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Stakeholder relations has been largely based upon a two-way public relations model. Along with this change, business diplomacy emerged as a proposal to renew stakeholder management. It is still uncertain if this proposal adds value to stakeholder management, which this study seeks to clarify.

Corporate representatives in charge of stakeholder management were invited to participate in an online survey measuring both public relations and business diplomacy activities. With a sample of 104 companies, factorial analyses were conducted on public relations and business diplomacy activities comparing model quality.

This study finds that public relations and business diplomacy activities share identity but not to the point of being fused and are thus different in nature. The best model showed three overarching functions (communication, influence and intelligence) implying that stakeholder management needs both public relations and business diplomacy.

Findings suggest both public relations and business diplomacy research should be included in advanced stakeholder management studies.

By acknowledging the role that business diplomacy plays in stakeholder management, companies may place influence at the core of the renewed stakeholder management strategy to better deal with the increasingly complex business environment.

This study adds clarity to the role of public relations and business diplomacy in stakeholder management based on actual activities developed in organizations and reveals the underlying dimensions of communication, influence and intelligence.

The purpose of the paper is to propose that stakeholder scholarship should take its rightful role in the acknowledgement of stakeholder value production, the enhancement of stakeholder voice and public stakeholder advocacy. Its focus is on low‐wage workers particularly, although the analysis holds for dependent stakeholders generally.

This paper analyses and develops extant stakeholder theory with regard to employer treatment of low‐wage workers. A general point is made about the need for stakeholder research, writing and advocacy to take more explicit normative stances. This is achieved in three stages: by explaining why low‐wage workers are dependent stakeholders; by considering the strengths and weakness of stakeholder theory as an explanatory framework for low‐wage workers; and by identifying how stakeholder theory should be developed in order to provide an explicitly normative account of low‐wage workers that leads to pragmatic action.

Labour and industrial relations scholarship would benefit from the integration of stakeholder language and scholarship, as the stakeholder concept has gained currency and legitimacy among academics in a variety of fields. Stakeholder theory scholarship would benefit from explicit consideration of power, which is common to work in labour and industrial relations scholarship.

Stakeholder theory can benefit from labour and industrial relations scholarship and practice. Likewise, industrial relations can benefit from understanding and integration of the increasingly ubiquitous stakeholder concept. It is believed that the integration of stakeholder theory with insights from labour and industrial relations scholarship helps further work in both fields.

The purpose of this article is to establish a strategic management framework that supports the integration of corporate social responsibility principles and stakeholder approaches into mainstream business strategy.

A top‐down and bottom‐up approach was used to develop the proposed framework. The top‐down approach focused on analyzing the main strategic management theories including social responsibility movements to identify complementary concepts and create a relevant topology. The bottom‐up approach was based on empirical research on the views of business companies on corporate social responsibility, a review of best practices and case studies mainly in Greece.

The paper describes a stakeholder‐oriented integrative strategic management framework linking the main strategic management theories across value, responsiveness and responsibility dimensions. A mathematical model is presented describing the synergistic development of advantage‐creating knowledge and advantage‐creating stakeholder relations in accordance with the criteria of the resource‐based theory.

The proposed management framework is based on the results of research projects and is not fully developed and tested. The approach will be refined, exploiting results from ongoing research including further empirical research and testing in business organizations.

The paper defines a novel conceptual framework extending the resource‐ and stakeholder‐based approaches by introducing two interlinked concepts: advantage‐creating knowledge and advantage‐creating stakeholder relations.

This study proposes a new construct and a measure for understanding the embeddedness of public relations capability at the organisation level. The public relations orientation measure assesses the degree to which organisations (1) pursue both behavioural and symbolic relationships with publics, (2) set public relations goals to support organisational goals and facilitate effective use of public relations information within the organisation, (3) provide adequate resources for public relations, and (4) engage in dialogue with the publics on whom their success or failure depends. Suggestions are given for how public relations orientation (PRO) can be used as a diagnostic and benchmarking tool in organisations.

This paper aims to investigate the conceptualisation of corporate communication management (CCM) and its dimensionality from the practitioners’ perspectives. It proposes to validate an operational definition and dimensions of the CCM construct, which have not been identified in the literature.

