Stakeholder Engagement: Beyond the Myth of Corporate Responsibility

Journal of Business Ethics 74 (4):315-327 (2007)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to transcend the assumption that stakeholder engagement is necessarily a responsible practice. Stakeholder engagement is traditionally seen as corporate responsibility in action. Indeed, in some literatures there exists an assumption that the more an organisation engages with its stakeholders, the more it is responsible. This simple 'more is better' view of stakeholder engagement belies the true complexity of the relationship between engagement and corporate responsibility. Stakeholder engagement may be understood in a variety of different ways and from a variety of different theoretical perspectives. Stakeholder engagement may or may not involve a moral dimension and, hence, is primarily a morally neutral practice. It is therefore argued that stakeholder engagement must be seen as separate from, but related to, corporate responsibility. A model that reflects the multifaceted relationship between the two constructs is proposed. This model not only allows the coincidence of stakeholder engagement with corporate responsibility, but also allows for the development of the notion of corporate irresponsibility

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Corporate Citizenship and Stakeholder Engagement: Maintaining an Equitable Power Balance.Bethel Ihugba & Onyeka Osuji - 2011 - Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies 16 (2):28-38.
Corporate and Stakeholder Responsibility.Andrew C. Wicks - 2007 - Business Ethics Quarterly 17 (3):375-398.
Maximizing Stakeholders’ Interests.Silvia Ayuso - 2014 - Business and Society 53 (3):414-439.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
158 (#111,782)

6 months
10 (#135,615)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

References found in this work

Postmodern ethics.Zygmunt Bauman - 1993 - Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Stakeholder Theory and A Principle of Fairness.Robert A. Phillips - 1997 - Business Ethics Quarterly 7 (1):51-66.
A Feminist Reinterpretation of The Stakeholder Concept.R. Edward Freeman - 1994 - Business Ethics Quarterly 4 (4):475-497.
The moral basis of stakeholder theory.Kevin Gibson - 2000 - Journal of Business Ethics 26 (3):245 - 257.

View all 27 references / Add more references