Stakeholder theory

Examples of a company's internal and external stakeholders
Protesting students invoking stakeholder theory at Shimer College in 2010

The stakeholder theory is a theory of organizational management and business ethics that accounts for multiple constituencies impacted by business entities like employees, suppliers, local communities, creditors, and others.[1] It addresses morals and values in managing an organization, such as those related to corporate social responsibility, market economy, and social contract theory.

The stakeholder view of strategy integrates a resource-based view and a market-based view, and adds a socio-political level. One common version of stakeholder theory seeks to define the specific stakeholders of a company (the normative theory of stakeholder identification) and then examine the conditions under which managers treat these parties as stakeholders (the descriptive theory of stakeholder salience).[2]

In fields such as law, management, and human resources, stakeholder theory succeeded in challenging the usual analysis frameworks, by suggesting that stakeholders' needs should be put at the beginning of any action.[3] Some authors, such as Geoffroy Murat, tried to apply stakeholder's theory to irregular warfare.[4]

  1. ^ Lin, Tom C. W., Incorporating Social Activism (December 1, 2018). 98 Boston University Law Review 1535 (2018)
  2. ^ Phillips, Robert (2003). Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Ethics. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. p. 66. ISBN 978-1576752685.
  3. ^ Harrison, Wicks, Parmar and De Colle, Stakeholder Theory, State of the Art, Cambridge University Press, 2010
  4. ^ Connelley and Tripodi, Aspects of leadership, Ethics, law and Spirituality, Marines Corps University Press, 2012, pp. 39–59