Stakeholder management in reality: Moving from conceptual frameworks to operational strategies and interactions

Abstract

Established management systems are believed to be useful for CSR practise and in this context the benefits of integrating all aspects of CSR into one sustainability management system (SMS) are often highlighted. Stakeholder management is a managerial framework for dealing with CSR by interacting with stakeholders in order to create value. Although efforts have been made to integrate stakeholder management and SMS, the resulting frameworks are almost always conceptual and seldom describe how stakeholder management can be performed.This is an important empirical addition, in that it describes how a company reacts to and adopts stakeholder management theory. The focus is on the practical rather than theoretical implications. The paper provides practitioners with a stakeholder management theory that can be purposefully applied within a management system approach and offers a way of working that categorizes, systematizes and makes stakeholder management more effective. A case study based on interactive workshops shows how the planning phase in the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) methodology, i.e. the identification of stakes and the development of effective strategies to best manage stakeholders, can be performed. The stakes and strategies thus constitute the primary base on which SMS is built. The study shows how these stakes and strategies can be translated into objectives, targets, programmes, procedures and practises for the implementation of CSR in ongoing everyday activities. It also demonstrates that theory can easily be practised and can generate interesting discussions when a company is forced to look at stakeholders from different perspectives.