Look at the history of activist investors like Carl Icahn. They will happily start a proxy war to oust management to wring the last cent out of a company, or file a minority shareholder lawsuit alleging all kinds of malfeasance to tank the stock to be able to buy up a controlling interest. The 80s M&A boom had all kinds of crazy things, and it makes recent history look somewhat mild by comparison.

These days the vast majority of executive comp is in stock - imagine if bad optics could force you to take a 60% pay cut, you'd be pretty conservative with your choices.

Well just to be complete there are enumerated duties to shareholders (the fiduciary ones):

1. Duty of Care

2. Duty of Loyalty

3. Duty of Disclosure

4. Duty of Confidentiality

5. Duty of Prudence

6. Duty of Good Faith

You can start looking at this rabbit hole here (and it is a rabbit hole): https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fiduciary_duty

P.S. Just a (fly-by)comment; not advice of any short or kind -- either investment or legal. P.S.2 Oh it does happen that share/stake holders seek enforcement for breach of fiduciary duties. I would say it is quite common.

Their duty is to keep revenue or profitability up and to the right. Every quarter that they don’t do this, analysts will grill the management team about what happened and what will change. The company is forced into a cycle, quarter by quarter, of underestimating earnings, outperforming estimates, and pleasing investors.