This paper suggests that due to the changing nature of the firm, viewing shareholders as
the sole residual claimants is an increasingly tenuous description of the actual
relationships among a corporation’s various stakeholders. Thus, a shareholder wealth
perspective is increasingly unsatisfactory for accurately answering the two fundamental
questions concerning the theory of the firm: that of economic value creation, and the
distribution of this economic value. Examining the corporation from a (team production)
property rights perspective of incomplete contracting and implicit contracting provides a foundation for the revitalization of a stakeholder theory of the firm in the strategic
management discipline.