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Corporate Governance and EHS Leadership
The economic theory of value maximization as a proposition to the share-
holder is deeply entrenched in over two centuries of economic theory and
research. Starting with Adam Smith, economists have argued that both the
social wealth and welfare of people is inuenced by the economic success of
corporations, which seek to maximize the stream of prots that can then be
divided among their investors.
Today, this theory has been developed to cover a more long-term market value
of corporations, as suggested by Chew and Gillan (2005). A competing theory is
the stakeholder theory, in which the difference is th ...