Are the managers in firms giving shareholders what they want?

Most firms now adays state that their focus is not only on expanding their organisation but also in giving back returns (dividends) to their shareholders. How true that is, i believe depends on the firm's financial performance considering as the economic market has become versatile so has the dividends being paid back to shareholders. But if the shareholder's are being paid dividends, why do they still have concerns?

According to Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, they believe that if shareholder's interests are being made paramount, both the firm and the society at large are likely to benefit so long as the firm obey the laws and ethics of society. But the truth is everyone wants to benefit in other words stakeholders want to benefit as well as satisfying the shareholders. With the way businesses are ran nowadays according to Fame and Jenson (1983) they decided to introduce the agency-cost theory where managements behaviour will be monitored  more frequently with regards to shareholders wealth. This is apparently suppose to minimise managment's self interest and focus on the firm's performance as a whole which will in turn give rise to higher dividends for the shraeholders and more benefits (i.e bonuses) for the staffs and managment team when targets are acheived..

But sometimes there are external factors which are likely to affect a firms performance due to slight ignorance for lack of adherence from management to professional advice from both internal and external informants. An example of this is the current situation occuring with BP and their £bns losses due to the fuel spill known as the 'Deepwater Horizon oil spill' that took place on April 20th 2010. This dramatically affected the company's performance hence affecting their dividend payouts. Infact until recently the shareholders were not paid any dividends for a couple of months, and even now the dividend payouts they receive is a lot less than before as its been cut by a half. The questions is how effective were the managment decisions in their objectives towards shareholders? Its very easy to blame external factors for this mess but also it could have been avoided via thorough consideration and err on the side of caution but instead professional warnings about the pipes were neglected.

BP's share have dramatically dropped since this incident. What does the future hold for investors now? will they hold or will they sell? These are questions that will be on every shareholder's mind especially with the recent news of $900m Russian setback. There are threats from their Russian partner in TNK-BP who are not in support of BP's promise of further payouts considering the organisation's current situation.