R. Edward Freeman’s Selected Works on Stakeholder Theory and Business Ethics

Ed Freeman’s influential ideas on stakeholder theory, business ethics, humanities, and capitalism became foundational in the management field and turned around the mainstream thinking about business. Stakeholder theory developed by Freeman and others posits that business is not as much about profits, but rather about creating value for its stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities, financiers, and suppliers. The relationship between a company and its stakeholders is the essence of business and should be of utmost attention to its managers. Managers should avoid resorting to trade-offs by prioritizing one stakeholder group (e.g., shareholders) over the others and strive to run their companies in the interests of all stakeholders. The idea of pursuing the interests of all stakeholders became revolutionary in management and went far beyond the management field, expanding to Law, Health Care, Education, Public Policy and Administration, and Environmental Policy. This book is a collection of Ed Freeman’s most influential and important works on stakeholder theory as well as business ethics, humanities, and capitalism.

Sergiy D. Dmytriyev is Assistant Professor of Management at James Madison University (JMU). He received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Virginia, MA in Economics from Michigan State University, and an MBA from IESE Business School. His research interests connect Strategic Management and Social Issues through the exploration of stakeholder management and supererogation (going beyond duty) in organizations. He previously co-edited such books as Cambridge Handbook of Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2017), The Moral Imagination of Patricia Werhane: A Festschrift (Springer, 2018), and Humanizing Business: What Humanities Can Say to Business (Springer, 2022). He has also co-authored articles on different aspects of stakeholder theory published in Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, and Symphonia. Emerging Issues in Management. Prior to joining academia, Dmytriyev worked for Procter & Gamble, Bain & Company, and Monsanto. He resides with his wife and three children in Harrisonburg, Virginia. 

R. Edward Freeman is University Professor, Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration, Academic Director of the Institute for Business in Society, and Senior Fellow of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is best known for his award-winning book, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Pitman, 1984; and reprinted by Cambridge University Press in 2010). His latest books are The Power of And with Kirsten Martin and Bidhan Parmar (Columbia University Press, 2020), The Cambridge Handbook of Stakeholder Theory with Jeffrey Harrison, Jay Barney and Robert Phillips (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Cambridge Handbook of Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility with Patricia Werhane and Sergiy Dmytriyev (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and Bridging the Values Gap with Ellen Auster (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015). He has received six honorary doctorates (Doctor Honoris Causa) from: Radboud University in the Netherlands, Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain, the Hanken School of Economics and Tampere university in Finland, Sherbrooke University in Canada, and Leuphana University in Germany for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics. Freeman has been Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Ethics, one of the leading journals in business ethics. He is the author of more than 300 publications in a wide variety of academic and practitioner outlets. At its 2010 annual meeting, the Society for Business Ethics presented Freeman with its “Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship Award” for his stakeholder theory work, to which there has currently been more than 100,000 citations. TheAcademy of Management awarded Freeman the 2018 Award for Distinguished Scholarly Contributions to Management recognizing his influential lifetime career achievements. He is a lifelong student of philosophy, martial arts, and the blues. Freeman is a co-founding member of Red Goat Records, LLC (redgoatrecords.com) bringing joy of original soul and rhythm and blues music into the twenty-first century. He is also a principal in Stakeholder Media LLC sponsor of The Stakeholder Podcast where he is the host.