Obiettivi del paper: Il lavoro analizza e interpreta lo shareholder engagement quale strumento di co-creazione del valore e intende verificare se quest'ultimo possa favorire una maggiore circolazione delle informazioni all'interno dell'impresa, creando le premesse per un governo condiviso.Metodologia: Dato il carattere esplorativo dello studio, ci si è avvalsi di un approccio fenomenologico. Nel lavoro si utilizza un campione relativo al 44% di società italiane a larga e media capitalizzazione. I dati utilizzati, relativi al triennio 2014/2016, riportano il grado di dissenso delle minoranze rispetto alle proposte dell' assemblea degli azionisti relative alle politiche di remunerazione.Risultati: Il lavoro evidenzia che politiche continue di shareholder engagement riducono il grado di dissenso delle minoranze verso le decisioni assembleari, soprattutto quelle relative alle politiche di remunerazione.Limiti della ricerca: Lo studio è testato su un campione relativo al 44% delle società italiane a larga e media capitalizzazione quotate. Sarebbe auspicabile, in futuro, allargare l'indagine ad un campione di imprese internazionali, operanti in contesti differenti.Implicazioni pratiche: Il lavoro offre informazioni circa il funzionamento e l' efficacia delle azioni e delle politiche di engagement fornendo utili indicazioni pratiche sull' efficacia dei proxy solicitors e su un nuovo ruolo dell' assemblea.Originalità del paper: Negli studi sulla corporate governance, l' approccio value co-creation non ha trovato uno specifico inquadramento epistemologico. In questo lavoro, invece, si è cercato di reinterpretare lo shareholder engagement come strumento di co-creation.

Purpose of the paper: Recent research identifies a troubling number of institutional investors that automatically follow the advice of their proxy advisors so that they can prove to have complied with their fiduciary duties in a practice known as robo-voting. Therefore, our central research questions are: How could the characteristics of institutional investors affect robo-voting phenomenon? How could robo-voting phenomenon favour the creation of new opportunistic behaviour, changing the scope of shareholder engagement? Methodology: Our paper directly addresses these questions by using ANCOVA (Analysis of Covariance) to test the effect of characteristics of institutional investors on the dependent variable under study. We use a manually constructed sample of coverage information from 123 Annual General Meetings held by large Italian companies in the 4-year period 2015 to 2018 and the voting reports of three proxy advisors. Findings: We show that such voting based on robo-voting phenomenon is restricted to specific types of institutional investors and it may be highlighted as a negative aspect of a duty to ‘demonstrate’ engagement on the part of institutional investors. Specifically, this duty could depend on location, strategy and category of institutional investors. Research limits: We refer only to the Italian market and it may be considered as a peripheral market by investors. Practical implications: We argue that legal enforcement of the conceptual and operational spectrum of engagement duties currently sits uncomfortably upon institutional investors and proxy advisors. Originality of the paper: We think it is important to consider how to promote shareholder engagement in general in a European context and at the same time curb negative activism by some shareholders.

Given the economic weight of the assets managed and their social importance (due to their fiduciary duty towards their policyholders), PFs can influence and participate actively in the investee company’s decisions and literature has shown the importance of activism of this type of institutional investors (Gillan & Starks, 2000; Clark & Hebb, 2004). Institutional investors’ activism may be promoted through favourable legislation, but also through the adoption of good governance practices. Based on this framework, our aim is to understand what key issues that prevent PFs from being active owners and what possible solutions PFs could adopt in order to play an active role in the corporate governance of investee companies. Starting from pension funds’ difficulties, this paper develops a research proposal for describing and analysing the behaviour taken by pension funds and aims to present possible best practice.