Stakeholder Approach

The stakeholder approach, which takes into consideration the interests of all parties having some claim on the company, is the opposite pole from the shareholder approach. The term stakeholder was introduced in strategic management by Freeman in the early 1960’s. For Freeman, stakeholders are the people, groups, and institutions, both internal and external, that have a well-founded and clearly articulated interest with regard to the company in the form of claims or obligations. Therefore, they can either actively influence the decisions of management or are passively influenced by the actions of the management (Freeman 1984, p. 46). He argues that the one-sided orientation of the shareholder value approach toward the interests of investors is too limited.