This event will reflect on the future of stakeholder theory. As we open the 2020s, stakeholder theory seems poised for its scholarly break out. One prominent theorist has made the (titular) declaration that resource-based theory “must incorporate a stakeholder perspective” (Barney, 2018) and the Business Roundtable has just issued a new “Statement on the Purpose of the Corporation” with a distinct stakeholder flavor. These events portend a changing of the guard in management scholarship and practice. This is also a good time to take stock of the challenges and tensions that remain.
The speaker and colleagues have recently published a number of articles that, taken together, represent at least one point of view on the state of the art in stakeholder thinking. In this seminar, Rob Phillips will present an overview of this state relying an article in Business & Society (Freeman, Phillips and Sisodia, forthcoming), the introduction to the new Cambridge Handbook of Stakeholder Theory (Phillips, Harrison, Barney, & Freeman, 2019), and a response piece to the Business Roundtable Statement (Harrison, Phillips, & Freeman, forthcoming in Journal of Management).
Refreshments will be served at the beginning of the seminar.
About the speaker
Robert Phillips is George R. Gardiner Professor in Business Ethics and Professor of Strategic Management at the York University’s Schulich School of Business. His PhD is from the University of Virginia’s Darden School. Prior to Schulich he held positions at the University of Richmond, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (Shanghai), University of San Diego, The Wharton School, and Georgetown University. He was also the Gourlay Professor of Ethics in Business, at Trinity College, University of Melbourne.
His work has appeared in Business Ethics Quarterly, Strategic Management Journal, and the Academy of Management Review among others. He is author of Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Ethics (2003). His other research interests include, stakeholder theory, historic corporate responsibility, and ethics in network organizations.
He is Special Issues Editor at Journal of Business Ethics and was previously Associate Editor at Business & Society. He has held leadership positions in the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, the International Association for Business and Society and is past president of the Society for Business Ethics. He is affiliated with the Center of Excellence in Responsible Business (COERB) at Schulich, and is Senior Fellow at the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the Darden School.