It promised to be a small piece of American corporate history: shareholders in Hewlett-Packard were about to become the first in the nation to vote on a controversial proposal to give investors the right to nominate their own candidates to the board.

Yet if there is a wind of change sweeping through corporate America, it was not blowing hard at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, California, where the information technology group last month held its annual shareholder meeting. As investors shuffled over the well-trodden carpets into the hotel’s ballroom, their thoughts seemed to be more on the free cookies and coffee than corporate governance.