Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation and Success.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Bookshelf - Brief article - Book review

Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation and Success. By R. Edward Freeman, Jeffrey S. Harrison and Andrew C Wicks. Yale University Press, 173 pages. $26.

The central tenet in this slim volume is unequivocal: the key to thinking about corporate value is creating value for all stakeholders, not how to distribute the burdens and benefits of value among shareholders.

To the authors, everything changes when the organization integrates its thinking and actions towards its ecosystem--everything from employees and shareholders to suppliers, financiers and the media. Given the interconnections among these parties, they write, "the company that manages for shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders cannot sustain its performance."

Freeman, Harrison and Wicks--professors at the University of Virginia (Freeman and Wicks) and the University of Richmond--say the book...