Abstract
This paper explores corporate responsibility and argues that if you take a ‘creating value for stakeholders’ approach to business, and if you acknowledge that ethics and values are as important in these relationships as they are in our other relationships with our fellow human beings, then the idea of “corporate social responsibility” is just superfluous. The authors propose to replace corporate social responsibility with an idea they call “company stakeholder responsibility.” Additionally, the discussion includes a list of 10 principles of the stakeholder mindset that a firm must follow for it to reach the highest level of stakeholder commitment.
Originally published in: Corporate Social Responsibility, 9–23 © Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
Reprint by Springer, https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599574_2
The ideas in this paper have been developed with a number of co-authors over the years in several places. In particular see Wicks et al. (2005), Freeman and McVea (2001), Freeman et al. (2005a, b). We are grateful to a number of people for helpful conversations, in particular Professors Gianfranco Rusconi, Dr Valeria Fazio, Dr Mette Morsing, doctoral students at the Copenhagen Business School doctoral consortium on Corporate Responsibility, numerous participants in the EABIS conference in Gent, Professors Jeff Harrison, Robert Phillips and Andrew Wicks.
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Notes
- 1.
We admit that there are many ways of being a good corporate citizen.
- 2.
Note that we are using ‘ethics’ in its broadest sense to encompass obligations to employees, and other stakeholders. This is sometimes referred to as an ‘American’ usage, whereby the ‘European’ usage is much narrower. CSR is our broad term here, and we think it is more specific and more useful than distinguishing ‘ethical’ from ‘social’. We are grateful to Dr Valeria Fazio for many conversations on this issue.
- 3.
Slinger’s argument can be found in his doctoral dissertation, ‘Stakeholding and Takeovers: Three Essays’, University of Cambridge, 2001. An abridged version is in ‘Spanning the Gap: The Theoretical Principles Connecting Stakeholder Policies to Business Performance’, Centre for Business Research, Department of Applied Economics, Working Paper, University of Cambridge, 1998.
- 4.
An important paper on the stakeholder approach in the business ethics literature is Donaldson, T. and Preston, L. E. 1995. ‘The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications’. Academy of Management Review: 20(1), 65–91.
- 5.
Some readers may recognise Bob Collingwood as the harried hero of Freeman (1984). In reality he is a composite of the thousands of executives who have been kind enough to have conversations with us about the ideas here.
References
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Freeman, R.E., Velamuri, S.R. (2023). A New Approach to CSR: Company Stakeholder Responsibility. In: Dmytriyev, S.D., Freeman, R.E. (eds) R. Edward Freeman’s Selected Works on Stakeholder Theory and Business Ethics. Issues in Business Ethics(), vol 53. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04564-6_12
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