Alcune riflessioni sui recenti sviluppi dello stakeholder management: il "valore per gli stakeholder"

The purpose of this paper is to provide a basis for an open and more informed debate in the Italian academic world about recent developments in stakeholder management (SM). In the author's opinion, in fact, Italian business administration culture could provide a significant contribution to the strong debate that took place in the SM field, mostly in North America, in the last two decades (see Goodpaster 1991 to Freeman et al. 2010). The paper begins with an attempt to briefly clarify the epistemological status of stakeholder theory (ST). In particular, two relevant views are challenged: i) the constructivist perspective; ii) the approach that assimilates ST to a strict natural science view. The paper also points out that, whether ST application could be useful for pursuing long-term sustainable profit, it can't be reduced to a technique (or approach) for shareholder value maximization (Jensen 2002), mostly because of the intrinsic connection between ethics and business addressed by ST. In addition, in this paper a theoretical model is presented in order to discuss the meaning and significance of the label "stakeholder theory". In this perspective some general ideas of Freeman et al. 2010 about the nature of ST (e.g. Separation Fallacy, Integration Thesis I and II and Responsibility Principle) are discussed. In the remainder the most important and critical issues of SM are discussed. In particular, attention is devoted to: i) the link between ethics and business; ii) the debate about ethical relativism in ST; iii) the problem of a multiple objective function of the stakeholders approach; iv) the view of capitalism according to SM; v) the identification and salience of stakeholders; vi) the reflections about shareholders rights. The paper also points out that, whether ST application could be useful for pursuing long-term sustainable profit, it can't be reduced to a technique (or approach) for shareholder value maximization (Jensen 2002), mostly because of the intrinsic connection between ethics and business addressed by ST.