What Would the Field of Strategic Management Look Like if it Took the Stakeholder Perspective Seriously?

Abstract

This chapter considers how core strategic management theories (resource-based theory, positioning theory and the theory of the firm) could be impacted by incorporating stakeholder considerations. Resource-based theory would need to adopt a model of profit appropriation in which stakeholders in addition to shareholders would have residual claims on a firm’s profits. Positioning theory’s traditional focus on threats would broaden to a focus on stakeholder-generated opportunities for profit generation. And stakeholder logic brings into question the importance of a theory of the firm for strategic management theory. These ideas (and others) are explored in this chapter as well as the implications for strategic management topics such as corporate diversification, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. Last, the chapter briefly considers some broader implications for other fields of scholarship that use and apply strategic management theories to develop applications and explain phenomena of interest in their own respective fields.