Stakeholder Multiplicity: Toward an Understanding of the Interactions between Stakeholders

While stakeholder theory has traditionally considered organization’s interactions with stakeholders in terms of independent, dyadic relationships, recent scholarship has pointed to the fact that organizations exist within a complex network of intertwining relationships [e.g., Rowley, T. J.: 1997, The Academy of Management Review 22(4), 887–910]. However, further theoretical and empirical development of the interactions between stakeholders has been lacking. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding and measuring the effects upon the organization of competing, complementary and cooperative stakeholder interactions, which we refer to as stakeholder multiplicity. We draw upon three forms of fit (i.e. fit as matching, fit as moderation, and fit as gestalts; Venkatraman, N.: 1989) to develop a framework for understanding stakeholder multiplicity based upon the direction, strength, and synergies of the interacting claims. Additionally, we draw upon the theory of stakeholder identification and salience of Mitchell et al. (1997), which we argue provides a more relevant and significantly more illustrative explanation of the nature and effects of stakeholder interactions upon the organization than the network approach of Rowley (1997). Furthermore, we ground our framework through reference to three stakeholder groups (i.e. governments, customers, and employees) and the stakeholder issue of concern for the natural environment. We propose a hierarchy of the multiplicity strength of influence of these three stakeholder groups. Potential measurement and implications are discussed.     

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.     

Learning from Multi-Stakeholder Networks: Issue-Focussed Stakeholder Management

From an analysis of the role of companies in multi-stakeholder networks and a critical review of stakeholder theory, it is argued that companies practise two different types of stakeholder management: they focus on their organization’s welfare (organization- focussed stakeholder management) or on an issue that affects their relationship with other societal groups and organizations (issue-focussed stakeholder management). These two approaches supplement each other. It is demonstrated that issue-focussed stakeholder management dominates in multi-stakeholder networks, because it enables corporations to address complex problems and challenges in cooperation with stakeholders. Since deliberation is the key to issue-focussed stakeholder management, it helps to cope with numerous and at times contradictory stakeholder demands and enhances the legitimacy of corporate activities. The research for this article was facilitated by the ESC Rennes Management Research Fund.     

Stakeholder Perspectives:

No abstract available for this article.     

Understanding Consumption: Contributions from a Narrative Perspective

In this paper we outline the contribution of a narrative perspective for theory and method in consumer research. Narratives are considered to be a fundamental way by which we structure and therefore make sense of our lives. Accordingly, narratives have the potential to contribute to our understanding of how consumers structure and make sense of their consumption experiences. We also develop a narrative paradigm and demonstrate how an understanding of narrative can underpin the three paradigmatic questions of ontology, epistemology and methodology. We include throughout a discussion of the implications of our perspective for consumer research and marketing in general.     

互联网思维的解读与启示

互联网思维不单是互联网企业的思维,也是互联网时代的思维。本文首先从商界领袖的两次赌约谈起互联网思维的话题;随后,本文通过深入浅出的六句话介绍互联网思维;最后,本文指出了新时代下互联网思维给企业营销的四点启示。     

Intermediary roles in local mobile advertising: Findings from a Finnish study

This research examines the intermediary roles that advertising agencies perform between small local advertisers and a mobile advertising service provider. The intermediary roles have been left unexplored, although the agencies have influence on their client's decisions to use new media. A real-life experiment of new mobile advertising system was conducted, and interview data from eight advertising agencies were collected. The findings show that agencies may play three types of roles. In playing connecting, mediating, and inhibiting roles, agencies influence the value created not only for their clients' but also for themselves and the advertising media provider.     

Reconceptualizing Entrepreneurial Performance: The Creation and Destruction of Value from a Stakeholder Capabilities Perspective

Journal of Business Ethics - Although scholars have long known that entrepreneurship involves the interaction of countless individuals beyond the entrepreneur, traditional performance metrics are...     

