The Aristotelian Commutative Justice and The Management of the Firm’s Stakeholder Relations.

Over the last 30 years, stakeholder theory has emerged as a new framework to replace the economic model of the firm’s behaviour. However, some central aspects still remain undetermined. Focusing on the normative approach, one of the main criticisms concerns its overall prescriptive indeterminacy in being unable to establish any criteria for the distribution of the benefits. Furthermore, the rules of conduct that can operationally define the management of the relationship with stakeholders remain somewhat unexplored. We propose analysing the role of the organizations in distributing the stakeholders' benefits within an exchange dynamic. We draw up a relational explanation that underpins the stakeholders' benefits in the philosophical notion of an "exchange as an ethical action" ranging from Aristotle to Simmel. Along this line, we emphasize the rationale of commutative justice rather than the more widely used distributive justice. A greater understanding of a fair exchange according to commutative justice leads to: i) a distribution of the benefits that is more consistent with the mutual power relations between organization and stakeholders; ii) -focusing on work relations- a theoretical coherence with the tenets of organizational justice. Further theoretical and practical implications on the stakeholders’ management are then discussed.