Employees as Conduits for Effective Stakeholder Engagement: An Example from B Corporations

Anne-Laure P. Winkler (), Jill A. Brown () and David L. Finegold ()
Additional contact information
Anne-Laure P. Winkler: City University of New York
Jill A. Brown: Bentley University
David L. Finegold: Chatham University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 160, issue 4, No 6, 913-936

Abstract: Abstract Is there a link between how a firm manages its internal and external stakeholders? More specifically, are firms that give employees stock ownership and more say in running the enterprise more likely to engage with external stakeholders? This study seeks to answer these questions by elaborating on mechanisms that link employees to external stakeholders, such as the community, suppliers, and the environment. It tests these relationships using a sample of 347 private, mostly small-to-medium size firms, which completed a stakeholder impact assessment organized by the non-profit B Lab. The results support the hypotheses that both employee ownership and employee involvement are positively associated with external stakeholder engagement. Further, we found that certification plays a role, as employee ownership contributes to external stakeholder engagement only in certified B Corporations, and not in firms that merely completed the B Lab Impact assessment. Our findings have import for stakeholder engagement frameworks, as we show that there is interplay between internal employee stakeholders and external stakeholders that may be important to overall firm–stakeholder management.

Keywords: Stakeholder engagement; Employee ownership and employee involvement; B Corporations and certification. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-018-3924-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:160:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-018-3924-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-018-3924-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().