Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Ethics

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Chapter 2The Limits of Stakeholder Theory

The term stakeholder is a powerful one due, to a significant degree, to its conceptual breadth. Because the term means many different things to many different people, it evokes praise or scorn from scholars and practitioners of myriad academic disciplines and backgrounds. Such breadth of interpretation, though one of stakeholder theory’s greatest strengths, is also one of its most prominent theoretical liabilities as a topic of reasoned discourse. Much of the power of stakeholder theory is a direct result of the fact that, when used unreflectively, its managerial prescriptions and implications are nearly ...