[jdietrich]

Ultimately, it comes down to the attitudes of shareholders. There are two major competing trends in this respect.

On the one hand, the shareholder value movement has done immense harm to the long-term planning of businesses by focusing fanatically on quarterly profits. At its worst, this turns into corporate raiding and asset stripping.

On the other, an increasing proportion of equities are held by tracker funds; Vanguard are largely indifferent to the performance of any one company, as long as the market as a whole keeps growing. The entire business of index tracker funds is predisposed upon stable long-term growth.