The initial concepts are based on academic literature and followed by 12 face-to-face interviews with corporate communication practitioners and consultants from Malaysia to confirm the practicality of each dimension. QSR Nvivo Version 9.0 software is used to analyse the qualitative data. Then, the data are classified through deductive content analysis based on key words or themes.

The diverse perspectives are shown from the practitioners and consultants on the dimensionality of CCM. Most of the interviewees suggest that CCM dimensions include corporate advertising, corporate affairs, investor relations and employee communication within the corporate communication and other departments. They also found the public relations and media relations are clearly under corporate communications manager’s supervision. This research confirms the concept of CCM and its dimensionality to operationalise the CCM construct. The CCM dimensions also offer opportunities for further research to develop the measurement scales.

This research contributes to the clarification on the subject matter by developing clear concepts of the CCM and by offering insights about the role of the CCM dimensions, which help managers to more successfully incorporate the CCM dimension into the corporate management strategy. This paper also examines the concept of CCM and confirms its dimensionality, which helps in developing the CCM measurement for further quantitative research.

The purpose of this paper is to bring the concept of “meeting the gaze of the other” into conversation with the organizational accountability literature. This is done by integrating “the gaze” phenomenon with Darwall’s (2006) distinction between de jure and de facto authority. In the context of accountability, only de jure accountability entails meeting the gaze of the stakeholder, in that it requires organizations to grant stakeholders the moral authority to hold them to account. Drawing on this work, this paper aims to critically examine the distinction between de jure and de facto in current organizational accountability theorizing and in practice.

A content analysis of the “letters to the stakeholders” from the Global 100 firms’ accountability/social responsibility reports. Specifically, this paper examines the frequency with which leading companies acknowledge de facto vs de jure accountability, the nature of these statements and toward which stakeholder group they are directed.

Most firms acknowledge de facto accountability, but few grant de jure standing, making it more likely that firms will ignore claimants they prefer not to morally engage. De jure relationships that are acknowledged tend to be restricted to certain stakeholders such as employees, customers and shareholders. In addition, there are differences in the granting of de jure accountability across industry sectors.

This work highlights the importance of acknowledging de jure accountability when engaging with stakeholders, and importantly, it highlights how to integrate consideration for de jure accountability into theorizing on organizational accountability. This analysis suggests that acknowledging de jure accountability vis-a-vis stakeholders can lead to more positive ethical decision-making and stronger relationships. Organizations are encouraged to strengthen their ethical decision-making by granting moral standing to their stakeholders.

Organizational accountability is typically treated as a single construct, yet de jure accountability (vs simply de facto accountability) has been linked to particularly powerful moral effects. This paper examines the critical distinction between de facto and de jure accountability. It makes a compelling case for the importance of acknowledging the gaze of organizational stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to examine to what extent the companies could adapt the corporate governance principles of the Capital Markets Board (CMB) to their own structures in terms of stakeholder relations; and second, to raise awareness of the deficiencies related to these relations.

The companies listed in ISE‐50 Index in the fourth quarter of 2010 were examined. The corporate governance principles compliance reports, activity reports and articles of associations of the companies that should be issued were examined to obtain the data. The research findings have been studied under five subtitles: company policies relating to stakeholders; promoting the participation of stakeholders in the management; human resources policies; relations with the customers and suppliers; ethical rules and social responsibility.

It is found that the companies have not taken any action for the representation of the employees in the board of directors. Also, it is seen that most of the companies, when any interest group is privileged, do not make the confidential business information obtained due to such privilege used so as to violate the equal opportunity principle. There are difficulties in paying attention to the confidentiality of the confidential business information related to the customers and suppliers.

The findings of this study can indicate that, effective handling of applications reflecting the perception related with the stakeholders of the corporate governance could only be probable if CMB corporate governance principles “practice and specify what you do not practice” have become compulsory.

The paper provides useful information on the relationships of the companies listed in the ISE‐50 Index with stakeholders.

Listening to and conversing with stakeholders has become a basic requirement for the survival of any organization in a society with insistent demands for transparency and dialogue. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Latin American practitioners are using social media for corporate and networking purposes, and their perceptions about which social media activity is more relevant for organizational stakeholders.

