This increase is not limited to the United
States (85 million), but extends also to such
non-traditional homes of individual share
ownership as Germany (18 million), and
France (6 million, of which 2 million are shareholding
employees). Share-owning individuals
in such large numbers signify a new force
in corporate governance, a force we call mass
ownership and wish to differentiate from dispersed
ownership as described by Berle and
Means and assumed by many agency theorists
(cf. Fama and Jensen, 1983a).