Joshua D. Margolis

Joshua D. Margolis is an American academic and the James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS)

Misery loves companies: Rethinking social initiatives by business, 2003
Margolis, Joshua D. and James P. Walsh. "Misery loves companies: Rethinking social initiatives by business." Administrative science quarterly 48.2 (2003): 268-305.


 * Looking at the business corporation through something other than the eyes of its equity holders has inspired great efforts to translate that intuitive appeal into a theory... The promise of stakeholder theory to offer a cogent alternative to the economic account of the firm, however, is impeded by a set of assumptions designed to accommodate economic considerations.
 * p. 279, partly cited in: Enyinna, Okechukwu. "Is stakeholder theory really ethical?." African Journal of Business Ethics 7.2 (2013).


 * A preoccupation with instrumental consequences renders a theory that accommodates economic premises yet sidesteps the underlying tensions between the social and economic imperatives that confront organisations. Such a theory risks omitting the pressing descriptive and normative questions raised by these tensions, which, when explored, might hold great promise for a new theory and even for addressing practical management challenges.
 * p. 280 as cited in: Enyinna, Okechukwu. "Is stakeholder theory really ethical?." African Journal of Business Ethics 7.2 (2013).