La teoria degli stakeholder come legame tra etica e business

There has always been a relationship, though very often implicit, between ethics and business: only very few scholars or practitioners do not openly recognize that business behavior must comply not only with law, but also with ethical constraints (Friedman 1970 considers maximizing profits for shareholders as the only duty of managers, but asks for ethical customs to be respected as well). The stakeholder view asks for more, affirming that it is based on the idea of an intrinsic, strict and synergic connection between ethics and business and, consequently, the relations between ethics and business are an essential question for this approach. This paper examines the most interesting works of Authors, who try to connect ethics with business, and also presents their contributions and limitations. All these studies contribute both to a better understanding of the ethics/strategy connections in the stakeholder view and are useful for achieving better managerial practices. In conclusion, the paper affirms that an ingenuous and rough win-win view cannot logically be acceptable, but a creative and responsible management could lead to a sort of asymptotic and synergic convergence between ethics and competitive strategy.