The Impact of How Monsanto Manages the Relationship Between Shareholders and Other Stakeholders

The impact of how Monsanto manages the relationship between shareholders and other stakeholders

Introduction

Monsanto is a US based company with its focus on agricultural chemistry and biotechnology business (Robin 2010). As the world's leader in the area of producing genetically-modified seeds and herbicide, its branches cover multiple locations around the world and it possesses considerable capital resources. Therefore, large companies as Monsanto are supposed to create value in a responsible way and behave in accordance with social contract. The earliest concept of a social contract was put forward by in 17th and 18th centuries (White 2007). For centuries, scholars keep altering its connotation to catch up with the transaction of social environment. The corporation plays an essential role in forming people's likelihood in contemporary society. A vital process of corporation governance is stakeholder management. This paper will concentrate on how Monsanto manages the conflict between shareholders' value and other stakeholders' interests through examining its social intangible performance, to see whether or to what extent the behavior of corporation corresponds with the stakeholders' core value rather than merely generate wealth for shareholders. Stakeholder groups are varied, including shareholders, employees, government, customers, suppliers, local communities and so on (Mallin 2007), some of which are discussed in the current paper.

The case for Monsanto

It has been over half century since Milton Friedman first came up with his famous phrase "the business of business is business" in 1962 (Crouch, Maclean 2011). However, today's rules of commercial activities have changed significantly. There is a huge impact in which the corporation manages their business on the local community stakeholders (Straus 2009). Monsanto observes that and has been making efforts to bring well-being to them. Child labor has been a critical problem since mid 1800s in...