The managers of a business firm have the responsibility of establishing the firm’s overall direction (its mission, strategies, goals, and policies) and seeing to it that these plans are carried out. As a consequence, managers have some long-term responsibilities and many that are of more immediate concern. Before the stake- holder environment became as turbulent and rapidly changing as it now is, the managerial task was relatively straightforward because the external environment was stable. As we have evolved to the stakeholder view of the firm, however, we see the managerial task as an inevitable consequence of the dynamic trends and developments we described in our first two chapters.
Stakeholder management has become important as managers have discovered the many groups that have to be addressed and relatively satisfied for the firm to meet its objectives. Without question, we still recognize the significance and necessity of profits as a return on the stockholders’ investments, but now we also perceive and understand the growing claims of other stakeholder groups and the success they have had in getting what they want.