, have become increasingly willing to challenge company boards. For examples of such activity see the case study at the end of the chapter.
Managers as shareholders and linking pay to performance
The introduction of share option schemes, whereby managers and workers are encouraged to obtain shares on preferential terms, blurs the divide between owners and managers and goes some way to ensure that the interests of management and owners are common (see the mini case, ‘Share options for company directors and workers’). Nevertheless, the rewards to managers do not derive predominantly from their position as shareholders and the possible conflict between shareholder and management remains.
Directly linking managerial rewards to profit performance can induce management to work in the interest of shareholders. However, as indicated above, this may be only one determinant of managerial pay. Management might also seek to link its rewards to other performance measures such as company size and the growth of sales, although in certain circumstances these measures might not affect or might even conflict with profit and/or company efficiency. For example, sales might increase as a result of an overly expensive and inefficient promotional campaign; a gas company’s sales will rise with lower than average winter temperatures; or the company might benefit from the demise or mistakes of rivals. Finally, although merger and takeover activity often provides a rationale for increased managerial salaries, it is often found that such activity does not in itself improve overall profitability. Such activity is, however, consistent with managerial motives for higher status.
Market forces in the product market
In perfectly competitive product markets the firm must be fully efficient to survive. In the long run, firms only earn normal profit (see Chapter 5). In these circumstances firms must pursue profit maximisation as any other policy results in the firm earning less than normal profit and being forced to leave the industry (note that long-run equilibrium in monopolistic competition is also characterised by firms only earning normal profit).
For a firm to pursue a non-profit-maximising goal it must therefore be in either an oligopoly or a monopoly and be capable of earning abnormal profit. In such circumstances the firm has the discretion to be less than fully efficient and still survive in the market (see the concepts of x-inefficiency in Section 5.11 and organisational slack below).