Freeman's "landmark book.....set the agenda for what we now call stakeholder theory" , and the importance of taking a stakeholder approach has been proven by successful stakeholder actions over the past 30 years and recently by the global financial crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2015.):
"as the recent global financial crisis has taught us. The 21st Century is one of “Managing for Stakeholders.” The task of executives is to create as much value as possible for stakeholders without resorting to tradeoffs. Great companies endure because they manage to get stakeholder interests aligned in the same direction.” (Freeman, http://redwardfreeman.com/stakeholder-management/)