Abstract

Purpose – This literature review paper attempts to discuss and present one’s current knowledge on the wide spectrum of stakeholder relationship management, to highlight future research opportunities. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on a literature review methodology involving different streams of research. Findings – Diverse and distinct sections concerning stakeholder relationship management with specific regard to corporate governance and CSR, entrepreneurship and open innovation/open social innovation are discussed. Originality/value – The paper presents future research opportunities concerning the wide spectrum of stakeholder relationship management. Keywords Stakeholder relationship management, Stakeholders, Private sector, Public sector Paper type Literature review

Introduction

Stakeholders are considered fundamental for any type of organization (Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Santoro et al., 2020). In detail, stakeholders are: “Individuals or groups who will be impacted by, or can influence the success or failure of an organisation’s activities” (Bourne, 2009), like customers, suppliers, employees, local communities and shareholders. They have a stake in, and are affected by, the firm’s success or failure (Magness, 2008). Such a stake in the organization’s activity can take the form of an interest or right (legal or moral) or a resource provided (knowledge, skills, tangibles, human capital) (Bourne, 2009). Only when the needs and expectations of each stakeholder and the stake or stakes they may have in the outcome are known and understood is it really possible to create a shared value (Shams, 2015). Accordingly, a systematic and steady managerial attention to stakeholder interests is critical for firm’s success (Freeman, 1999). In fact, in the contemporary experience economy (Molleda and Jain, 2013), especially, understanding the stakeholders’ perceived experience about a company’s activities is seen as a key success factor for the company’s success and survival (Ardito et al., 2019). Based on the “cause and consequence of stakeholder relationships and interactions as a stakeholder causal scope (SCS)” (Shams, 2016, p. 141), the “associated stakeholders develop their perception about a company/industry and its businesses” (Shams, 2016, p. 145). Therefore, analysing such SCS, in order to recognize stakeholders’ perceptions that are originated through stakeholders’ relationships and interactions, creates further opportunities to design and deliver products and services in a way that would be expected and accepted by the associated stakeholders (Di Bella and Al-Fayoumi, 2016; ShuvAmi, 2016; Santoro et al., 2017; Vrontis et al., 2017). Such a stakeholder-centred business management approach has been contributing to develop win-win value propositions (Adderley and Mellor, 2014). Despite this, the varied implications of stakeholder relationships are not extensively understood from diverse business and management knowledge streams, functional areas and industry perspectives, leaving room for further theories and contributions. As a consequence, it can be argued that we have still limited knowledge on different business and management knowledge streams to fully exploit the potentials of stakeholder relationship management, in order to streamline business management processes for value co-creation and better organizational performance. Based on the discussion so far, this literature review paper attempts to reinforce our current understanding on the advances in stakeholder relationship management, in order to develop insights on how SCS analysis would be instrumental to co-create value for improved organizational efficacy in the public and private sectors. More specifically, this literature review paper has been structured with diverse and distinct sections concerning stakeholder relationship management with specific regard to corporate governance and CSR, entrepreneurship and open innovation/open social innovation. For each section, thus the core literature is presented with the final aim of shedding light on what we know so far about this topic and for providing future research opportunities.

Literature review

Stakeholder relationship management, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility

