If they don’t put the shareholders first, the shareholders can sue the company.
The thing that gets you sued is not doing what you say you’re supposed to be doing. And that entirely depends on what it says in the corporate charter. A corporation is only obligated to maximize quarterly shareholder returns if they don’t clearly state otherwise. And it’s never been the stock price, it’s been dividends (which drive the stock price). And you’ll notice that quite a lot of software firms don’t turn a profit for many years and pay no dividends. And yet they’re not sued by shareholders, because they openly announced that that was what their strategy was.
The thing that gets you sued is not doing what you say you’re supposed to be doing. And that entirely depends on what it says in the corporate charter. A corporation is only obligated to maximize quarterly shareholder returns if they don’t clearly state otherwise. And it’s never been the stock price, it’s been dividends (which drive the stock price). And you’ll notice that quite a lot of software firms don’t turn a profit for many years and pay no dividends. And yet they’re not sued by shareholders, because they openly announced that that was what their strategy was.