Paul Hess

The modern corporation has many demands placed upon it by various stakeholders: investors, customers, employees, communities, government, representatives of the natural environment, etc. How should corporations respond to these stakeholders? There are three major possibilities: to prioritize one stakeholder, to address all stakeholders separately, or to serve all stakeholders as part of a common good.

Prioritizing one stakeholder is done by the most common model of the firm, the shareholder firm, whose proponents …