Thank you Usman, the poll results are interesting. As you may have seen from the comments on David's blog post on the same subject, there is some confusion as to what "maximization of shareholder value" means. Given this confusion, your poll results are understandable. Perhaps to illustrate my point, consider the owner of a small business, who is both the shareholder and manager. In this case there can be very little doubt that the manager of this business will be maximizing the value of the business from the shareholder's perspective since they are one and the same person. When you separate the two into different individuals that is when we introduce the principal agent problem. Add to this the creation of corporate boards and you will see why there is confusion about "whose value is it anyway?". In the end the buck stops with the owners of the business who should be deciding what value they intend to derive from the business, be it short, medium or long term, and then aggressively enforcing this (as in shareholder activism). They leave this decision and execution to the manager and corporate boards at their peril. An example of this is CP Rail (I live in Toronto), which was muddling along until Bill Ackman came along and issued marching orders to deliver shareholder value. Best wishes Savio