Stakeholder Theory: Literature Review

PART 2 – LEARNING LOG

1. Literature Review

ASSIGNMENT BRIEF

In the 1980s, Freeman introduced stakeholder theory, which led to the development of the notion of the response organization and, it is argued, ultimately, the introduction of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). se and synthesis?

APPROACH
Stage 1 – Search for Literature
1. Lookup Stakeholder Theory on Google Scholar
2. Narrow search based on theme of interest within stakeholder theory
3. Search for quality journals related to theme of interest
4. Narrow down to ¾ journals that are high quality, check against ABS list
Stage 2 – Report on Literature Search
5. Explain what steps you took to locate your final selection of papers
6. Include the keywords you employed

• The main area of interest, being instrumental stakeholder theory is defined within the confines of connections or lack thereof and the achievement of traditional corporation objectives (p71)
• The writers set out at the onset that the extent to which stakeholder theory is understood to represent a controversial to conventional views varies greatly among market capitalist economies varies greatly (p69). This may be read in direct reference to Friedman’s theory [reference point here].
• Whilst conclusions firms up the writers’ argument that justification of stakeholder is in its normative base; they also raise some sort of disclaimer that Different theories have different purposes and therefore different validity criteria and different implications hints on the breadth of the subject [].
• This makes the Instrumental aspect of ST rather interesting, with a practical focus. i.e. how organisations can succeed in current and future business environment.[p72]. Key justification for Instrumental ST at the time was that hypotheses on descriptive theory was untested empirically, leading us to the work of

Suppliers, Customers, Financiers, Regulators
Secondary Those who influence or are influenced by the firm Media, Various social groups with capacity to mobilise public opinion in either direction.

• Adapted RDAP Scale (Reactive Defensive Accommodative Proactive) to include Corporate Posture. A fairly current example is the Volkswagen Scandal where FT (2015 reports . This could be viewed as somewhere between Defencing and accommodative; and would clearly be important as a measure in empirical research.
• The three propositions agree with Freeman (2010) Trade off or value creation. (We however need to criticize this somehow so that we don’t chow too much)

7.3 Instrumental Stakeholder Theory: A synthesis of Ethics and Economics
• The core theory is that a subset of ethical principles (trust and cooperativeness can result in significant competitive advantage.
• Assertively points out to the originality of Donaldson & Preston’s paper