The Seven Azimuths: Who Are the Stakeholders?

Abstract

The word ‘stakeholder’ conjures up images of early gold rushers bashing bits of wood into the ground to establish their claim. It is also an ugly word, but one, nevertheless, that has passed into common usage among the growing community concerned with corporate social responsibility. There is no general agreement on who or what are the stakeholders of a firm, and stakeholder theory offers ‘a maddening variety of signals on how questions of stakeholder identification might be answered.’1 Whatever theory eventually comes up with, practice has shown that in terms of social responsibility there are at least seven azimuths2, communities or stakeholders that the business spectrum is involved with, namely: owners/investors (share or stock holders); management; employees; customers; natural environment; the wider community (including government); contractors/suppliers. KeywordsCorporate Social ResponsibilitySocial ResponsibilityTrade UnionInvestment FundRural WorkerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.