Scandinavian Stakeholder Thinking: Seminal Offerings from the Late Juha Na ¨si Robert Strand Received: 1 May 2013 / Accepted: 26 June 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Editors’ Note In June 1994, a symposium dedicated to outlining the state of the art of stakeholder thinking was hosted by the Department of Management and Economics at the University of Jyva ¨s- kyla ¨ in Finland. The major planning efforts were made by Juha Na ¨si of the University of Jyva ¨skyla ¨ and Steven N. Brenner from Portland State University, Oregon, USA. The result was an international conference of the highest caliber. A product of this conference was the book Under- standing Stakeholder Thinking (ISBN 951-96013-6-8) comprised of chapters offered by conference participants that was edited by Juha Na ¨si and published by LSR Pub- lications of Helsinki, Finland. Contributors include Steven N. Brenner, Archie B. Carroll, R. Edward Freeman and Juha Na ¨si. Juha Na ¨si wrote the introductory chapter titled ‘‘What is stakeholder thinking? A snapshot of a social theory of the firm’’ and a chapter within titled ‘‘A Scan- dinavian approach to stakeholder thinking: An analysis of its theoretical and practical uses, 1964–1980’’. Understanding Stakeholder Thinking represents a sig- nificant contribution to the body of work associated with stakeholder theory but the book itself risks extinction. Therefore, with the kind agreement by LSR publications of Helsinki, Finland, we offer a reprint of the two important chapters within this volume authored by the late Juha Na ¨si. Within these two chapters, Na ¨si chronicled key Scandina- vian contributions to the development of the stakeholder concept. Juha Na ¨si’s offerings are even more relevant today given that effective stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as necessary for addressing the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges and contributions from Scandinavia are receiving growing attention worldwide (see Strand and Freeman 2013). We offer our sincere gratitude to LSR publications for granting this reprint to keep alive these important offerings by Professor Juha Na ¨si.—Ed Freeman, Kai Hockerts, and Robert Strand. What is Stakeholder Thinking? A Snapshot of a Social Theory of the Firm Introductory Words By stakeholder thinking we mean a way to see the company and its activities through stakeholder concepts and prop- ositions. The idea then is that ‘‘holders’’ who have ‘‘stakes’’ interact with the firm and thus make its operation possible. In order to understand what this stakeholder thinking is, it is necessary to have a rough conception of the evolution of this way of thinking. It is also necessary to define the key concepts, assumptions and propositions. Furthermore, there is justification for mentioning the main related approaches. Because stakeholder thinking is today an extremely popular framework it is worthwhile outlin- ing the central areas for its use and also briefly consid- ering why it should be so popular just now. All these ideas and matters together constitute the doctrine of stakeholder thinking which is intended to be used both in academic research and in actual business practice. The purpose of this brief introduction is to give an overview of this whole fascinating subject. The aim is only to open the field and outline main features, not at all to go into deep details. R. Strand (&) Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: rs.ikl@cbs.dk 123 J Bus Ethics DOI 10.1007/s10551-013-1793-0