
Is Stakeholderism Bad for Stakeholders?
A series of recent papers (here, here, and here, for example) have argued that maximizing shareholder value remains the proper goal of the modern corporation – and in some cases that stakeholderism is in fact harmful to stakeholders. Yet giving up on stakeholderism for the sake of stakeholders cannot be the right answer or strategy, even though there are significant challenges to steering away from the currently prevailing framework.
Although the papers differ in the details of their arguments, they share some common themes:
- Corporate managers do not and will not use discretion to benefit non-shareholder