5 Building Blocks and the New Story of Business

In a world awash with concerns, what is the “new story of business” people can help take shape? Is it focused on sustainability, corporate social responsibility, impact investing or numerous other well-intentioned ideas?

Maybe we don’t have to have an “or.” Maybe we can have an “and.”

Darden Professor Ed Freeman and Ben Freeman discuss stakeholder capitalism, the importance of and, and the key concepts we can learn from the problems imposed by the old story of business. They can lead us to a new one.

There are five major ideas that are the building blocks of a new story of business. These five ideas work together, and they are the underpinning of most of the calls for reform. All five of these ideas require that we give up a number of the usual dichotomies of business and use the word “and” to replace them.

Read more in The Economic Times of India piece “The Old Story of Business: Towards a Better Capitalism.”

About the Expert

R. Edward Freeman

University Professor; Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration; Academic Director, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics; Co-Academic Director, Institute for Business in Society

Freeman is best known for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics, in which he suggests that businesses build their strategy around their relationships with key stakeholders. His expertise also extends to areas such as leadership, corporate responsibility and business strategy. Since writing the award-winning book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach in 1984, countless scholars, business leaders and students worldwide have cited Freeman’s work.

Freeman also wrote Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation and Success and Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art.

B.A., Duke University; Ph.D., Washington University

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