Stakeholder Theory Community Honors Professor Ed Freeman’s Impact on Business and Academia

The enduring and ever-growing global impact of Professor Ed Freeman and stakeholder theory took the spotlight in late July at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Colleagues and friends from industry and academia gathered to celebrate Freeman—the Stephen E. Bachand University Professor of Business Administration, Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration and academic director of Darden’s Institute for Business in Society—as he prepares to retire from full-time teaching following the 2026–27 academic year.

At a daylong conference and celebration dinner at the UVA Rotunda, the diverse group of collaborators and well-wishers reflected on the way Freeman’s ideas have changed the world for the better, offering enduring frameworks for leadership and decision-making focused on balancing the interests of all business stakeholders rather than primarily serving shareholders.

Kip Tindell, left, former CEO of The Container Store, and John Mackey, right, former CEO of Whole Foods, attended events honoring the impact of UVA Darden Professor Ed Freeman. Photo by Jack Looney

At a panel featuring corporate leaders who have put stakeholder theory into practice, John Mackey, the cofounder and former CEO of Whole Foods Market and CEO of the health and wellness company Love.Life, recounted becoming acquainted with Freeman while reading Robert Solomon’s “Ethics and Excellence.” He saw multiple footnotes citing “this guy named Ed Freeman.” Mackey said he began reading Freeman’s works and felt the lightbulb go off.

“It was like, yes, this is it, I get it,” said Mackey, who would go on to become an influential leader in what’s been termed the Conscious Capitalism movement. “This is exactly what it’s all about. Of course, business should create value for stakeholders.”

Mackey said Whole Foods overcame adversity and survived and thrived in part due to its emphasis on prioritizing its stakeholders—especially customers—even if he didn’t initially have the terminology.

Freeman became a “hero” to Mackey, helping to shape and inform his approach to leadership.

“I personally owe a great debt to Ed because he helped me think this all through, and I began to see that there are all of these interdependencies. It’s a system,” said Mackey. “Then I began to realize that stakeholder theory, rightly understood, is a win-win-win system. It creates value in multiple ways.”

Practicing With a Stakeholder Theory Approach: ‘It’s a Lot More Fun’

While stakeholder theory has gained visibility and adoption since Freeman articulated the idea in his 1984 book “Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach,” practitioner panelists made clear that there was no one way to embrace the theory. While Mackey takes a customer-centric approach, for instance, Kip Tindell, co-founder and former CEO of The Container Store, said he always put taking care of the employee first, with value for customers, vendors and the community rippling out from engaged, long-tenured and well compensated employees.

“A bad boss or a lousy manager is one who thinks that people want to goof off and do as little as possible. They don’t understand the human spirit,” said Tindell, noting that The Container Store was ranked by Fortune as the top place to work in the U.S. on multiple occasions. “People want to get up in the morning, look forward to going to work, do great things with the people they admire and then go home at night feeling good about what they’ve done.”

Another underappreciated aspect of leading with a stakeholder mindset? “It’s a lot more fun,” said Tindell.

Similarly, Tindell said, “life’s a lot more fun when you’re fortunate enough to hang out with Ed Freeman,” praising his contributions to business and ethics and also his talents as a musician, cook, martial artist and generous friend. “Ed makes everyone around him feel better about themselves. If you can make everyone around you thrive, that’s the key to success, and Ed represents that so well.”

Influence From the Classroom to the World of Practice

As Mackey and Tindell used a stakeholder mindset to grow the businesses they helped found and lead, Duke Energy Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer Katherine Neebe (MBA ‘04) discussed how Freeman’s influence spanned the Darden classroom, the workplace and the world. To sit in Freeman’s classroom as an MBA student and discuss ideas about the human relationships at the core of business—and to reframe ideas of success around value creation for all stakeholders versus extraction for some—was transformative at the outset of her career.

Professor Ed Freeman speaks during a day of panels, organized in his honor, examining the academic and real-world business impacts of stakeholder theory.

“His classroom was not just a place where I learned a theory,” said Neebe. “It was a place where people could wrestle with ideas, challenge assumptions, bring different perspectives into the conversation and discover that their own worldview might have a place.”

Over more than two decades leading sustainability initiatives at the WWF, Wal-Mart and now Duke Energy, Neebe said she frequently found herself asking, “What would Ed do?” She learned to reframe tradeoffs as optimization opportunities and use stakeholder theory as a framework for navigating disagreement in pursuit of creating enduring value.

These are lessons that have informed her career and generations of Darden students, Neebe said. As the conference room full of academics and practitioners could attest, they have proved enormously influential across business and society.

Said Neebe to Freeman: “Your impact guides our companies, our communities and our decisions into how we try—imperfectly and humanly but intentionally—to lead. Thank you for giving us the framework, and thank you for showing us that business can be a force for bringing people together, even when reasonable people disagree.”

Spreading Stakeholder Theory to the Next Generation

Darden Professor Emerita Pat Werhane said Freeman and stakeholder theory deserved a great deal of credit for providing an “enormous change of mindset” in how companies think about their role in society. She also drew attention to Freeman’s habit of collaborating with students or newly minted Ph.D.s. While there are countless ways to measure Freeman’s contributions and influence, Werhane encouraged attendees to consider the 100-plus coauthors amid Freeman’s “massive numbers of publications,” and note how many were young academics in the early stage of their career.

“That can really help put some oomph into a career,” said Werhane. “It’s a wonderful thing, and he encourages them all the way.”

The July gathering represented one of the initial events in Darden’s celebration of Freeman’s career ahead of his retirement at the conclusion of the 2026–27 academic year. Additional events are planned.

As the conference made clear, Freeman’s legacy includes not just a world-changing theory but also generations of scholars, business leaders and students who continue to live, adapt and expand his ideas in novel ways.

Ed Freeman poses with his family outside UVA’s Rotunda before a dinner honoring him ahead of his retirement at the end of the 2026-27 academic year. Photo by Jack Looney