The 4th international conference on Owners as Strategists aims to discuss the topic ’Owners as Stakeholders’.

Owners are stakeholders of firms. Yet, owners have a special standing among all other stakeholders, such as managers, customers, or suppliers. As claimants to the firm’s residual profit, owners are only paid after all the other stakeholders have been paid. It has been argued, thus, that owners should retain the right to appoint the board, and with this the right to set the strategy of the firm. The landscape of corporate governance is however undergoing a continuous evolution. While owner primacy has dominated corporate governance for the past decades, more and more scholars claim that the central problem in corporate governance today is to devise coalitional contracting solutions to the collective action problems inherent in team production and innovation.

From the perspective of team production, we may ask whether the superior position of shareholders is justified? Various researchers have delved into this and related questions, and recent discussions about what has been called stakeholder capitalism has renewed this interest. Where do we stand in these debates? How should owners cooperate with other stakeholders? What is the role of the board when the primary focus is on resolving conflicts between stakeholders and who should appoint such a board of directors? Who should be the owners of the firm? Are there new legal forms and new ways of distributing control and cash-flow rights that help organize firms in efficient ways?

This year’s conference aims to develop new theory and stimulate novel discussions about how firm owners integrate into a stakeholder-driven world.

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