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The purpose of this study is to investigate how a higher status of one stakeholder group relates to the outcomes of stakeholder–organization relationship with other lower status stakeholder groups.

This conceptual paper uses insights from resource dependence theory while applying the tenets of social dominance theory (SDT) to develop a model with testable propositions explaining the variability with regard to stakeholder dominance and the resulting outcome in terms of (un)favorable organizational responsiveness to other stakeholder demands.

Firm’s behavior or decisions regarding a particular stakeholder group may be influenced by dominant hierarchical status of another stakeholder group if the latter considers that their respective interests are misaligned and is not willing to compromise. The argument build in this paper indicates that it is likely that the influence of the dominant stakeholder group will undermine stakeholders from a subordinate group.

This paper contributes to two distinct literature streams. First, this paper extends research on stakeholder responsiveness exploring the triadic relationship, particularly focusing on stakeholders’ perspective that has been given much less attention in prior literature. Second, this paper extends the application of the SDT to a stakeholder relationship context potentially allowing for a more parsimonious theory.

This paper aims to explore social enterprise accountability with respect to their dual social and financial objectives. Drawing on theories of accountability, stakeholders and institutional logics, this paper examines to whom and how social enterprises are accountable, focusing on the potential differences in accountability where social enterprises have a dominant versus a diversified commercial customer base.

Case studies on four work integrated social enterprises are analysed. Primary data include interviews with general managers of each social enterprise. Secondary data include social media, websites and internal and external reports.

Findings reveal accountability is largely influenced by dominant stakeholders (dominant commercial customers and parent organisations). Further, a connection between to whom and how social enterprises are accountable was noted, with formal accountability directed to the main stakeholders of the social enterprises, while less formal types of accountability were directed to less powerful stakeholders.

The integrated nature of the social enterprises facilitated complementarity rather than conflict among their commercial and social logics. While formal accountability was directed to those with power, expectations of these stakeholders ensured social and commercial logics were balanced, highlighting the importance of powerful stakeholders supporting both logics for social enterprises to effectively manage their hybridity. Conclusions consider the importance of social enterprises’ reporting practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interactive element in social and environmental reporting during a controversy between business organisations and a stakeholder over environmental performance.

The paper adopts Aristotle's triangular framework of the rhetorical situation to examine how the writer, the audience, and the purpose of communication interact in the choice of rhetorical strategies used to persuade others of the validity and legitimacy of a claim during a public controversy. The analysis focuses on the strategies (i.e. moves and their rhetorical realisations) in the form of logos (appealing to logic), ethos (appealing to authority), and pathos (appealing to emotion), with a particular emphasis on metaphor, used to achieve social and political goals. The authors base the analysis on a case study involving a conflict between Greenpeace and six organisations in the sportswear/fashion industry over wastewater discharge of hazardous chemicals. The conflict played out in a series of 20 press releases issued by the parties over a two-month period.

All six firms interacting with Greenpeace in the form of press releases eventually conceded to Greenpeace's demand to eliminate hazardous chemicals from their supply chains. The paper attributes this to Greenpeace's ability to harness support from other key stakeholders and to use rhetoric effectively. Results show the extensive use of rhetoric by all parties.

The authors regard legitimacy construction as reliant on communication and as being achieved by organisations participating in a dialogue with stakeholders. For this purpose, the paper develops an analytical framework which situates environmental reporting in a specific rhetorical situation and links rhetoric, argument, and metaphor.

This paper seeks to investigate the influence of stakeholders on accountability relationships and the development of accounting practices and processes within two Tanzanian non‐governmental organisations (NGOs).

Stakeholder analysis is employed to evaluate the positions of stakeholder groups in terms of Mitchell et al.'s attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency. Data analysis was undertaken using a grounded theory approach.

The research found that overseas donors were the stakeholders with the highest salience as a result of which they significantly influenced accountability relationships and accounting processes and practices within NGOs. Despite the often proclaimed NGOs' objective of improving welfare of beneficiary groups there appeared to be little accountability by NGOs to beneficiaries. Differences in the accounting functions in the NGOs were explained by the influence of dominant stakeholders, the credibility of the organisation and its managers and the varied ways through which the organisations negotiated and accounted for funding. Moreover, accounting was virtually unemployed in internal decision‐making processes indicating that it was largely a tool for satisfying claims of the highly salient stakeholders.

