A measure of the evolution of the company's orientation toward its primary stakeholders

Carlos Alves

Finance Research Letters, 2022, vol. 50, issue C

Abstract: In recent years, many have argued for a greater orientation of companies toward defending the interests of their various stakeholders, and many firms have proclaimed their adherence to stakeholder capitalism. However, there is not a single measure that can objectively quantify the orientation of companies. This paper proposes metrics to capture the evolution of the primary stakeholder focus. An empirical application to ESG-rated European companies concludes that, in 2013-2021, companies seemed to move toward a greater focus on shareholders' interests to the detriment of a greater co-determination with employees' interests. Covid19 and the social capital of companies have attenuated this orientation.

Keywords: stakeholder capitalism; stakeholder theory; ESG; corporate purpose; corporate orientation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612322004202
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finlet:v:50:y:2022:i:c:s1544612322004202

DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.103215

Access Statistics for this article

Finance Research Letters is currently edited by R. Gençay

More articles in Finance Research Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().