Value Distribution to Stakeholders: A Study on Power and Strategic Importance in TSX IPOs

Abstract

Stakeholder theory has developed over the past few decades and has established an increasing presence in business studies. In this context, the concepts of stakeholders' power and strategic importance have been studied in the literature, however, some aspects remain unclear, such as the relationship between these concepts and the value distributed to stakeholders by companies. This research seeks to provide theoretical clarification based on empirical evidence about the distribution of value to stakeholders. Our purpose is to verify the association between the power and the strategic importance of stakeholders and the distribution of value to them by publicly-traded companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). In order to obtain the information relevant to the treatment given by companies to their stakeholders, data collection took place in the prospectuses presented by companies for the TSX IPO process in the period from 2008 to 2019. 104 prospects were studied in which the data collection was done through content analysis with the aid of the Nvivo 12 software and the data analysis was done using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to test our hypotheses. The results observed reveal that not only is power and strategic importance relevant to the distribution of value to Stakeholders but also that stakeholder 'strategic importance has greater influence when compared to its Power.