A firm that manages for stakeholders allocates more resources to satisfy the needs and demands of its legitimate stakeholders than would be necessary to simply retain their willful participation in the firm's productive activities. We explain why this sort of behavior unlocks additional...

In the decades since R. Edward Freeman first introduced stakeholder theory, which views firms in terms of their relationships to a broad set of partners, the stakeholder approach has drawn increasing attention as a model for ethical business. Edited by Freeman, alongside other leading scholars...

Building on prior research (Phillips et al. 2010), we make explicit the implied assumptions – both managerialist and determinist – in stakeholder research. We argue that three elements – managerial discretion, stakeholder orientation and nexus rent – interact in important and...

Social contracts have emerged as among the most powerful methods and metaphors for the study of organizational ethics. That participation with an organization entails obligations to follow the extant norms of that organization, subject to the moral minimums of basic human rights, is a widely...