Governing for Stakeholders

This PhD thesis lies at the intersection of stakeholder theory and corporate governance research. Stakeholder theory proposes that firms are best understood as a set of relationships among groups that have a stake in the activities of the firm. Corporate governance research, on the other hand, has almost exclusively focused on the owners of firms as it deals with the question of how decision-making structures and accountability practices should be designed within organizations, such that owners can ensure themselves of getting a return on their investment. By adopting a stakeholder theory lens to corporate governance, I seek to broaden the theoretical and empirical scope of corporate governance such that various stakeholder groups can be included in the analysis of the corporate governance of organizations.