Kevin Laverty, a retired associate professor of business strategy at University of Washington in Bothell, wrote one of the first academic research papers to use the phrase “short-termism” and examine the phenomenon. The paper was published in 1996, but Mr. Laverty began researching it in 1991. “Wall Street was asking the same questions back then,” he said.

In the 1980s, many companies expressed concern that stock market pressure for short-term profits and the threat of hostile takeovers were forcing them to abandon long-term projects. Many observers at the time blamed what they called management “myopia”— decisions that enable companies to pursue short‐term gains at the expense of long-term strategies — for managerial incentives based on quarterly profits and stock prices. Mr. Laverty said the debate continued because there had not been any agreement on whether short-termism was a problem. “I think it goes back to human nature,” he said. “Why do people seek immediate gratification rather than looking to the long term?”

Robert C. Pozen, a senior lecturer at M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said: “Many investors put money into Google, Amgen, Amazon, so clearly these investors aren’t afraid of making long-term investments. On the other hand, there are companies that make money and squander it making long-term investments, like Hewlett-Packard under Carly Fiorina. But if this is a problem, then what do we do about it? There’s a lot of cluttered and clouded thinking about it.”

Another scholar of short-termism, Judith F. Samuelson of the Aspen Institute, said the fundamental question in all this was “are corporations bound to serve any shareholders that own your stock today, as much as their long-term investors?” Ms. Samuelson, who is executive director of the Business and Society Program at the institute, says that for a long time now corporations have operated as if the shareholder is king. That, she said, is “a wealth-destroying idea and one that is not embedded in the practices of the best run companies.”

Not everyone is convinced. Mark J. Roe, a professor at Harvard Law School, is not ready to demonize short-termism and activist investors. He said some of the consequences of activist investor efforts have been good for companies. “On average I think activist investors are probably a good thing, with some problems,” Mr. Roe said. “The good thing is that managers and boards can get complacent and rest on their laurels. Activist investors can give them a kick when they aren’t moving fast enough.” However Mr. Roe is not a fan of those investors pushing companies to borrow more so they can deduct more interest from their tax bill. “I don’t think we should be producing wealth by creating more leverage and a bigger tax deduction,” he said. The way to fix the problem is not to stop activists, he added, but to change the tax code so that debt and equity are taxed equally.

Jeremy C. Stein, a professor of economics at Harvard, wrote a paper in 1989 on short-termism, which he called “myopic corporate behavior” at the time. He said there was plenty of evidence that short-termism existed but the magnitude of its effect was unclear. “I would not be comfortable saying we should really discourage people from maximizing the stock price or discourage activist investors,” Professor Stein said. “It may be that activist investors get people more focused on the short run. It may get companies underinvesting in certain things, but the general pressure could also make them more efficient.”

What do we do about short-termism then, if it is a problem?

Mr. Pozen of M.I.T. said the corporate world needs to rethink how it compensates executives, specifically the period of time against which performance bonuses are given. “If you look at most companies, it’s one year,” he said. “If you pay people based on one year’s compensation, they will manage for a one-year horizon.”