Professor Jay Barney, Center for Business, Health, and Prosperity Co-Academic Director and Presidential Professor of Strategic Management at the David Eccles School of Business co-hosted an international conference at the Silver Baron Lodge at Deer Valley Ski Resort highlighting the topic of New Stakeholder Theory. The conference had an international audience from across North America and Europe.
What is New Stakeholder Theory and why hold a conference in Utah?
New Stakeholder Theory focuses on how firms manage the conflicting interests of their stakeholders—shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and so forth—instead of just focusing on creating wealth for shareholders. Professor Jay Barney describes it as “a theory of how to manage returns, not only to financially invested shareholders, but to other stakeholders as well, realizing that it will rarely be possible to simultaneously satisfy all of a firm’s stakeholders. It is a topic that brings together logic and methodology from economics and strategic management, and links it with concerns about stakeholders.” Barney added, “This subject is of increasing interest to practicing managers in the face of increased pressures to respond to a variety of social challenges while, at the same time, driving profitability and wealth creation for their shareholders.”
The group of scholars in attendance examined this theory from a wide variety of different perspectives. Topics ranged widely from how to manage conflicting interests among stakeholders to moral transaction cost. For example, one paper examined the need to rally political support before it was possible for Abraham Lincoln to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. That announcement became possible when Union forces were able to turn back Lee’s Confederate army at the battle of Antietam—a battle that cost some 22,000 casualties. Thus, it took 22,000 casualties—North and South—to build the political support necessary to emancipate the slaves in the Confederacy.
This is the second time the group has met to discuss this topic. They first met last year at a conference held at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. The group hopes to continue the research and discussion next year with another conference to be held at HEC near Paris, France.
Thank you to all who contributed to the conference, including conference sponsors: The Center for Business, Health, and Prosperity, Sorenson Impact Center, Goff Strategic Leadership
Center, and the Lassonde Social Entrepreneurship Program.
Learn more about New Stakeholder Theory from these Sorenson Impact Roundtables: