Stakeholder Literature Research Articles

‘I’m a nurse and I have the responsibility’

This article explores the interplay of human and non human actors in a Danish hospital setting in which corporate and individual stakeholder identities are negotiated, contested or aligned with the common goal of providing good health care. Viewing the hospital as a network of stakeholders, and following Luoma-Aho and Paloviita (2010), I subscribe to the argument that non-human agency has been given too little attention in stakeholder literature. From this point of departure I discuss the complexities of nonhuman agency, bringing together aspects of Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Halliday’s Grammatical Metaphor Theory. I subsequently combine ANT and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Theory (specifically, Grammatical Metaphor Theory, Transitivity analysis, and Mood and Modality) in analyses of selected data in an empirical case study of a hospital in Denmark. In the analyses I focus on the complex nature of non-human agency as construed in printed materials and interviews with nursing staff in one of the hospital wards. I discuss how non-human stakeholders might influence the construal of identity among nursing staff and conclude with reflections on the role played by non-human stakeholders in a healthcare sector increasingly governed by private-sector management instruments.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Context of Multiple Environments

The aim of this paper is to specify the strengths and limitations of 'transnational' or 'glocal' CSR strategy formulation of multinational companies (MNCs). Bartlett & Ghoshal's typology of international business strategies has become a popular focal point for research into MNCs' strategic approaches to international CSR. Previous studies suggest that the transnational strategy type is best suited to address the multitude of global and local CSR challenges the modern MNC faces. However, the partially decentralized network structure the transnational CSR strategy aims to establish is unlikely to be achieved in a North/South context. Instead, as a result of the lack of stakeholder salience among Southern actors and the increasingly dominant role of corporate headquarters, the transnational CSR strategy is more likely to reflect a traditional hub-and-spoke model. Using the stakeholder literature and organisational legitimacy theory as theoretical lenses, we argue that in a North/South context, the transnational CSR strategy fails to empower developing country stakeholders and reinforces a skewed CSR agenda. From a corporate perspective, the transnational CSR strategy can still be considered the most suitable strategy type. From a societal perspective, however, it is likely to replicate a company's domestic priorities: global integration crowds out local adaptation.

Identifying functional stakeholder clusters to maximise communication for the ecosystem approach to fisheries management

Interaction with ecological models can improve stakeholder participation in fisheries management. Problems exist in efficiently communicating outputs to stakeholders and an objective method of structuring stakeholder differences is lacking. This paper aims to inform the design of a multi-user communication interface for fisheries management by identifying functional stakeholder groups. Intuitive categorisation of stakeholders, derived from survey responses, is contrasted with an Evidence-Based method derived from analysis of stakeholder literature. Intuitive categorisation relies on interpretation and professional judgement when categorising stakeholders among conventional stakeholder groups. Evidence-Based categorisation quantitatively characterises each stakeholder with a vector of four management objective interest-strength values (Yield, Employment, Profit and Ecosystem Preservation). Survey respondents agreed little in forming intuitive groups and the groups were poorly defined and heterogeneous in interests. In contrast the Evidence-Based clusters were well defined and largely homogeneous, so more useful for identifying functional relations with model outputs. The categorisations lead to two different clusterings of stakeholders and suggest unhelpful stereotyping of stakeholders may occur with the Intuitive categorisation method. Stakeholder clusters based on literature-evidence show a high degree of common interests among clusters and is encouraging for those seeking to maximise dialogue and consensus forming.

Stakeholder Theory, Fact/Value Dichotomy, and the Normative Core: How Wall Street Stops the Ethics Conversation

A review of the stakeholder literature reveals that the concept of “normative core” can be applied in three main ways: philosophical justification of stakeholder theory, theoretical governing principles of a firm, and managerial beliefs/values influencing the underlying narrative of business. When considering the case of Wall Street, we argue that the managerial application of normative core reveals the imbedded nature of the fact/value dichotomy. Problems arise when the work of the fact/value dichotomy contributes to a closed-core institution. We make the distinction between open- and closed-core institutions to show how in the case of the closed-core, ethical decision-making is viewed by the institution as a separate domain from the core business of the institution. The resulting blind spot stifles meaningful exchanges with stakeholders attempting to address the need for reform. We suggest in conclusion that ethical considerations are less about casting a value judgment and more about creating a process for meaningful conversation throughout an institution and its stakeholders.

Incorporating stakeholder decision support needs into an integrated regional Earth system model

A new modeling effort exploring the opportunities, constraints, and interactions between mitigation and adaptation at regional scale is utilizing stakeholder engagement in an innovative approach to guide model development and demonstration, including uncertainty characterization, to effectively inform regional decision making. This project, the integrated Regional Earth System Model (iRESM), employs structured stakeholder interactions and literature reviews to identify the most relevant adaptation and mitigation alternatives and decision criteria for each regional application of the framework. The information is used to identify important model capabilities and to provide a focus for numerical experiments. This paper presents the stakeholder research results from the first iRESM pilot region. The pilot region includes the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwest portion of the United States as well as other contiguous states. This geographic area (14 states in total) permits cohesive modeling of hydrologic systems while also providing strong gradients in climate, demography, land cover/land use, and energy supply and demand. The results from the stakeholder research indicate that, for this region, iRESM should prioritize addressing adaptation alternatives in the water resources, urban infrastructure, and agriculture sectors, including water conservation, expanded water quality monitoring, altered reservoir releases, lowered water intakes, urban infrastructure upgrades, increased electric power reserves in urban areas, and land use management/crop selection changes. For mitigation in this region, the stakeholder research implies that iRESM should focus on policies affecting the penetration of renewable energy technologies, and the costs and effectiveness of energy efficiency, bioenergy production, wind energy, and carbon capture and sequestration.

Reclaiming Marginalized Stakeholders

Within stakeholder literature, much attention has been given to which stakeholders “really count.” This article strives to explain why organizational theorists should abandon the pursuit of “Who and What Really Counts” to challenge the assumption of a managerial perspective that defines stakeholder legitimacy. Reflecting on the paucity of employee rights and protections in marginalized work environments, I argue that as organizational researchers, we must recognize and take responsibility for the impact of our research models and visions. By confronting and rethinking the foundational assumptions of stakeholder theory, business and society scholars can identify and pursue research questions that more effectively address contemporary social challenges.

Strategic stakeholder dialogues: a discursive perspective on relationship building

PurposeSocietal developments and stakeholder awareness place responsibility and legitimacy high on corporate agendas. Increased awareness heightens focus on stakeholder relations and dialogue as key aspects in corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate identity and corporate communication scholarship, but the question remains how can dialogue be initiated and maintained? The purpose of this paper is to establish a framework for conceptualizing dialogue.Design/methodology/approachThrough a review of CSR, corporate identity, corporate communication and stakeholder literature, a framework is developed taking into account the different stakes held by key stakeholder groups, i.e. consumers, investors, employees, non‐governmental organization and suppliers. Based on the discursive terms of form and script, we argue that different stakes condition different dialogical types.FindingsThe paper argues that the stakeholder orientations of the CSR, corporate identity and corporate communication disciplines can aid in strengthening dialogue. It is thus suggested that dialogue may be strengthened by constructing a framework which links the stakes held by key stakeholder groups to specific dialogue forms and scripts.Practical implicationsThe practical implication of articulating stakeholder dialogue as scripted interaction is that organizations seeking to engage stakeholders strategically must understand and respect conventions and expectations.Originality/valueThe paper's contribution is to expand the notion of dialogue within communication research and to provide organizations with a framework for understanding stakeholder involvement in identity relevant issues of responsibility and legitimacy.

Network mobilizers and target firms: The case of saving the Baltic Sea

This paper examines why and how firms participate in issue networks that aim at solving contemporary complex problems. We build mainly on network and stakeholder literatures to understand mobilization from a relational perspective. Drawing on a single embedded case study of four initiatives to save the Baltic Sea, we build a multilevel model for firm participation in issue networks. Besides discovering diverse motivational factors, the model sheds light on the interaction between individual, organization, and network levels factors explaining mobilization. We argue that there is high theoretical, managerial, and societal relevance for studying the dynamics of issue networks—a topic which could be better incorporated in the research agenda of business network scholars.

Stakeholder orientation: development and testing of a framework for socially responsible marketing

Drawing on the market orientation and stakeholder literatures, we conceptualize and operationalize stakeholder orientation to explore the potential contribution of the marketing function in a stakeholder view of the firm. Stakeholder orientation, similar to market orientation, is operationalized as both an organizational culture and a set of behaviors. The results of a managerial survey reveal that a new construct of stakeholder-oriented behaviors has a strong positive association with market performance, financial performance, reputation, and employee commitment. Overall, our study illustrates how a stakeholder view of the firm can help improve managerial practices that contribute to improved financial, social, and ethical performance.

