The theory that corporations should serve all stakeholders (employees, communities, environment, society) rather than solely shareholders — promoted by the World Economic Forum under Klaus Schwab and adopted by major institutional investors.
Against shareholder primacy: stakeholder capitalism's intellectual case: Milton Friedman's shareholder primacy doctrine (corporations should maximize profits for shareholders) produces externalities (pollution, labor exploitation, community destruction) that the shareholder price cannot capture. Corporations should internalize these effects by treating all stakeholders as having legitimate claims on corporate behavior. The WEF's 2020 Davos Manifesto committed signatories to stakeholder principles. Critics from the right (like the Business Roundtable's 2019 statement going further) argue it is used to impose political agendas; critics from the left argue it is cosmetic — corporations adopt the language without changing behavior.
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