Joan Heminway makes the point, kindly linking some of my work:
A number of scholars [at a recent conference] referenced, in their presentations or in comments to the presentations of others, "shareholder primacy." As I listened, it was clear these folks were referring to the prioritizing of shareholder interests--especially financial interests--ahead of the interests of other stakeholders in corporate decision-making, rather than the elements of corporate control (few as there are) enjoyed by shareholders. As I began to recognize this, several things happened in rapid succession.
First, I remembered David Millon's recent paper on this subject, which (among other things) tells a history of the use of the "shareholder primacy" term. It's well worth a read. Or a re-read!
Second, I remembered Steve Bainbridge's earlier work on this same topic. Ditto on that paper; read it or re-read it. His chart in Figure 1 of that paper is an amazing visual summary.
Third, and largely as a result of those two papers, I wondered why we use the same term for these two aspects of corporate modeling (whether you label them them radical versus traditional shareholder primacy, shareholder protection versus monitoring, corporate ends versus means, or anything else). It's confusing! I kept wanting to interrupt, as folks were using "shareholder primacy," to ask: "which kind?" to move my understanding and analysis further forward faster.
Here's my pitch. I advocate moving away from using the term "shareholder primacy" when a more specific term is available.
Works for me.