{"title":"Is Berle and Means Really a Myth?","authors":"B. Cheffins, Steven A. Bank","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1352605","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously declared in 1932 that a separation of ownership and control was a hallmark of large U.S. corporations, and their characterization of matters quickly became received wisdom. A series of recent papers has called the Berle-Means orthodoxy into question. This survey of the relevant historical literature acknowledges that the pattern of ownership and control in U.S. public companies is not monolithic. Nevertheless, a separation between ownership and control remains an appropriate reference point for analysis of U.S. corporate governance.","PeriodicalId":431428,"journal":{"name":"Corporate Law: LLCs","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2009-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"58","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Corporate Law: LLCs","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1352605","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 58
Abstract
Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously declared in 1932 that a separation of ownership and control was a hallmark of large U.S. corporations, and their characterization of matters quickly became received wisdom. A series of recent papers has called the Berle-Means orthodoxy into question. This survey of the relevant historical literature acknowledges that the pattern of ownership and control in U.S. public companies is not monolithic. Nevertheless, a separation between ownership and control remains an appropriate reference point for analysis of U.S. corporate governance.