Stakeholder-Oriented Firms Have Feelings and Moral Standing Too.

ABSTRACT: A central claim in stakeholder theory is that, if we see stakeholders as human beings, we will attribute higher moral standing or show more moral consideration to stakeholders. But would the same hold for firms? In this paper, I apply the concepts of humanization and moral standing to firms, and I predict that (1) individuals attribute higher moral standing to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms, because (2) individuals attribute more experience (such as feelings) to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms. Five experiments support these predictions across different operationalizations of stakeholder and profit orientations. The analyses show that moral standing attributions are not fully explained by attributions of agency (such as thinking) to firms, or by attri

SUBMITTER: Quintelier KJP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8898933 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature