Yet the timeline upon which they are to do this is unclear. Investors want to maximize for a decade, temporary holders want to maximize the quarter. The point Christensen makes is that short term maximization does not always lead to long term maximization. One thus must blame the shareholders themselves for not acting as investors, but rather as speculators, frequently not even participating in board elections, allowing the CEO to pack the board with allies, just waiting for a bump in the share price so that they can exit their position.
In the US, it's probably something to do with quarterly dividends (which makes it the reporting period for financial results). Less frequent dividends would cause the value of shares to drop more significantly post dividend (which happens anyway, but with quarterly distributions, one doesn't have to think of shares as being 'almost there' w.r.t paying out). More frequently (monthly, say) would increase transaction costs too much.
Unfortunately, if history is an indicator, the West has not been very good at thinking long term.
In my opinion the race has been run. The damage to our planet is probably irreversible insofar as that at some point human life will not be possible. At that time we can only hope that a more intelligent species will come along and do better than us.
