Finance theory looked at the corporation from the "outside": from the viewpoint of the investor and of the financial markets. There is, therefore, an affinity between finance theory's view of the corporation and the way in which the governance of corporate life, especially of American corporate life, evolved. The economist Alan Blinder (2000, p. 18) puts it well: ". . . the stark assumption of [market] value maximization comes much closer to the mark today than it did a decade or two ago."

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 1173