This paper makes a contribution to the literatures of both stakeholder theory and NGO accounting. From the grounded theory analysis it is suggested that the stakeholder framework of Mitchell et al. could be usefully extended in the three areas of power asymmetries of definitive stakeholders, stakeholder salience asymmetries across organisational phenomena and asymmetries across time.

The paper contributes to the empirical accounting literature by seeking a deeper understanding of how and why accounting and accountability relationships develop within NGOs. It sheds light on a type of organisation that has not been extensively studied in the public sector management literature.

This paper aims to examine the role of stakeholders and their relationships in the sustainability of telecentres in Vietnam through the lens of stakeholder theory.

This study methodologically adopted a qualitative case study to identify stakeholders that have been involved in telecentres in Vietnam. It then categorizes those stakeholders’ salience through the lens of stakeholder identification and salience theory. Secondary data and interviews were used as data sources for the present paper.

The authors identify six main stakeholders that have been involved in telecentres, including the government, entrepreneurs, international donors, telecommunications providers, civil society organisations and individual community members/users. Among these stakeholders, the government, entrepreneurs and users belong to definitive stakeholders, which have the greatest impact on the sustainability of telecentres in comparison to other groups of stakeholders (e.g. dominant, dependent and dormant stakeholders). Moreover, the authors propose a model to identify the relationships of stakeholders towards the sustainability of telecentres. In particular, the authors indicate that each group of stakeholders has its own role in contributing to sustainable telecentres and they also influence others in either direct or indirect ways.

This study provides an additional approach for managers to make judgments in prioritizing the interests of some of their stakeholders while still maintaining a level of satisfaction among other stakeholders. For example, stakeholders that should be of the highest concern to the sustainability of telecentres are the government, entrepreneurs and users, while civil society organisations can be maintained in lower priority to other stakeholders. In addition, we propose the model of interactions and relationships of stakeholders, which can be seen as a starting point for a study on the roles of stakeholders in sustainability not only in telecentres, but also in other fields, such as digital transformation, cyber security and e-government.

This paper aims to examine the governance structures and models adopted by diverse types of social enterprises (SEs) in China, a rarely studied topic of theoretical and practical importance.

The analysis is based on a comparative case study of 38 typical social enterprises. Empirical data are drawn from secondary sources (bylaws, annual reports, board meeting minutes and other relevant documents) and in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders (founders, board members, general managers and beneficiaries).

Although SEs in China are registered in various forms, their ownership frameworks nevertheless commonly lack a legislatively defined community or multi-stakeholder orientation. According to their registration status and the participation of their multiple stakeholders, SEs normally adopt three forms of governance structures: government-supervised, shareholder-controlled and member-regulated. Currently, the hybrid of stewardship and co-optation or stakeholder approach is becoming the predominant governance model among SEs in China.

This paper is based primarily on the qualitative case method to make a preliminary assessment of the governance dynamics of SEs in China. Compared with large-N quantitative methods, case studies may have limitations in terms of insufficient quantification, objectivity and generalisability of findings.

The paper sheds light on the governance issues of SEs in China, emphasising contextual effects specific to China and providing an empirical base to extend and refine previous theoretical perspectives on the governance of SEs.

Business‐to‐business technology development firms face a unique set of challenges when participating in the opportunities made possible by emerging multi‐sector innovations. The greatest challenge involves the firm’s efforts to influence and shape the market in its favor. This requires strategies for dealing with numerous stakeholders – many with which the firm has had little experience. Because both the risks and pay‐offs are great, the firm needs an analytical and systematic process for stakeholder analysis to provide the basis for stakeholder management strategies. The case of one significant multi‐sector innovation – wireless technologies for integrated traffic management and emergency response – provides an illustrative context for demonstrating a five‐step process for stakeholder analysis.

This paper aims to investigate, using stakeholder map methodology, showing power, urgency, legitimacy and concerns of different actors, the current state of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Switzerland. Previous research on CSR in Europe has made few attempts to identify stakeholders and their contribution to this topic.

To derive this map, publicly available documents were explored, augmented by 27 interviews with key stakeholders (consumers, media, government, trade unions, non-profit organisations [NPOs], banks, certifiers and consultants) and management of different companies (multinational enterprises [MNEs], small- and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs] and large national companies). Using MAXQDA, the quantified codes given for power, legitimacy and urgency were triangulated between self-reporting, external assessments and statements from publicly available documents and subsequently transferred into stakeholder priorities or, in other words, into positions in the map. Further, the codes given in the interviews for different CSR interests and the results from the document analysis were linked between stakeholders. The identified concerns and priorities were quantitatively analysed in regard to centrality and salience using VennMaker.

