H1, centred: Stakeholder Theory.
Sub: A question, asked before the strategy gets written, about who the firm is for.

Eyebrow: `STRATEGY ROOM · NOTE 09 OF 15`
H1: Freeman's Stakeholder Theory.
Pill: `STRATEGIC SYNTHESIS`

Two-column. Portrait card: R. Edward Freeman · University of Virginia. Cover thumbnail: Strategic Management · A Stakeholder Approach (Pitman, 1984).
Caption: Counter-pole: Milton Friedman, NYT Magazine, 13 September 1970.

Pulled quote, large: "any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by, the achievement of the organisation's objectives."
Citation: Freeman, 1984.

Donaldson and Preston (1995). Three rows.
Descriptive · who you actually relate to.
Instrumental · firms that take it seriously, return more.
Normative · the relationships carry moral weight, useful or not.

The theory is easy to endorse and hard to apply.
The test is what happens when stakeholders pull in opposite directions.
The theory does not tell you who wins. It tells you that you cannot define the losers out of the room.

H1: BP plc.
Sub: Strategic Reset · 2024 to 2026 · live.
Pill: `CASE STUDY · UK`

Date plates: February 2020 · Net zero ambition.
August 2020 · Detailed targets.
Three lines:
Net zero by 2050.
Oil and gas production · minus 40 percent by 2030.
Capital tilt to renewables, hydrogen, electric charging.

September 2023 · Looney departs.
The strategy holds, on paper, for a year.
Caption: Strategies rarely snap. They drift.

Date plate: February 2025.
Three lines:
Oil and gas capex raised to $10bn / year.
Renewables spend cut.
40-percent target withdrawn.

Two columns under `WHO PULLED WHICH WAY`.
Left, up-weighted: Elliott Management (~5%) · near-term oil holders · certain supplier communities.
Right, down-weighted: Legal & General · Norges Bank · Nest · Follow This · ClientEarth · transition workforce.

Top: Generous reading: re-weighting. He chose a different coalition.
Middle (teal accent): Jensen's reading: market correction. Looney's pledge was a normative overreach. Auchincloss is rescuing the firm from a strategy that destroyed shareholder value.
Bottom: Harder reading: re-weighting to near-zero is Friedman's answer in Freeman's language.
Caption (italic, smaller): The Note acknowledges the steel-man before testing it.

Hero card, teal accent.
H1: The Ethical Residue Test.
Body: After re-weighting, can the board articulate the ethical claim of the displaced stakeholder, in terms the stakeholder itself would recognise?
Pill at bottom: `ORIGINAL ANALYTICAL CONTRIBUTION`

BP, February 2025: did not.
By the test, exited Freeman's theory in that month.

H1: Ørsted A/S.
Sub: Henrik Poulsen · 2012 to 2020 · decisive divestment 2017.
Pill: `POSITIVE CONTRAST · DK`

Two-column.
Left, 2012: DONG Energy · most coal-intensive utility in Europe.
Right, 2017: Ørsted · world's largest offshore wind developer.

Three rows under `THE WORK FREEMAN'S THEORY DEMANDS`.
Coal workforce · transition agreements, retraining, pension protection.
Fossil suppliers · long exit windows for retooling.
Short-cycle bondholders · told, in writing, this company is no longer for them.

Jensen, 2001, pulled quote: "Stakeholder theory leaves directors with no compass."
Counter, in teal: Freeman: a single-metric compass is only a compass if you have already accepted whose interests it encodes.

Lund departure announced · April 2025.
The down-weighted stakeholders have not gone away.
The Ethical Residue Test will return.

Eyebrow: `THREE THINGS TO CARRY FORWARD`

Hero text:
If you asked your board today
to articulate the ethical justification
for the stakeholders it has downgraded,
in terms those stakeholders would recognise,
could it?

Curated by Matthew Doyle · mæd partners.

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Educational material · not legal, regulatory, or investment advice · see `00 - Disclaimers.md` for the full notice · © 2026 mæd partners limited.