The stakeholder approach has become a popular perspective in mainstream management
and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. However, it remains an open
question how real‐life managers actually view their stakeholders and what rationales are
used for making judgments about their relative importance. This article will try to
answer these questions by examining who managers in multinational corporations
(MNCs) consider as their stakeholders and how they value them. It is concluded that
managers still tend to hold a rather narrow (managerial) view of the firm and primarily
give priority to stakeholder groups which are directly involved in the core
transformation system. The conclusions are derived from interviews and surveys of in
total 662 managers in four MNCs. The data is collected as part of RESPONSE: a large
EU‐ and corporate‐funded initiative on corporate social responsibility (CSR)
