Stakeholders Matter

The dominant shareholder-value model has led to mismanagement, market failure and a boost to regulation, as spectacularly demonstrated by the events surrounding the recent financial crisis. Stakeholders Matter challenges the basic assumptions of this model, in particular traditional economic views on the theory of the firm and dominant theories of strategic management, and develops a new understanding of value creation away from pure self-interest toward mutuality. This new 'stakeholder paradigm' is based on a network view, whereby mutuality enhances benefits and reduces risks for the firm and its stakeholders. The understanding of mutual value creation is operationalized according to the license to operate, to innovate and to compete. The book develops a vision for a strategy in society in which, rather than the invisible hand of the market, it the visible hands of the firm and the stakeholders that lead to an overall increase in the welfare of society.

Sybille Sachs is Professor and Head of the Institute for Strategic Management: Stakeholder View at the University of Applied Sciences Zurich (HWZ). In addition, she is an affiliate professor of the University of Zurich, where she established the module for Business and Society in 2000. She has published numerous articles and books in the fields of strategic management and stakeholder management and is co-author of the book Redefining the Corporation (2002).

Edwin Rühli is Professor Emeritus for Business Administration at the University of Zurich. He is also Senior Advisor at the Institute for Strategic Management: Stakeholder View of the University of Applied Sciences in Zurich. He is the author of the groundbreaking German management book Unternehmungsführung I-III and has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications in the fields of international management, corporate governance, strategic management and stakeholder management.