Corporate governance is an important topic for both scholars and practicing managers. To date, most work on this subject has focused on how to resolve potential conflicts of interest between a firm’s senior managers and its shareholders in how firms create and distribute economic value. This work, based in agency theory (Alchian&Demsetz,1972; Jensen&Meckling,1976),has led to the design of a variety of corporate governance mechanisms that have been widely implemented by many firmsaroundtheworld (Aguilera& Jackson,2003; Williamson, 1996). These mechanisms include incentive programs for senior managers—such as CEO compensation in the form of stock and stock options based on firm performance—that act as management “bonding” devices (Jensen & Murphy, 1990), and a variety of disciplinary mechanisms—such as the inclusion of “outsiders”onboardsof directors and legallymandated reporting requirements—that increase the ability of shareholders to “monitor” the performance of a firm (Fama & Jensen, 1983). Work on using governance to resolve possible conflicts between senior managers and shareholders has largely developed separately from governance questions focused on the broader relationships between a firm and its multiple stakeholders (Donaldson & Preston,1995;Freeman,1984).This is ironic sincesome of the earliest work on agency theory conceptualized a firm as “a nexus for a set of contracting relationships among individuals” (Jensen & Meckling, 1976: 310). These individuals, including “individuals” as legal fictions, can be viewed as a firm’s stakeholders. However, instead of examining how governance could enable a firm to work with all of its stakeholders in creating and distributing economic value, agency theorists have mostly focused on governing the relationship between managers and only a single stakeholder: shareholders. An ideawhose timehas come is that of considering more directly the governance of relations between a firm and its multiple stakeholders and not just with its shareholders. This will necessitate broadening the conceptualization of the value created by a firm beyond simply shareholder return (Barney, 2018; McGahan, 2020), a requirement accentuated by the recent COVID-19 public health crisis (Carney, 2020). However, on the face of it, the analysis of stakeholder governance seems likely to be a more difficult problem than the governance of manager– shareholder relations. Theories of shareholder governance focus on how economic value is created by and distributed between two groups—shareholders and senior managers—that are relatively homogenous with respect to their (sometimes)-conflicting interests regarding how they would like to see a firm managed (Jensen & Meckling, 1976). Governance mechanisms designed to reconcile these potential conflicts are relatively straightforward to formulate, although not always easy to implement (Baysinger & Butler, 1985; Tihanyi, Graffin, & George, 2014). Stakeholder governance, however, must deal with much broader relationships between a firm and its multiple stakeholder groups (Freeman, 1984) and the associated creation and distribution of value across them. Conventional corporate finance suggests that, with perfect factor markets, a firm that maximizes the wealth of its shareholders as its sole residual claimants will correspondingly maximize the economic value of the firm (Jensen, 2001).However, this isnot the case in a world of incomplete contracting and strategic factor markets: maximizing shareholder wealth does not necessarily address the conflicting economic interests of shareholders, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders, and thus does not necessarily maximize the value of the firm (Barney, 1986, 2018; Klein, Mahoney, McGahan, & Pitelis, 2012; Zingales, 2000). Moreover, while shareholder governance has primarily focused on economic returns, stakeholders can have interests that go well beyond narrow economic concerns (Campbell, Coff, & Kryscynski, 2012; Carney, 2020; McGahan, 2020). Employees, for example, are likely to be concerned about appropriating some of the economic profits their human capital helps to create (Morris, Alvarez, Barney, &Molloy, 2017), butmay also have interests in personal health (Michel, 2011), work life quality (Lambert, 2000), internal and external pay

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来自编辑们（为什么我们需要利益相关者治理理论）以及为什么这是一个难题

公司治理对于学者和实践管理者都是重要的话题。迄今为止，有关该主题的大多数工作都集中在如何解决公司的高级管理人员与其股东之间在公司如何创造和分配经济价值方面的潜在利益冲突。这项基于代理理论的工作（Alchian＆Demsetz，1972； Jensen＆Meckling，1976）导致了各种公司治理机制的设计，这些机制已被全世界的许多公司广泛实施（Aguilera和Jackson，2003； Williamson，1996）。这些机制包括针对高级管理人员的激励计划，例如以股票和基于公司绩效的股票期权形式的CEO薪酬，它们充当管理“绑定”工具（Jensen＆Murphy，1990年），以及各种纪律机制，例如将“外部人”纳入董事局和法律规定的报告要求，这些机制提高了股东“监督”公司绩效的能力（Fama＆Jensen，1983）。使用治理来解决高级管理人员与股东之间可能发生的冲突的工作与针对公司及其多个利益相关方之间更广泛关系的治理问题大体上是分开的（Donaldson＆Preston，1995； Freeman，1984）。代理理论的最早工作将公司概念化为“个人之间一系列契约关系的纽带”（Jensen＆Meckling，1976：310）。这些人，包括作为法律小说的“个人”，可以被视为公司的利益相关者。然而，代理理论家没有研究治理如何使公司能够与其所有利益相关者合作来创造和分配经济价值，而是主要关注于管理经理与仅一个利益相关者（股东）之间的关系。时间到了，就是更直接地考虑公司与多个利益相关者之间关系的治理，而不仅仅是与股东之间的关系。这将需要扩大公司创造的价值的概念化，而不仅仅是股东回报（Barney，2018； McGahan，2020），这是最近的COVID-19公共卫生危机（Carney，2020）所强调的要求。但是，从表面上看，利益相关者治理的分析似乎比管理者－股东关系的治理更困难。股东治理理论侧重于如何在两个群体（股东和高级管理人员）之间创造经济价值并在两者之间分配经济利益，这两个群体在（有时）相互冲突的利益方面，关于他们希望一家公司如何管理（Jensen＆麦克林（1976）。旨在调和这些潜在冲突的治理机制虽然相对较难实施，但相对而言却相对容易制定（Baysinger＆Butler，1985； Tihanyi，Graffin，＆George，2014）。但是，利益相关者治理必须处理公司与其多个利益相关者群体之间更广泛的关系（Freeman，1984年）以及相关的价值创造和分配。传统的公司融资建议，在要素市场完善的情况下，一个将股东的财富最大化的企业作为其唯一的剩余索取者，将相应地使该企业的经济价值最大化（Jensen，2001）。然而，在不完整的契约和战略要素市场的世界里，情况并非如此：最大化股东财富不一定解决股东，雇员，供应商和其他利益相关者利益冲突的情况，因此不一定能使公司的价值最大化（Barney，1986，2018； Klein，Mahoney，McGahan和Pitelis，2012； Zingales，2000 ）。此外，尽管股东治理主要集中在经济回报上，但利益相关者所拥有的利益远远超出了狭concerns的经济关切（Campbell，Coff和Kryscynski，2012； Carney，2020； McGahan，2020）。例如员工