A population of 803 public relations professionals from 18 Latin American countries working on different hierarchical levels, both in communication departments and agencies across the region, were surveyed as part of a larger online survey. For this research, five questions about social media usage have been included in the first edition of the Latin American Communication Monitor (LCM) project.

The study shows that despite the massive incorporation of social media into communication strategies of organizations, Latin American professionals report less intensive use of these collaborative channels than do peers in the Asia-Pacific, but they are in line with colleagues from Europe. Practitioners report a cautious optimism on the success achieved in the social media arena, as well as an insignificant use of these tools for professional networking purposes.

This paper touches only four sections of the LCM 2014/2015. Participant fatigue may have negatively impacted the quality of the data. A large sample of professionals was approached, but a much small number initiated and completed the online survey. This resulted in the lack of representation of some countries in the subcontinent. In the future, greater participation is needed to allow for a more comprehensive comparative analysis.

This research provides a more in-depth look at the current state of public relations practice in Latin America and the use of social media channels to communicate with stakeholders. Even if social media continue to create unprecedented opportunities, social media platforms have not been widely adopted by professionals in the region, probably due to the lack of appropriate structures, cultures and strategies for participative modes of social media communication.

This dearth of knowledge about how PR professionals use social media affects the engagement process, and as a result, the reputation, legitimization, satisfaction with and trust in organizations. Without listening carefully to stakeholder needs, satisfying these needs and establishing a real conversation, organizations will not be able to attain the sought-after engagement that leads to a stable and lasting relation with the public.

Although numerous articles on the situation of public relations in different Latin American countries have been published, this research is first attempt to investigate the use of social media channels in the subcontinent through opinions of a representative sample of professionals.

This chapter aims to understand the communication practices of CSR in technological environments, specifically corporate websites. It is important to know what are the dimensions of CSR most valued in online communication, what content is more widespread, and if there is dialogic communication between organizations and different stakeholders. It was used a quantitative method of analysis, using the expanded web content analysis. It was based on the study results of the 1,000 largest Portuguese companies published by the Economic Journal in 2014. The chapter includes the analysis of the best companies from 24 sectors of activity of Portugal. Portuguese organizations use their websites to communicate about CSR practices. A large majority of companies dedicate to these subjects a higher number of pages. The findings indicate that the issues disseminated are various, but the predominance content is related to environmental dimension. Results suggest a low level of dialogic dimension adoption. It is proposed a theoretical framework of online communication of CSR that integrates a set of indicators from three interlinked dimensions: the technical dimension, the informational dimension and dialogical dimension, considering the different kind of publics and the different practice areas inherent to CSR. This framework is a contribution to the deepening of knowledge and understanding of online communication of CSR practices, on the perspective of public relations theory. It has practical implications to communication, because it proposes guidelines that should be considered in an effective online communication of CSR in organizations of various sectors of activity in Portugal. It is proposed a theoretical framework of an effective online communication of CSR that integrates a set of indicators from three interlinked dimensions that are part of the dialogical capacity of organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate relational contracting (RC) practices that give rise to higher quality interpersonal relations between these pairs of stakeholders at the end of public projects: clients and contractors; contractors and consultants; and clients and consultants. It developed models to predict the level of quality of interpersonal relations between the stakeholders at the completion of public projects.

Using a set of questionnaire, data were collected from randomly selected construction industry practitioners who have had experience in public projects in Singapore. The data were analysed to identify association between the use of RC practices and quality of interpersonal relations between stakeholders. In-depth interviews with experts were conducted.

It was found that when certain RC practices were adopted to a larger extent, public projects also have significantly higher quality of interpersonal relations between clients, contractors and consultants. Three mathematical models were developed to predict the relationship quality between stakeholders at the end of the public project.

The limitations include the subjective nature of the Likert scale that was used in answering the questionnaire survey and the limited number of interviews. The effect of existing good relations among stakeholders was not taken into account.

Suitable RC practices for adoption by public clients, contractors and consultants in public projects are recommended. These include developing deeper mutual trust and understanding, sharing project information, and having real gain-share/pain-share among contracting parties.

RC practices that are significantly associated with relationships among contracting parties in public projects in Singapore are uncovered. Contracting parties may use the recommendations to help enhance their relationships with one another in a public project.