Stakeholder founder defends the concept

Academic Ed Freeman coined the much-misused “stakeholder” concept 25 years ago and believes the endless spectacle of scapegoating and witch hunts against ‘financial miscreants’ like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs are doomed to failure. He believes the ‘demonising’ is ultimately only addressing the symptoms and not the cause so the ‘let the traditional markets rip’ philosophy fails to have any meaningful ethical component. He says the business-as-usual pursuit of increased revenues and profit has undesirable outcomes – ethically, environmentally, socially – and ignores key stakeholder...