“Executive Compensation, Political Economy, and Managerial Control: The Transformation of Managerial Incentive Structures and Ideology, 1950–2000”

Beginning in the late 1980s and the 1990s, the confl ict between managers and institutional investors captured the attention of the business press.1 These confrontations, whether over compensation, accounting and proxy rules, and board composition demonstrated the power that institutional investors had accumulated. But, by focusing on these contests, news reporters overlooked the fundamental changes that were occurring within the modern corporation’s managerial hierarchies.