Abstract

Though possible influences of a stakeholder’s fairness or equity perceptions on its inclination to impose sanctions upon a firm or, conversely, to support it, have received a modicum of attention from researchers in stakeholder theory, the limited work in this area of inquiry assumes that stakeholders are homogeneous in their sensitivity to unfairness or inequity in the firm-stakeholder relationship, though research on equity sensitivity suggests that this assumption likely will not hold. Based on work in stakeholder theory, equity theory, and equity sensitivity theory, in this paper I present and test hypotheses relating a stakeholder’s equity preferences – or equity sensitivity – to its propensity to take action against, or to support, the firm.