Drivers of Environmental Disclosure and Stakeholder Expectation: Evidence from Taiwan

This article investigates stakeholder expectations associated with corporate environmental disclosure. Several articles have studied the effect that stakeholder pressure has on environmental disclosing strategies. In this article, we extend previous research to an examination of the influence of external, internal, and intermediary stakeholder groups or constituencies in turn to clarify the demands of multiple stakeholders as to firms’ disclosure of sufficient and adequate environmental information. The sample comprised Taiwanese firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Our results show that the level of environmental disclosure is significantly affected by stakeholder groups’ demands. External stakeholder groups, such as the government, debtors, and consumers, exert a strong influence over management intentions regarding the extent of environmental disclosure. Internal stakeholder groups, such as shareholders and employees, impose additional pressures on firms to disclose environmental information. As for intermediate stakeholder groups, environmental protection organizations, and accounting firms, these can greatly influence managerial choices regarding their environmental disclosure strategies.     

Beyond Stakeholder Utility Function: Stakeholder Capability in the Value Creation Process

In spite of the thousands of articles on stakeholder theory, research on value creation has had a shorter history and narrower breadth. Only a few studies have researched value creation from stakeholder perspective looking at how stakeholders appropiate value or the processes or activities by which stakeholders create value. Consequently to date, certain questions still remain unanswered regarding how a firm should treat stakeholders in order to create value. Several questions arise specifically from the stakeholder's side: What does "value" mean for a particular group of stakeholders and how do firms create these different types of value? How do we measure the value created by stakeholders? The purpose of this paper is to answer these questions from Amartya Sen's Capability Approach, identifying and measuring stakeholders' capabilities in the value creation process. Stakeholder Capability is the adequate concept for understanding stakeholder welfare rather than the utility function concept. The empirical evidence comes from an in-depth case study of the company The Grobo Group and its stakeholders. According to the results, the following stakeholder capabilities are relevant to value creation: being employable, being autonomus, being innovative, being entreprenurial, being responsive, being socially integrated, being emphatic, being "green" and being healthy.     

Stakeholder Salience in Public and Private Firms: Results from Tanzania

It has become evident that Western concepts of business and management must be evaluated within their realms of application. The objective of this research was to analyze the effects of stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency on the stakeholder salience of shareholders, employees, customers, and community in state-owned and privatized firms in Tanzania. In general, the framework developed and used in Western studies proved useful in characterizing Tanzanian management perceptions toward stakeholders. That is, when using a common questionnaire, results were obtained that linked stakeholder saliency with underlying attributes. Nevertheless, the saliency profile for stakeholders was different in the Tanzanian culture from previous studies in the United States and Spain. In a Tanzanian context, employees, customers, and community attained inferior status compared to the results obtained in developed countries for which the theory had been developed. Profiles were also different in comparing state-owned and privatized firms in Tanzania. Results indicated that the effects on salience are similar for shareholders but different for the remaining stakeholder groups in the two categories of firms. Some policy recommendations are made as a consequence of observations, and the need for further work is acknowledged.     

God as a Managerial Stakeholder?

Can or should God be considered a managerial stakeholder? While at first glance such a proposition might seem beyond the norms of stakeholder management theory or traditional management practice, further investigation suggests that there might be both theoretical and practical support for such a notion. This paper will make the argument that God both is and should be considered a managerial stakeholder for those businesspeople and business firms that accept that God exists and can affect the world. In doing so, part one of the paper first discusses the growth of religion and spirituality within the business and academic communities. Part two raises several arguments based on stakeholder theory and business reality to support the notion of God as a managerial stakeholder. Part three addresses the arguments against God as a managerial stakeholder. Part four discusses the managerial implications of considering God as a managerial stakeholder. The paper concludes with its limitations.     

Stakeholder Theory and Managerial Decision-Making: Constraints and Implications of Balancing Stakeholder Interests

Stakeholder theory is widely recognized as a management theory, yet very little research has considered its implications for individual managerial decision-making. In the two studies reported here, we used stakeholder theory to examine managerial decisions about balancing stakeholder interests. Results of Study 1 suggest that indivisible resources and unequal levels of stakeholder saliency constrain managers’ efforts to balance stakeholder interests. Resource divisibility also influenced whether managers used a within-decision or an across-decision approach to balance stakeholder interests. In Study 2 we examined instrumental and normative implications of these two approaches. We conclude by considering the contributions of this research.