Home Alone?: What has happened to Home Depot, a company that under Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank was a model of stakeholder responsiveness?

In the wonderful Corporate Culture and Performance, John Kotter argues that the best companies try to balance the needs of three key stakeholder groups (shareholders, customers, employees). Jim Collins and Jerry Porras expand on this concept in Built to Last, talking about companies that understand “the genius of the ‘and’” (the ability to find win-win solutions) rather than accepting “the tyranny of the ‘or’” (trading off one group’s interests against another’s.

Kotter goes on to say that some companies respond to only a single stakeholder—usually, the shareholder. They survive, but they do not tend to perform as well as a multi-stakeholder company.

And then there are those that don’t respond to any stakeholder at all, that are run entirely for the benefit of the people running them. Home Depot now appears to fall into this category.