Ultimate Questions: Relational Stakeholder Theory and the Good Life

Abstract The author was a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia who passed away in October 2025. Earlier that year, in February, he retired from Darden after eight years of living with a progressive, terminal neurodegenerative disease. His article discusses his experience teaching a course he created, “Ultimate Questions and Creating Value for Stakeholders.” The course consistently had strong enrollment and demand, and students were eager “to reflect on the deep questions of life.” In noting the second part of the course name: “Creating Value for Stakeholders” he writes that “I see this course as not just about our own personal, private ways of understanding the world, but also about how our views on ultimate questions relate to what we do with others, including what goes on at work.” He contends that businesses do better internally and externally when they do not take a narrow view of who comprises their stakeholders. He writes that “the more that managers understand their stakeholders and what they want, especially as that evolves and changes over time, the better off they will be in operating and growing their business for both the short and the long term.”