Beyond the final consumer: the effectiveness of a generalist stakeholder strategy

PurposeManagers often face a number of dilemmas with respect to their stakeholders: Who are the most salient ones? How many should they target? How to allocate attention/efforts among them? Based on stakeholders and market orientation research this paper aims to address these dilemmas.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on a survey of managers in a cross‐industry sample of 115 firms. The authors first identify a specific group of salient stakeholders – those providing the firm with revenues and financial support. The article then studies the conditions under which firms should adopt a key approach to stakeholders' management – a “generalist” stakeholder strategy, that is, deal with a larger number of revenue and funding producing stakeholder types, and/or more evenly spread attention/efforts among them.FindingsThe findings suggest that a generalist stakeholder strategy has a positive effect on firms' performance among resource‐rich firms and among firms who face dissimilar (“unrelated”) stakeholders. Also, degree of environmental volatility was not found to moderate the relationship between a generalist stakeholder strategy and firms' performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe study contributes to the marketing and stakeholder literatures by identifying and studying a group of important stakeholders beyond final consumers – those providing the firm with revenues and financial support, and by studying the conditions under which firms benefit from one key approach to stakeholders – a “generalist” stakeholder strategy. The study's limitations characterize most cross‐sectional survey research (e.g. single informants, subjective performance assessments). However, substantial efforts were made to ensure the validity and robustness of the findings.Practical implicationsThe study offers managers insight into the organizational and environmental conditions under which firms should adopt a generalist stakeholder strategy.Originality/valueThis is one of the few papers that integrate into the marketing literature the study of stakeholders. Specifically, it introduces the concept of a generalist stakeholder strategy.

Strategic Management of Stakeholders: Theory and Practice

This article explores how top management teams can increase the robustness of their strategies by attending to important concepts emerging from the stakeholder literature. Analysis of three themes emanating from this literature leads to the development of a method composed of three techniques which elaborates how stakeholder management concepts can be applied in practice. The research, which spanned a 15 year time period, was based on working with 16 top management teams while they were developing their strategies, so that the method e which developed incrementally in response to the teams’ reactions to its utility e was grounded in both theory and practice.

A Dynamic Perspective in Freeman’s Stakeholder Model

Stakeholder literature has acknowledged the need to complement the extant theory on stakeholder management by more dynamic perspectives. This article makes use of the recent terminology of stakewatcher and stakeseeker to illustrate the dynamic aspect of stakeholder theory transposed in the graphical representation of Freeman’s stakeholder model. Presenting a few selected case studies, it applies the scheme on the concept of value responsibility chain; it exemplifies the role of stakeseekers in various forms of activism, from shareholders, NGOs and government, in the stakeholder mobilisation process. This article clarifies how stakewatchers and stakeseekers can profoundly affect stakeholder salience, especially in crises. The transposition and integration of the dynamic aspect of stakeholder theory into the graphical representation strengthen the forceful pedagogical value of the Freeman’s stakeholder graphical model.

The Nature of Nature as a Stakeholder

There is a longstanding debate in the stakeholder literature as to who and what really counts as the stakeholders of the firm. Likewise, there have been discussions on whether nature should be considered a stakeholder of the firm. However, one seldom encounters any definitions of the key concepts, that is of nature or the natural environment. We seek to contribute to the debate by taking a closer look at what this thing called nature actually is. In addition, we discuss the implications of this conceptual refinement for the stakeholder model. In order to reinforce the status of the natural environment in the stakeholder model, we propose that any visualisation of a stakeholder network should be embedded in the natural environment.

Analyzing the Essence of Stakeholder Relationships: What do we Need in Addition to Power, Legitimacy, and Urgency?

This article contributes to the body of stakeholder literature by providing an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of stakeholder relationships as a part of change in value creation. The article presents an argument that the stakeholder salience model as a tool for analyzing stakeholder relationships is not sufficient for understanding business value creation. In the recent stakeholder literature, understanding business value creation has become an important theme. Through an analysis of an empirical case, the article shows how the three stakeholder relationship attributes, legitimacy, power and urgency help to reveal the definitive stakeholders and to capture dynamics of stakeholder relations. However, in the case of strategic change, where the value creation of a firm is in transition, a more profound understanding of stakeholder relationships is needed. As a result of our empirical analysis, six characteristics of stakeholder relationships were identified. To conclude, the question of who and what really counts should be replaced by the question of how value is created in stakeholder relationships.

