The Common Law, parliamentary democracy, and academia all institutionalize dissent to check undue obedience to authority; and corporate governance reformers advocate the same in boardrooms. Many corporate governance disasters could be averted if directors asked hard questions, demanded clear...

A key objective of shareholder activists is to persuade a firm’s management to change its strategy. CFOs play an important role in negotiations, nonetheless activism research mainly focuses on CEOs. We examine the relationship between CFO overconfidence and the likelihood to get targeted by...