Commentary on "Toward Common Sense and Common Ground? Reflections on the Shared Interests of Managers and Labor in a More Rational System of Corporate Governance" by Leo E. Strine, Jr (Response to Article in This Issue, P. 1‪)‬

It is an irony of conventional corporate theory that the people who truly dedicate their lives to the enterprise--the employees of the firm, both managers and line workers--are treated at best as if they don't exist and at worst as enemies of the purpose of the firm. By comparison, the heroes of the conventional story--the shareholders--are generally nowhere to be found in a modern public corporation. (1) They hold diversified portfolios, and have as little human relationship to the wealth generating activities of the corporation as they do to the workings of a distant government bureau that lives off of their tax dollars. (2) Shareholder activists often wonder about the hostility they receive from the management of the companies they invest in--the refusals to meet, the endless defensiveness. Now, of course, some of this comes from an all too human desire of power to perpetuate itself, but some of it comes from a perfectly reasonable anger at being second guessed by outsiders--people who have no idea what the business they seek to change is really like. (3)