IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buetqu/v9y1999i04p699-706_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Upping the Stakes: A Response to John Hasnas on the Normative Viability of the Stockholder and Stakeholder Theories

Author

Listed:
  • Palmer, Daniel E.

Abstract

This essay responds to Hasnas’s recent article “The Normative Theories of Business Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed” in Business Ethics Quarterly. Hasnas claims that the stockholder theory is more plausible than commonly supposed and that the stakeholder theory is prone to significant difficulties. I argue that Hasnas’s reasons for favoring the stockholder over the stakeholder theory are not as strong as he suggests. Following Hasnas, I examine both theories in light of two sets of normative considerations: utilitarian and deontological. First, I show that utilitarian considerations clearly favor the stakeholder theory. I then argue that though Hasnas rightly accents the basic deontological constraint at the core of the stockholder theory, he is wrong to think that acknowledging such a constraint necessarily counts against the stakeholder theory. Here, I develop Ross’s notion of prima facie obligations to show how a viable stakeholder theory might be developed within a deontological framework.

Suggested Citation

  • Palmer, Daniel E., 1999. "Upping the Stakes: A Response to John Hasnas on the Normative Viability of the Stockholder and Stakeholder Theories," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(4), pages 699-706, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:9:y:1999:i:04:p:699-706_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1052150X00004711/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. J. Kaler, 2006. "Evaluating Stakeholder Theory," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 249-268, December.
    2. Mary Stoll, 2008. "Backlash Hits Business Ethics: Finding Effective Strategies for Communicating the Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 78(1), pages 17-24, March.
    3. Subrata Chakrabarty & A. Erin Bass, 2015. "Comparing Virtue, Consequentialist, and Deontological Ethics-Based Corporate Social Responsibility: Mitigating Microfinance Risk in Institutional Voids," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(3), pages 487-512, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:9:y:1999:i:04:p:699-706_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/beq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.