Stakeholder Theory of the MNC

In our work we want to explain the principle ideas of the stakeholder theory.
The fact that the stakeholder concept has achieved widespread popularity among
academics, media and managers we think that it is an important task to bring some
system into all those confusing approaches around to the stakeholder concept. At the
beginning we will comment on the basic idea of the stakeholder theory. We will also
try to give a clear definition of what the concept is all about. Freeman who has
contributed a lot to this approach will be the main guide line in our work. We will also
give a brief overview of the history of the stakeholder concept and how it developed
and why it became so popular lately.

1. Introduction........................................................................................3
2. Basic idea of the Stakeholder Theory and Definition ....................3
2.1. The stakeholder concept – popular and trendy..........................................................................4
2.2. Different definitions of Stakeholder....................................................5
2.3. What is a Stakeholder?..........................................................6
2.4. Who are Stakeholders?...........................................................................6
2.5. History of the Stakeholder Theory................................................................................................7
3. Contribution of Freeman to the stakeholder literature ..................9
3.1. Freeman Strategic Management ...................................................................................................9
3.2. Freeman’s essential book: A stakeholder approach......................... 10
4. Normative, instrumental, and descriptive stakeholder theory....13
4.1. Introduction........................................................................................................ 13
4.2. Normative theory......................................................................................... 14
4.2.1. Objective................................................................................................ 14
4.2.2. The action of a company should be ‘ethic’........................................................................... 15
4.2.3. Freeman’s normative theory................................................................... 15
4.3 Analytic theory............................................................................................. 17
4.3.1. Introduction.................................................................................... 17
4.3.2. Strategic management: Freeman (1984) and Savage et Al. (1991)................................... 18
4.3.3. Stakeholder identification: Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997)................................................ 21
4.3.4. Friedman and Miles (2002)................................................................................................... 22
5. The stakeholders: from theory to practice....................................24
5.1. The Corporate Social Responsibility theory............................................................................ 24
5.2. The three main current of the CSR............................................................................................ 26
5.3. Te different CSR strategies .................................................................. 28
5.4. The Limits of the theory and its application ............................... 30
6. Conclusion .......................................................................................33