© Greenleaf Publishing 2002JCC 6 Summer 2002 19 Stakeholder Responsibilities Lessons for Managers

For managers, a scholarly theory that other stakeholders should have some duties— towards the firm, in particular—should be a pleasant relief. However, key lessons for managers are that responsibilities towards the firm require that managers first con-duct themselves morally; and that other stakeholder responsibilities often involve moral and citizenship duties requiring collective action, for which business leader-ship may be crucial. Mutual and joint responsibilities of stakeholders separate into four general categories: with the firm; among stakeholders themselves; common pool resources (especially nature); and the commonwealth. Stakeholder responsibil-ities are thus separable into those of interdependent actors, moral individuals and citizens. Interdependent responsibilities are arguably weaker than moral and citizen-ship responsibilities, and may amount only to benevolence in the stakeholder context absent those other responsibilities. While actions can be subject to rules, motives are subject mostly to moral education. Responsibility for consequences—stake-holder responsibility theory becomes a form of consequentialism—is far more diffi-cult to trace (because of distant repercussions) and specify. Outcomes will involve distributive equity, which as J.S. Mill established is a matter of collective action, based on moral reflection (Heilbroner 1953: 121, 307). A consequentialism framework may subject stakeholders to Rawls’s (1971) principle that changes from the status quo must be directed towards the least advantaged in a given situation. The paper directs attention to the responsibilities of consumers as a very difficult test, for both man-agers and an emerging academic theory