It occurs to me--is there some sort of financial instrument a company could buy (or sell) which would incentivize them to take a longer-term view of their own performance?
The one thing that comes to mind is Enron's scheme of selling debt backed by the integral of future projected profits from an energy contract, and then writing that debt-asset down as current-quarter earnings. It did overvalue their stock, but it also locked them into a model where contracts with declining long-term outlooks would force a loss, rather than just a declining gain.
That doesn't seem like a glowing recommendation, I admit--but an overvalue of the stock in this case could actually be the "economically correct" value; it could just be incorporating the company's potential upside for being forced to take a longer-term view, and rewarding the participants for taking on increased downside risk.
The stock price, in an efficient market (that is, one that understands what it's investing in, unlike what happened with Enron) would also be offset with lower demand due to said increased risk--but a company could still come out slightly better off for establishing these instruments. It just comes down to whether other short-term investors actually value a company that "goes long" more than a regular quarter-to-quarter-earnings one.