Despite the increasing interest in the stakeholder theory in the last decades, the varied implications of stakeholder relationships are not extensively understood from diverse business and management theoretical fields, functional areas and industry perspectives. For example, analysing stakeholder relationships and interactions within the context of corporate governance and CSR is still at its infancy (Ayuso et al., 2014; Belyaeva, 2016; Bresciani et al., 2017). There has been little research on how to integrate the interests of all the different stakeholders into the corporation’s decision-making and management processes and on the effects of these management approaches. In this context, theoretically, the stakeholder theory suggested three types of realm. The normative realm suggests how managers should deal with corporate stakeholders (Donaldson and Preston, 1995). The instrumental realm deals with what happens if managers treat stakeholders in a certain manner (Jones, 1995). The descriptive/empirical realm regards how actually managers deal with stakeholders (Berman et al., 1999). An active engagement with stakeholders can be considered both a condition for and a consequence of the stakeholder approach to corporate governance (Hillman and Keim, 2001; Short et al., 2016). Stakeholder engagement activities range from identification of key stakeholders to steady partnerships for specific purposes, such as developing innovative projects, reshaping the corporate’s image, engaging with communities and improving global responsibility (Belyaeva, 2013; Belyaeva and Kazakov, 2015). In this regard, some studies attempted to understand the significance of shareholder value models in contrast to stakeholder-oriented conceptions of corporate governance (Allen et al., 2015), while others addressed the role of the board in big corporations, which is seen vital for connecting responsible behaviours to corporate governance choices and stakeholders’ engagement practices (Frias- Aceituno et al., 2013). However, even though it is not the role of the board to be involved in the implementation of tactical programmes of stakeholder management, the board is responsible for assessing the various stakeholders’ needs, which must be considered in developing strategies and decisions. Nevertheless, there has been little interest in understanding how dealing with CSR issues in the boardroom impacts on both financial and social performances of the company so far. Thus, there is a need to explore concrete mechanisms as a way of addressing the needs of diverse stakeholders within a CSR strategy. One exception in this regard is offered by Ayuso et al. (2014), which suggested that dealing with CSR issues on the board is positively associated with engagement with customers, employees and external stakeholders too. The authors also advocated that CSR board responsibility and stakeholder engagement are more common in countries with stakeholdercentred modes of corporate governance than in countries with shareholder-centred modes of governance. Another rather unexplored issue concerns the impact of different types of CSR on different performance and outcome measures. In this regard, Matten and Moon (2008) proposed two types of CSR, namely explicit CSR and implicit CSR. Explicit CSR, which is widespread in America, describes CSR manifest in the form of corporate activities, mainly voluntary policies and strategies, motivated by perceived expectations of different stakeholders of the company. By contrast, implicit CSR, which is widespread in Europe, consists of values, norms and rules, usually codified and mandatory, emerging from the society itself and its expectations on the role of the corporation. In addition, there appears to be few studies regarding the relationship between stakeholder relationship management, corporate governance and CSR in public organizations. In fact, so far studies have investigated private companies especially. Exceptions are recent studies addressing corporate governance dynamics in the context of public–private partnerships (PPPs), which are partnerships for the provision of public infrastructure and other public assets. Specifically, PPPs are defined as “long-term contract between a private party and a government entity, for providing a public asset or service, in which the private party bears significant risk and management, and payment is linked to performance” (World-Bank, 2014, p. 19). In such a context, recently, Nederhand and Klijn (2018) examined to what degree citizens and societal stakeholders are involved in PPP projects, what factors account for their involvement and what are the effects on the performance and innovativeness of the projects, finding that although trustful relationships between actors enhance the inclusion of societal parties, the presence of a contract that allows  for flexibility leads to more citizen involvement. Benıtez-Avila et al. (2018) showed that relational governance with its elements of relational norms and partners’ trust acts as a mediator between contractual governance and partners’ contributions leading to project performance. Finally, and even most importantly, there is a need to shed more light on the relationships between stakeholders’ requirements and social outcomes. Local air, pollution, child labour, human resource rights and climate change are just few examples of current issues that corporates face nowadays (Franceschelli et al., 2018). These issues have become a central part of the current global debate and are reshaping companies’ approaches towards sustainable practices, strategies and stakeholders’ needs. The challenge has moved from “whether” to “how” to integrate corporate social, environmental and economic impacts into everyday management decisions when managers at all levels have significant incentive pressures to increase short-term earnings. It is vital now to understand more how to integrate the needs of all the stakeholders and measure the outcomes of such management methods.

