by Janice Dean
First published 2003
Corporate governance transforms when directors face pressure from multiple stakeholders beyond traditional shareholders. Janice Dean investigates how public company boards navigate duties to employees, customers, suppliers, creditors, communities, and environmental concerns. Through interviews with directors and company secretaries across various industries and company sizes, Dean examines whether current leadership views their roles as requiring stakeholder assessment. She explores how boards actually incorporate diverse interests into decision making and what impact statutory stakeholder duties might create. The research contrasts "Enlightened Shareholder Value" approaches focused on maximizing returns against "pluralist" models treating shareholders as one constituency among many. Dean connects stakeholder theory to Third Way political movements championed by Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens, placing corporate law reform within broader commercial and political contexts. The book addresses how board structure affects corporate decisions and measures stakeholder orientation's effects on economic performance and social impact.
Genres: business, politics, social-issues, non-fiction
Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: academic-research, expert-interview
300 pages · Hardcover · Routledge-Cavendish