This paper studies the way supplier firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects their likelihood of being selected as new suppliers. Using a large sample of US public firms with detailed supply chain and CSR data, we provide empirical evidence that corporate customers prefer socially responsible suppliers, and that the effect is more prominent when the supplier industry is more competitive, the customer’s own CSR performance is better, or the supplier and the customer have more similar CSR focuses. Our paper contributes (...) to the literature of instrumental stakeholder theory (IST) by confirming corporate customer attraction as a desirable outcome of supplier CSR engagement. It complements the existing IST studies on customer responses by showing that CSR attracts not only final customers but also corporate customers. Moreover, by focusing on corporate customers’ revealed preferences for socially responsible suppliers, our paper also complements the stated-preference-based evidence in the literature of sustainable supply chain management. Our paper’s findings encourage supplier firm managers to invest in CSR to gain competitive advantages in the form of a higher likelihood of selection while simultaneously making positive contributions to society. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory has largely been anthropocentric in its focus on human actors and interests, failing to recognise the impact of nonhumans in business and organisations. This leads to an incomplete understanding of organisational contexts that include key relationships with nonhuman animals. In addition, the limited scholarly attention paid to nonhumans as stakeholders has mostly been conceptual to date. Therefore, we develop a stakeholder theory with animals illustrated through two ethnographic case studies: an animal shelter and Nordic husky businesses. We focus (...) our feminist reading of Driscoll and Starik’s (J Bus Ethics 49:55–73, 2004) stakeholder attributes for nonhumans and extend this to include affective salience built on embodied affectivity and knowledge, memories, action and care. Findings reveal that nonhuman animals are important actors in practice, affecting organisational operations through human–animal care relationships. In addition to confirming animals are stakeholders, we further contribute to stakeholder theory by offering ways to better listen to nontraditional actors. (shrink)

Stakeholder engagement has grown into a widely used yet often unclear construct in business and society research. The literature lacks a unified understanding of the essentials of stakeholder engagement, and the fragmented use of the stakeholder engagement construct challenges its development and legitimacy. The purpose of this article is to clarify the construct of stakeholder engagement to unfold the full potential of stakeholder engagement research. We conduct a literature review on 90 articles in leading academic journals focusing on stakeholder engagement (...) in the business and society, management and strategy, and environmental management and environmental policy literatures. We present a descriptive analysis of stakeholder engagement research for a 15-year period, and we identify the moral, strategic, and pragmatic components of stakeholder engagement as well as its aims, activities, and impacts. Moreover, we offer an inclusive stakeholder engagement definition and provide a guide to organizing the research. Finally, we complement the current understanding with a largely overlooked dark side of stakeholder engagement. We conclude with future research avenues for stakeholder engagement research. (shrink)

Communication, as a discipline that generates a rich body of literature on CSR, has become a critical contributor to CSR knowledge in social science. However, limited research exists to understand how CSR knowledge is constructed and diffused in the discipline. This study thus intends to unpack the knowledge construction process of CSR research in the communication discipline from a network perspective. Invisible college was adopted as the conceptual framework. Article and theory/concept networks were constructed with 290 peer-reviewed articles from 61 (...) communication journals between 1980 and 2018. Results showed that in the past four decades, CSR literature in communication has been growing and maturing, as evidenced by the increasing volume and diversity of theories and concepts applied. Furthermore, this body of literature tends to gravitate toward certain selected groups of theories and concepts, resulting in denser article networks over time. Our findings reflected a substantial influence of management and psychological perspectives on CSR research in communication. Additionally, the results showed that public relations concepts and theories have influenced CSR research across different communication subfields such as advertising and organization communication. The study expects the continuation of the plurality of voices as to how communication researchers will approach CSR and what specific topics may gain popularity in future research. (shrink)

There is an impressive literature on organizational capacities that enable specific types of performance, but no work has been done on whether such capabilities extend to an organizational capacity for trustworthiness (CFT). This paper introduces the notion of a capacity for trustworthiness (CFT) defined as the collective capability of the organization to produce positive signals of trustworthiness to stakeholders. The antecedents to the CFT are bundles of organization routines that enable the firm to manifest trustworthiness and balance attending to both (...) financial and relational goals. The consequences of a high CFT are outcomes and behaviors that are congruent with pivotal stakeholder expectations and are, therefore, trust inducing. A process model is offered that outlines how an organization’s routines and CFT change in response to feedback and pressure and increase or decrease stakeholders’ trust. Implications for the management of stakeholder relations, trust repair, and the management of organizational systems are reviewed. (shrink)

This study examines local communities’ lived experiences and organizations’ care-giving processes regarding four oil and gas projects deployed in three countries. Analyzing the empirical data through the lens of ethics of care reveals that, together with mature justice, the inclination to care conceived at the focal organization creates an ethical culture encouraging caring activities by individuals at the local level. Through close communications with communities, project decision makers at the local level recognize the demanded care of local communities and develop (...) organizations’ caring capacity. The empirical analysis revealed that the care-giving process can also be influenced by the power dynamics of the network of stakeholders. This research emphasizes on the success of a bottom-up approach in caring for local communities, and sheds light on the capability of large organizations in giving care to their distal stakeholders by adopting this approach. Furthermore, it indicates that justice and care both have some useful characteristics and are complementary but, most importantly, are socially constructed and not mutually exclusive. (shrink)

This study integrates insights from stakeholder theory and the literature on competitive dynamics and incumbent responses to entry. While research in economics and strategy has examined how market incumbents respond to new entrants, little is known about the heterogeneity in these responses to the entry of a stakeholder-oriented firm; our study addresses this research gap. Findings from a novel, longitudinal dataset of 206 granularly defined pharmaceutical markets in India suggest that stakeholder-oriented firm entry in these markets is associated with an (...) impact on prices and product differentiation with heterogeneous responses from high-end and low-end incumbents. Specifically, entry by a stakeholder-oriented firm results in a reduction in prices and dosage sizes from high-end incumbents, whereas low-end incumbents respond in the opposite direction. (shrink)