Stakeholder theory

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. 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). 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. Some authors such as Geoffroy Murat tried to apply stakeholder's theory to irregular warfare. Concepts similar to modern stakeholder theory can be traced back to longstanding philosophical views about the nature of civil society itself and the relations between individuals. In Miles v Sydney Meat-Preserving Co Ltd (1912), which saw the rejection of a shareholder's legal right to a dividend, Australian chief justice Samuel Griffith observed that: The law does not require the members of a company to divest themselves, in its management, of all altruistic motives, or to maintain the character of the company as a soulless and bowelless thing, or to exact the last farthing in its commercial dealings, or forbid them to carry on its operations in a way which they think conducive to the best interests of the community as a whole. The word "stakeholder" in its current use first appeared in an internal memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute in 1963. Subsequently, a "plethora" of stakeholder definitions and theories were developed.