Developing sustainability strategies is often an important challenge for organizations, but implementation is usually the larger challenge. Managers are often challenged as to how to manage the paradox of simultaneously improving social, environmental and financial performance and how to respond to all the stakeholders’ expectations as shareholders ask for more profits and dividends, employees seek higher rights and wages, the environment and citizens ask for respectful behaviours and cleaner productions and activities (Franceschelli, 2017). Organizations must recognize that stakeholders have numerous impacts on company profits. However, it is extremely hard to understand how to create value, both economic and social, by managing competing interests of stakeholders in light of the recent awareness for social and environmental issues which are threatening people’s lives and organizational activities. Currently, both private and public organizations are facing increasingly complex challenges related to the pressure for sustainable practices and responsible behaviours (Gide and Shams, 2011). Saying that some of the practices related to CSR and sustainable development resulted to be residual both in their conceptualization and concrete evidences and appeared as pure passive responses to societal claims, without creating the expected value, is a given, for many firms and especially nowadays (Freeman et al., 2010). This resulted in an extensive debate among scholars and practitioners alike, calling for initiatives and practices that are integrated into the firms’ core business and function as catalysts to reconfiguring their approach to markets, societies and stakeholders, in terms of corporate governance but also in terms of redesigned business models and value chains (Shams and Belyaeva, 2019; Franceschelli et al., 2019). As discussed, CSR emphasizes the important role of corporate communication in establishing and maintaining transparent and open dialogues with diverse stakeholders with the final aim of sustaining a responsible bulk of actions (Golob and Bartlett, 2007). The practice of CSR is undergoing a transition as the role of the stakeholder assumes new meaning in the business environment. Accordingly, some scholars have extended the CSR concept to the notion of “stakeholder engagement” (Morsing and Schultz, 2006; Devin and Lane, 2014), reflecting the changing role of CSR from the mere enhancement of corporate image to one of managing issues and reputation based on boundary spanning. Nevertheless, it seems that there is a lack of studies on how to increase the impact of stakeholder relationship management on sustainable development (Lim and Greenwood, 2017). It is only through the identification, measurement and management of sustainability impacts that social and environmental and financial performance can be improved and value created. Organizations need to make an independent assessment of their social, economic and environmental impacts to see where pressure is most likely to come and also to see where the company is providing unpriced social, environmental and economic benefits.

Stakeholder relationship management and entrepreneurship

In entrepreneurship research, the “theories of entrepreneurship (that) most typically focus on characteristics specific to the individual (entrepreneurs)” (Acs et al., 2013, p. 759), often overlook the potentials of entrepreneurs’ stakeholder networks and relationships for identifying and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities (Burns et al., 2014; Ferraris et al., 2018). A few studies have suggested that ties with stakeholders can offer entrepreneurs a substantial source of knowledge and social capital (Smith and Lohrke, 2008). In addition, the presence of extensive and deep ties with heterogeneous stakeholders can provide entrepreneurs with handholds helpful for building learning, experience and success (Santarelli and Tran, 2013). Entrepreneurs always thrive in unsettling and turbulent conditions and strive to find paths for business growth, looking especially at opportunities for establishing and managing ties with external stakeholders (Freeman, 2010; Shams and Kaufmann, 2016). It is well established that stakeholders’ engagement is vital in facilitating business growth especially at organizational level. Network ties among firms have a significant role, as do the ties of individuals, especially for managers or entrepreneurs of smaller firms who work for business growth and are always looking for opportunities (Bresciani et al., 2013). Different stakeholders can provide entrepreneurs access to a wide range of unique and rare resources ranging from information to knowledge, finance, ideas and insights (Christofi et al., 2018; Santoro et al., 2018), which usually can be the keys of survival for small entrepreneurial organizations (Witt, 2004). An entrepreneur’s network is a learning habitat from which to gain understanding about opportunities and resources (Bowey and Easton, 2007). Entrepreneurs are thus driven by networking activity to grow (Dubini and Aldrich, 1991) because they cannot just rely on their in-house resources and skills to plan and implement activities in a way that would sustain their competitive advantage. According to the resourcebased view, intangible resources in particular can provide rare and inimitable competitive advantages (Wernerfelt, 1984), especially in the current global competitive arena. At an individual level, a personal network consists of stakeholders with whom an entrepreneur has relationships of different types and to achieve different tasks (Thrassou et al., 2018a, b). Stakeholders in this case can be partners, suppliers, customers, venture capitalists, bankers, other creditors, distributors, trade associations and family members (Moore, 1990; Leonidou et al., 2018). Typically, these are individuals whom entrepreneurs meet on a face-to-face basis and from whom they obtain services, advice and moral support, as well as basic information about new laws and regulations. Individual networks of stakeholders can also allow entrepreneurs to acquire information and knowledge for linking products and services to new markets (Dubini and Aldrich, 1991). Therefore, successful entrepreneurs exploit stakeholders’ competencies, mutually utilize opportunities and create value through collaborative modes and approaches. They strengthen the number and the density of network ties, both strong and weak (Granovetter, 1983). Strong ties are essentially close links based on mutual respect, trust and commitment (Kontinen and Ojala, 2011), while weak ties are superficial links not yet based on strong trust and whose members are not emotionally close to each other.

