Classified Board

  • 详情 The Safety Shield: How Classified Boards Benefit Rank-and-File Employees
    This study examines how classified boards affect workplace safety, an important dimension of employee welfare. Using comprehensive establishment-level injury data from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and a novel classified board database, we document that firms with classified boards experience 12-13% lower workplace injury rates. To establish causality, we employ instrumental variable and difference-in-differences approaches exploiting staggered board declassifications. The safety benefits of classified boards operate through increased safety expenditures, reduced employee workloads, and enhanced external monitoring through analyst coverage. These effects are strongest in financially constrained firms and those with weaker monitoring mechanisms. Our findings support the bonding hypothesis that anti-takeover provisions facilitate long-term value creation by protecting stakeholder relationships and provide novel evidence that classified boards benefit rank-and-file employees, not just executives and major customers. The results reveal an important mechanism through which governance structures impact employee welfare and challenge the conventional view that classified boards primarily serve managerial entrenchment.