The Stakeholder Approach Revisited

Zusammenfassung

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The purpose of this paper is to revisit the development of the stakeholder management approach developed in "Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach" published by Pitman Publishing in 1984. A brief history of the development of this approach is followed by a summary and an assessment of the main arguments. The approach has been used in a number of research streams which are outlined. The paper ends with some suggestions for promising lines of inquiry.

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The Stakeholder Approach Revisited

1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to trace the development of the idea of "stakeholders" or "stakeholder management" or "managing for stakeholders" or "stakeholder capitalism". Section II is a brief history of how I came to publish Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach in 1984 by building on the work of many others. Section III is a brief summary of that book and an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. It also outlines the revisions I would make to that book if I were writing it today. Section IV details some of the streams of research on the stakeholder idea during the last 20 years, though it is far from complete, and offers some promising new directions for the development of stakeholder theory.

2. Early History

After studying philosophy at Washington University I accepted an appointment on the research staff at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, with a research group called the Busch Center, and then rapidly moved to a new group called the Wharton Applied Research Center (WARC). The mission of WARC under the leadership of James R. Emshoff was to serve as Wharton's "window to the world" to connect Wharton faculty with managers who had real problems to solve. We organized ourselves by project teams, much like a traditional consulting firm (Emshoff had been with McKinsey and Co.), and by "development areas" which were conceptual spaces where we wanted to develop both expertise and new clients to try out our ideas.

2.1 Original Papers and Teaching

I began to work on the stakeholder concept in conjunction with Emshoff at about the time that AT&T, then the Bell System, asked us to develop an executive education program that would help their "leaders of the future" understand and manage t...

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