Stakeholder relationship management, open innovation and open social innovation

An emergent field of research, that is, open innovation, investigates how organizations, both private and public ones, leverage stakeholder relationships and open approaches to develop new products and services, thus accelerating innovation processes (Chesbrough et al., 2006; Vanhaverbeke, 2017; Dezi et al., 2018). This new innovation model contrasts the view of a closed innovation process according to which a firm generates, develops and commercializes its own ideas with a tight control of knowledge (Chandler, 1962; Chesbrough, 2006). The open innovation paradigm has been developed in 2003 to extend those theories through a new perspective. In detail, this paradigm describes the inflow and outflow of knowledge and technology between the focal firm and the external stakeholders (Chesbrough, 2006). More specifically, open innovation has been defined as “a distributed innovation process that involves purposively managed knowledge flows across organizational boundaries, using pecuniary and non-pecuniary mechanisms in line with the organization’s business model” (Chesbrough and Bogers, 2014, p. 12). Despite the increasing concern on how external stakeholders can impact firm’s innovation and financial performance (Laursen and Salter, 2006), the literature has rarely focussed on practices established to innovate in an open fashion (Scuotto et al., 2017). In particular, while there are a lot of studies on “where” to acquire the relevant knowledge to innovate, there is a lack of research concerning “how” to leverage the knowledge of external stakeholders to innovate (Spithoven et al., 2013).

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in understanding the link between open innovation and social innovation. Given the opportunities provided by the open innovation approach, scholars should further understand how its mechanisms may contribute to the development of social innovations and to what extent. The challenges faced by current economies call for new models and approaches to innovation, thus establishing and leveraging relationships with key stakeholders. In this context, although there are studies on social innovation that explicitly or implicitly consider the involvement of external stakeholders (Drayton and Budinich, 2010), the focus mainly remains on organizations of which the primary purpose is to achieve a social change without an economic return (Chesbrough and Di Minin, 2014). Nevertheless, recent events suggest that for profit companies can play a key role in the social field too, developing sustainable and hybrid business models. Moreover, collaborations among actors for a social purpose are not addressed deeply or consistently in the literature. In fact, while there are numerous studies on open innovation, very few studies on openness for social purposes exist. The main issue afflicting social innovation is that there is a growing gap between the problems that societies are facing and the solutions that they are offered. In this regard, open innovation represents a promising approach, which deserves more attention from both a theoretical lens and a practitioners’ level (Bogers et al., 2018). Finally, it is interesting to note that most of the studies on open innovation and stakeholder relationship management are based in a private company context. There are just a few recent studies on open innovation in a public organization context (Hilgers and Ihl, 2010; Feller et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2012). This is surprisingly given that usually public organizations do not have the needed competences and resources to innovate and that open strategies are vital to solve current global and local issues, creating participative approaches among stakeholders.

