Business Ethics Quarterly 15 (1):93-111 (2005)
Abstract |
This paper contends that rationality is more properly evaluated as a property of an organization’s relationships with its stakeholders than of the organization itself. We predicate our approach on the observation that stakeholders can hold goals quite distinct from those of owners and top managers, and these too can be rationally pursued. We build upon stakeholder theory and Weber’s classic distinction between wertrationalitat and zweckrationalitat, adding to them the “new institutionalist” concept of the organization field . Stakeholders employ a variety of direct and indirect mechanisms to rationalize relations with the firm. We discuss four: internal subunits, legislated stakeholder participation, legislated access to information, and direct stakeholder activism. Thesedevelopments are blurring the distinction between the environment and the organization by importing the values and goals of external stakeholders into the internal organization. They are also precipitating a more structured set of relationships among the actors who comprise the field. To the extent that the zweckrationalitat values of managers and owners as well as the wertrationalitat concerns of stakeholders are met, the firm is more rational
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Keywords | Applied Philosophy Business and Professional Ethics Social Science |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
ISBN(s) | 1052-150X |
DOI | 10.5840/beq20051514 |
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References found in this work BETA
Corporate Strategy and the Search for Ethics.R. Edward Freeman & Daniel R. Gilbert - 1992 - Journal of Business Ethics 11 (7):514-554.
[Book Review] a Social-Contract Theory of Organizations. [REVIEW]Michael C. Keeley - 1990 - Ethics 100 (3):681-682.
Perspectives in Business Ethics.Laura P. Hartman - 2003 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (4):449-450.
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Citations of this work BETA
Board Gender Quotas: Exploring Ethical Tensions From A Multi-Theoretical Perspective.Siri Terjesen & Ruth Sealy - 2016 - Business Ethics Quarterly 26 (1):23-65.
Why Does Board Gender Diversity Matter and How Do We Get There? The Role of Shareholder Activism in Deinstitutionalizing Old Boys’ Networks.Elise Perrault - 2015 - Journal of Business Ethics 128 (1):149-165.
The Principle of Good Faith: Toward Substantive Stakeholder Engagement.Cedric E. Dawkins - 2014 - Journal of Business Ethics 121 (2):1-13.
Social Contracting in a Pluralist Process of Moral Sense Making: A Dialogic Twist on the ISCT.Jerry M. Calton - 2006 - Journal of Business Ethics 68 (3):329-346.
New Directions in Strategic Management and Business Ethics.Robert A. Phillips - 2010 - Business Ethics Quarterly 20 (3):401-425.
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