Stakeholder theory, strategy, and organization: Past, present, and future

Abstract

We reflect on the past, present, and future of stakeholder theory, focusing on its link to strategy and organization scholarship. Stakeholder theory was originally conceived as a theory of strategic management, but for most of its history it largely developed without having a noticeable impact on strategy research. This has changed in the past decade, however, with the strategy field making a “stakeholder turn.” We highlight the streams of research at the forefront of this turn, including work on “behavioral stakeholder theory,” ‘stakeholder strategy theory,’ and “stakeholder governance.” We conclude with an outlook on how stakeholder theory can help strategy scholars develop a theory of managing value creation that explicitly acknowledges both the economic and moral nature of relationships in and around organizations.