A lesser-known article from the early 2000s (HBR)
Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2025 12:24 pm
Some time ago, I discovered this Harvard Business Review article from January of 2002 that you should read, called "The Incredibly Unproductive Shareholder".
In that article, Marjorie Kelly, the author, talks about the issue with shareholders becoming an "extraordinarily unproductive" force in business with their negative contribution to corporations for the last two decades (now, four).
She also reveals that despite CEOs being casted as the bad guys by the general public for laying off their staff or moving overseas, they're just serving their masters, the shareholders.
After I've read it, I realised that it was meant to be a warning about shareholder meddling with publicly traded corporations, like Take Two or Disney, yet we've ignored it for some reason...
And after 23 years, these practices still continue to this day.
https://hbr.org/2002/01/the-incredibly- ... hareholder
In that article, Marjorie Kelly, the author, talks about the issue with shareholders becoming an "extraordinarily unproductive" force in business with their negative contribution to corporations for the last two decades (now, four).
She also reveals that despite CEOs being casted as the bad guys by the general public for laying off their staff or moving overseas, they're just serving their masters, the shareholders.
After I've read it, I realised that it was meant to be a warning about shareholder meddling with publicly traded corporations, like Take Two or Disney, yet we've ignored it for some reason...
And after 23 years, these practices still continue to this day.
https://hbr.org/2002/01/the-incredibly- ... hareholder
