In 1984, R. Edward Freeman published his landmark book, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, a work that set the agenda for what we now call stakeholder theory. In the intervening years, the literature on stakeholder theory has become vast and diverse. This book examines this body of research and assesses its relevance for our understanding of modern business. Beginning with a discussion of the origins and development of stakeholder theory, it shows how this corpus of theory has influenced a variety of different fields, including strategic management, finance, accounting, management, marketing, law, health care, public policy, and environment. It also features in-depth discussions of two important areas that stakeholder theory has helped to shape and define: business ethics and corporate social responsibility. The book concludes by arguing that we should re-frame capitalism in the terms of stakeholder theory so that we come to see business as creating value for stakeholders.

Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation, and Success, the culmination of twenty years of research, interviews, and observations in the workplace, makes a major new contribution to management thinking and practice. Current ways of thinking about business and stakeholder management usually ask the Value Allocation Question: How should we distribute the burdens and benefits of corporate activities among stakeholders? Managing for Stakeholders, however, helps leaders develop a mindset that instead asks the Value Creation Question: How can we create as much value as possible for all of our stakeholders?Business is about how customers, suppliers, employees, financiers (stockholders, bondholders, banks, etc.), communities, the media, and managers interact and create value. World-renowned management scholar R. Edward Freeman and his coauthors outline ten concrete principles and seven practical techniques for managing stakeholder relationships in order to ensure a firm’s survival, reputation, and success. Managing for Stakeholders is a revolutionary book that will change not only how managers do business but also how they recognize and evaluate business opportunities that would otherwise be invisible.

A comprehensive foundation for stakeholder theory, written by many of the most respected and highly cited experts in the field.

The stakeholder perspective is an alternative way of understanding how companies and people create value and trade with each other. Freeman, Harrison and Zyglidopoulos discuss the foundation concepts and implementation of stakeholder management as well as the advantages this approach provides to firms and their managers. They present a number of tools that managers can use to implement stakeholder thinking, better understand stakeholders and create value with and for them. The Element concludes by discussing how managers can create stakeholder oriented control systems and by examining some of the important stakeholder-related issues that are worthy of future scholarly and managerial attention.

Honoring the twenty-fifth anniversary of R. Edward Freeman's Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, one of the most influential books in the history of business strategy and ethics, this work assembles a collection of contributions from some of the most renowned and widely-cited scholars working in the area of stakeholder scholarship today. The analyses collected here comment on the impact Freeman's book - and stakeholder theory more generally - has had upon the fields of management and organizational ethics. This study also includes an original response from Freeman himself. As the conversation about stakeholders hits its academic and popular stride, this timely volume provides both a retrospective of stakeholder theory's history as well as a guide to the questions that are likely to emerge during the next quarter century, providing a new foundation for future theory and practice. This book will be an indispensible resource for any serious scholar working in the area of stakeholder theory. Additionally, because the language of managing stakeholder relationships is becoming increasingly popular, practicing executives and NGO members will find this an exceptional and informative reference.

'Stakeholders' includes a discussion of the concept of 'the stakeholder' in fields such as management, corporate governance, accounting and finance, strategy, sociology, and politics, and in public policy debate. Practical examples are used to examine a range of stakeholders.

There is an active debate over whether the traditional purpose of the corporation – to maximize profits and financial value for the benefit of shareholders – can adequately encompass the interests of all other participants or stakeholders in the corporation's activities. Since a corporation cannot operate optimally without the support of its most important stakeholders, particularly its employees and customers, finding ways of incorporating responsiveness to stakeholder needs is vital for corporate management and governance. This anthology is designed to sharpen the debate about the role and purpose of the corporation. The debate includes such fundamental questions as: Who should be considered stakeholders? Which stakeholder interests should a corporation take into account? How should stakeholder interests be balanced against shareholder objectives (such as profits)? What changes should be made in corporate decision making and governance to reflect these new interests? This collection of seminal articles, is divided into three parts: Shareholders and Stakeholders; Morality, Ethics and Stakeholder Theory; and Stakeholder Theory and Management Performance. The articles date from 1916 to 1997, and are drawn from North American and European authors. Managers as well as researchers will find this collection presented will stimulate their thinking on the role of the corporation and its responsiveness to stakeholder interests. The volume is funded in part by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.