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Share ownership in Australia

The emergence of new tensions?

Department of Sociology, University of Tasmania

Bruce Tranter

School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland b.tranter{at}uq.edu.au

Dallas Hanson

School of Management, University of Tasmania

The rise in private share ownership over the last decade is an interesting but relatively poorly researched issue in Australia. In the expectation that relations between large companies and their shareholders are already important and will become increasingly so, we report exploratory longitudinal studies of two aspects of the interaction. Regression analysis of shareholders’ demographic and attitudinal characteristics, drawn from National Social Science and Australian Electoral Study surveys, shows what shareholders might expect from their companies. Content-analysis of corporate annual reports shows how two companies have reacted; here we compare Coles Myer, the subject of recurrent scandal, with Amcor, as a model of corporate responsiveness. We conclude that widespread share ownership is conducive to increasing social tension across a range of dimensions.

Key Words: activism • Australia • corporate governance • environmentalism • regulation • share ownership • social responsibility • triple bottom line

Journal of Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 2, 99-120 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1440783304042870


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