Prize essay: Do stakeholders have intrinsic moral rights?

摘要

In this paper, which is based on a prize-winning essay in the IBE/EBEN-UK student competition in Business Ethics 2003, an attempt is made to clarify and perhaps simplify stakeholder theory so that it may be more easily translated into a practical and widely accepted model for managing stakeholder relations. It is argued that the normative core of the concept is sufficiently rooted in ethical theories of rights and duties that require little further elucidation or justification. What is required, however, is an ongoing development of both the normative and instrumentalist strands of stakeholder theory, so that adherents can be reassured and agnostics and the unconvinced persuaded.