All Animals are Equal, but... How Managers in Multinational Corporations perceive Stakeholders and Societal Responsibilities

The stakeholder approach has become a popular perspective in mainstream management and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. However, it remains an open question how real‐life managers actually view their stakeholders and what rationales are used for making judgments about their relative importance. This article will try to answer these questions by examining who managers in multinational corporations (MNCs) consider as their stakeholders and how they value them. It is concluded that managers still tend to hold a rather narrow (managerial) view of the firm and primarily give priority to stakeholder groups which are directly involved in the core transformation system. The conclusions are derived from interviews and surveys of in total 662 managers in four MNCs. The data is collected as part of RESPONSE: a large EU‐ and corporate‐funded initiative on corporate social responsibility (CSR).