The Role of Dynamics in Stakeholder Thinking

Dynamics concerns the process of change in variable conditions through time at any level of analysis. Various important issues or topics in stakeholder theory and practice involve consideration of change over time and thus unavoidably involve dynamics. While dynamics has received explicit recognition in stakeholder literature, dynamic analysis remains partly tacit and suffused through the literature. One reason is that dynamics remains difficult to model even in economics. This article provides a basic orientation to stakeholder dynamics as a key conceptual and methodological issue for stakeholder thinking. This article identifies current literature concerning stakeholder dynamics and evaluates future directions in dynamic reasoning that would help build stakeholder theory and improve practice of stakeholder management. Notions of competition, influence strategies, change in stakeholder networks, mindsets, salience or values, learning, creative destruction, long-term sustainability, stakeholder reciprocity, sustainable development, and value creation all embed change and thus time dynamics. Static complexity and heterogeneity across units-of-analysis are not the same as dynamics but do also change over time. Dynamics concerns how change process influences consequences (later in time) in relationship to antecedents (earlier in time). Management copes with change process, as much as with complexity and variation in antecedents and consequences.

A “Black Box” of Stakeholder Thinking

The existence of a firm can be seen as a necessary condition for the existence of stakeholders. However, in the stakeholder literature, the firm has remained a relatively underdeveloped and fuzzy construct. In this essay, we examine how the firm has been conceptualized (explicitly or implicitly) in earlier research and suggest that, at least in stakeholder thinking, the firm can be considered as having an emergent nature. We elaborate this idea by building on the resent philosophical discussions of emergence and, as a result, propose the emergentist stakeholder model of the firm.

Institutional Implications for Stakeholder Modelling: Looking at Institutions in a Centralised Economy

Originating in the Anglo-American management literature, stakeholder thinking embraces a set of common reasoning and rests on a range of assumptions that pay little attention to the institutional variations across countries and regions with different economic systems. Our aim in this article is to contribute to the stakeholder literature by discussing the significance and implications of this institutional diversity for the stakeholder model.

The issue network: reshaping the stakeholder model

AbstractWho is a stakeholder? In this paper, stakeholders are defined in terms of who has a stake in an issue instead of who has a stake in a firm, and in so doing introduces the idea of an “issue network.” Drawing on concepts familiar to the social movements (sociology) and interest groups (political science) literatures, I argue that members of an issue network can be identified as those with grievances, resources, or opportunities. To illustrate this argument, I consider the issue of land use in the western United States, showing how various environmental organizations might fit into such a land use network. I conclude with the INSPIRE model, which locates my argument in this larger model of stakeholder management currently being constructed in the stakeholder literature. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From Market Orientation to Stakeholder Orientation

Drawing on the marketing orientation and stakeholder literature streams, the authors define the concepts of market orientation (MO) and stakeholder orientation (SO) to explore their potential contribution to marketing. They discuss the potential contribution of each construct along with the similarities and differences that could be significant for marketing strategy. The MO construct focuses on customers and competitors and indirectly on other stakeholder groups. The SO construct does not designate any stakeholder group as more important than another, and the prioritization of stakeholders may change depending on the issue. As such, SO is more contingency based and is a function of contextual aspects surrounding the organization. The SO and MO constructs are not mutually exclusive; there is some overlap between them. The authors suggest further research to explore the most appropriate construct for firms to consider.

A case of managing customer relationship management systems: Empirical insights and lessons learned

Purpose: The objective of this research paper is to show empirical evidence that supports a set of research proposition that was synthesized based on knowledge seeking and stakeholder literature. These propositions, which are related to the knowledge seeking strategies adopted by knowledge seekers and the knowledge stakeholder settings that exist in firms, are explored using the data collected from focus group discussions. Design/methodology/approach: Data collected from focus group discussions were interpreted through qualitative content analysis, resulting in discussions and findings that deliver strategies for knowledge seekers who quest for tacit knowledge. Findings: Empirical data from this study reveals strategies, ascertained from the context of three knowledge stakeholder including; powerful stakeholders, legitimate stakeholders and urgent stakeholders, each of which may be adopted in seeking tacit knowledge. Originality/value: The study proposes to tackle the issue of human centric knowledge seeking from the perspective of stakeholder theory in organization context. Knowledge stakeholders, such as external customers and internal supportive staffs and co-workers, are bearers of tacit knowledge and so identifying the knowledge stakeholders is crucial to leverage their knowledge for the firm's benefit.