Who or What Really Counts in a Firm's Stakeholder Environment: An Investigation of Stakeholder Prioritization and Reporting

Giacomo Boesso () and Kamalesh Kumar ()
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Giacomo Boesso: Universit… di Padova
Kamalesh Kumar: University of Michigan-Dearborn

No 51, "Marco Fanno" Working Papers from Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno"

Abstract: Following the line of thinking that a firm is a nexus of contracts between stakeholders, with managers as "the central node" (Hills and Jones, 1992), this study examined how managers prioritize stakeholder relationships and to what extent firms engage in voluntary disclosure with the stakeholder group they deem to be important. Data was simultaneously collected from two different national business contexts, Italy and the US. Results of the study show that the power, legitimacy, and urgency that managers associate with various stakeholder groups cumulatively determine how they go about prioritizing competing stakeholder claims. The results also provide evidence to the effect that the more importance a firm attaches to a stakeholder group, the greater the level of interaction between the firm and the stakeholder group, as evidenced in the information reported by the firm in its disclosures.

Keywords: Stakeholder management; voluntary disclosures; cross-cultural differences; stakeholder engagement; prioritizing stakeholder claims; stakeholder dialogue (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M14 M41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pad:wpaper:0051

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