Discussion and conclusions

Based on the discussion so far, it is reasonable to infer that, despite the large number of studies on stakeholder relationship management from various angles, in various contexts of analysis and in different industries, some gaps still exist. The importance of this issue is growing because public and private organizations are living and operating in conditions of increasing globalization and digitalization. These elements underline the importance of studying new relationships and dynamics that impact value creation. Although theoretical connections have been made between corporate governance theories, stakeholder theories and CSR theories, little research has been conducted on the intersection of corporate governance and CSR. The CSR concept suggests that companies have responsibilities that go beyond the interests of their shareholders and must include the interests of other stakeholders (e.g. employees, customers, suppliers, environmentalists, communities, etc.) and the broader society in which they operate (Ayuso et al., 2014). More specifically, there is a need to explore more how to integrate corporate social, environmental and economic impacts of corporate decisions and strategies. As stated, managers are often challenged as to how to manage the paradox of simultaneously improving social, environmental and financial performance and how to respond to all the stakeholders’ expectations as shareholders ask for more profits and dividends, employees seek higher rights and wages, environment and citizens ask for respectful behaviours and cleaner productions and activities (Franceschelli, 2017). Scholars should advance the knowledge in this field by proposing frameworks for guiding managerial decisions aiming at satisfying the interests of all the stakeholders. Moreover, future research could explore the influence of country and industry on the adoption of a stakeholder approach to corporate governance, especially in specific areas such as the Mediterranean one and in emerging markets, where it seems there is a lack of studies. In fact, it is argued that multinational companies’ “orientation (in emerging markets) may fail to address evolving and diverse stakeholder expectations” (Zhao et al., 2014, p. 842), precisely because they operate in different countries with different stakeholders. Lately, MNCs especially have been accused of provoking several issues regarding social aspects including product quality flaws, environmental pollution or abusive labour. Thus, we need more evidences on how MNCs can balance social, environmental and economic value creation when competing in different international markets, thus maintaining both economic and social sustainability. Such dynamics should be investigated also in alternative industries such as the tourism one. Indeed, in the tourism and hospitality industry, there is very limited research on the role and influence of stakeholders and their relationships in tourism and hospitality strategy and management (Del Chiappa and Presenza, 2013; Strobl and Peters, 2013; Ellis and Sheridan, 2014). Ultimately, there is a need to go beyond the mere distinction between implicit and explicit CSR (Matten and Moon, 2008), providing more frameworks for understanding the nature of corporate responsibility in a broader spectrum. Finally, developing CSR strategies is often a challenge for managers. However, implementation is even harder for them. Future studies should provide managers with practical implications in this regard, exploring the impact of different CSR strategies implementation. Despite the recent interest in stakeholder relationship management in the context of entrepreneurs, and despite the number of studies suggesting that the presence of extensive and deep ties with heterogeneous stakeholders can provide entrepreneurs with handholds helpful for building learning, experience and success (Dubini and Aldrich, 1991; Bowey and Easton, 2007; Santarelli and Tran, 2013), there is a need to explore more “how” to manage relationships and the relative outcomes of networks exploitation for entrepreneurs. More specifically, future studies should address the relationship between entrepreneur stakeholders’ management modes and performance outcomes such as resilience, economic returns, personal satisfaction, looking also at psychological traits (Keith et al., 2016). Future studies could investigate more the nature and quality of network ties, providing explanations for the effects of different types of ties with external stakeholders, given that each stakeholder provides different resources to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs live for exploiting opportunities (Shane, 2000). More evidences about the link between opportunity identification and stakeholders’ management and enrolment are needed. Finally, future studies should explore public policies and initiatives that foster stakeholders’ relationship for sustaining entrepreneurship and start-up venture, especially in countries with low entrepreneurial development. Studies on stakeholder relationship management should focus more on how to establish and nurture relationships to develop and commercialize new products and services. In this regard, the open innovation literature has grown tremendously during the past years with a primary focus on external knowledge sourcing (inbound open innovation) at the organizational level (e.g. Bogers et al., 2018). However, there has been limited focus on other levels of analysis, such as project level or ecosystem level (Yaghmaie and Vanhaverbeke, 2019), which represent relevant focus on analysis for the future. The open innovation paradigm is acquiring increasing interest also among institutions and governmental bodies, proven by the fact that, for example, EU funding is provided to open innovation projects, whereby different actors collaborate to find innovative solution for a sustainable and inclusive growth (Bogers et al., 2018; Bresciani et al., 2018). According to this, we need more empirical evidences concerning how to exploit partnerships and innovation ecosystems to improve social impact through social innovation and collective participation. Especially, empirical research is necessary on open innovation practices established by public organizations as most of the studies are conducted at a company level.

Table 1. Research issues in stakeholder relationship management.
Table 1. Research issues in stakeholder relationship management.

Also, aspects related to business models seem to provide research opportunities in the context of innovation ecosystems and open social innovation, as the organizations involved in open projects for sustainable products and services must be able to find a fit between social outcome and economic sustainability (Franceschelli et al., 2018). To conclude, as stated, while there are studies on “where” to acquire the relevant knowledge to innovate in terms of sources of knowledge, there is a lack of research concerning “how” to leverage the knowledge of external stakeholders to innovate (Spithoven et al., 2013). Future studies should focus on the open innovation practices and their impact on performance measures. Furthermore, studies should explore what are the needed capabilities to capitalize these open innovation practices. This literature review paper contributes to the literature by providing an overview of what we know about stakeholder relationship management in relation with different research streams. In this guise, it highlights future research opportunities connected to corporate governance and CSR, entrepreneurship and open innovation, which seem to be most valuable and relevant field that urges new insights (Table 1). To conclude, engaging with stakeholders and managing relationships with stakeholders in a proper way are extremely important for organizations, especially in the current era characterized by frequent changes, complex dynamics, globalization and digitalization. The purpose of this literature review paper was to further our understanding on the advances in stakeholder relationship management (Donaldson and Preston, 1995), with specific regard to corporate governance and CSR, entrepreneurship and open innovation. The insights presented provide scholars with some relevant research opportunities for furthering our understanding on this wide and relevant topic and also provide managers and policymakers with more fine-grained implications and insights for the future.

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