An "other constituency statute" permit, but do not require, boards of directors to consider non-shareholder interests (such as the interests of employees, the environment, et cetera) when making decisions. California and Delaware are among a handful of states that have not enacted an other constituency statute. Their decision to eschew such legislation appears to have been a wise one, at least according to one recently released study.
In The Cost (and Unbenefit) of Conscious Capitalism, the authors examined a sample of U.S. publicly traded firms spanning nearly three decades. Their conclusions are not good news for advocates of other constituency statutes and stakeholder capitalism:
The paper by Jitendra Aswani, Alona Bilokha, Mingying Cheng and Benjamin Cole is available here.