The distinctive focus of this chapter is on how stakeholder theory has been developed and discussed within the normative business ethics literature as we understand the main work in the discipline. Though it takes many forms, there are many reasons to see stakeholder theory as it has evolved as having a central place in business ethics (and vice versa). Within this literature, we can think of stakeholder theory as providing an effort to address the problem of the ethics of capitalism outlined in Chapter 1 and to integrate it into an understanding of value creation and trade. Partly because of their disciplinary background, and partly due to the momentum of the stakeholder concept, ethicists quickly latched onto stakeholder theory as a powerful way of thinking about the way in which we connect ethics and business.

In order to think in more detail about stakeholder theory as an avenue for addressing the problem of the ethics of capitalism, we identify several themes that underscore the importance of stakeholder theory for business ethics. First, particularly due to its reach into the strategy literature and the wider management literature, stakeholder theory provides a way for ethicists to connect systematically with a wider conversation about business and organizations. No longer just focused on a set of isolated, idiosyncratic problems, the focus of stakeholder theory opens up connections to basic considerations about business, its underlying purposes, its core focus, and its everyday operations.