The paper identified SMEs, MNEs and cooperating NPOs as being the most significant stakeholders, in that order. CSR is, therefore, not driven primarily by regulators, market pressure or customers. Further network parameters substantiated the importance of SMEs while following an unconventionally informal and idiosyncratic CSR approach. Hence, insights into these ethics-driven, unformalised business models that pursue broader responsibility based on trust, traditional values, regional anchors and the willingness to “give something back” were formed. Examples of this strong CSR habit include democratic decisions and abolished hierarchies, handshake instead of formal contracts and transparency in all respects (e.g. performance indicators, salaries and bonuses).

In total, 27 interviews as primary data that supplements publicly available documents are clearly only indicative.

The research found an innovative, vibrant and practical CSR model that is emerging for reasons other than conventional CSR agendas that are supposed to evolve. In fact, the stakeholder map and the CSR practices may point at a very different role businesses have adopted in Switzerland. Such models offer a useful, heuristic evaluation of the contribution of formal management systems (e.g. as could be found in MNEs) in comparison to the unformalised SME business conduct.

A rarely reported and astonishing feature of many of the very radical SME practices found in this study is that their link to commercial strategies was, in most cases, not seen. However, SMEs are neither the “poor relative” nor the abridged version of CSR, but are manifesting CSR as a Swiss set of values that fits the societal culture and the visionary goals of SME owners/managers and governs how a sustainably responsible company should behave. Hence, as a new stance and argument within CSR-related research, this paper concludes that “informal” does not mean “weak”. This paper covers a myriad of management fields, e.g. CSR as strategic tool in business ethics; stakeholder and network management; decision-making; and further theoretical frameworks, such as transaction cost and social capital theory. In other words, this research closes scientific gaps by at once applying quantitative as well as qualitative methods and by merging, for the first time, network methodology with CSR and stakeholder research.

This paper aims to examine the drivers of companies’ compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) using the stakeholder salience theory.

The authors have used panel data from 205 companies to examine the IFRS compliance level across 13 African countries. This study has also established the relationship between stakeholders’ attributes and firms’ compliance with IFRS.

On IFRS compliance, the authors found that the average compliance score among the companies over the period was 73.09 per cent, with a minimum score of 62.86 per cent and a maximum of 85.61 per cent. The authors found a significant positive association between audit committee competence and compliance, as well as among chartered accountants on board. There is less compliance with the latest standards, such as IFRS 3, 7 and 13. Also, IAS 17, 19, 36 and 37 are problematic across the sample. The authors also found that compliance has been increasing over the years.

For companies, this study provides empirical evidence on the importance of having chartered accountants’ corporate boards, as well as competent audit committees involved in ensuring high compliance with IFRS. The findings also provide valuable information for professional accounting organizations on the role of their members (chartered accountants) in the effectiveness of IFRS compliance.

This study complements and updates prior studies on IFRS compliance with findings from Africa, a region that has been neglected in the literature. It provides empirical evidence on the importance of chartered accountants sitting on corporate boards in ensuring high compliance with IFRS.

The purpose of this paper is to present advances towards a social intrapreneurship department within energy corporations. By drawing on the literature on social intrapreneurship and stakeholder theory, this paper provides a conceptual proposal for an organisational structure. This paper builds on the notion of bridging and boundary organisations, to suggest an organisational innovative structure as a social intrapreneurship endeavour focussing on the increasing salience of weak stakeholders in energy corporations from the energy justice approach.

This paper draws on the literatures on social intrapreneurship and stakeholder theory, to provide arguments and an organisational proposal to alleviate energy poverty in energy corporations.

The results are presented in a conceptual process model for the development of Social Energy Department units within large energy companies, illustrating their embeddedness in both societal and company-level processes to facilitate social intrapreneurship initiatives that would alleviate energy poverty in the just transition.

The paper promises novel insights at the nexus of social enterprise and organisational change. The practical applicability is particularly promising, as it focusses on integrating novel units in energy companies and stimulates further research on models of social intrapreneurship to tackle energy poverty.

The paper offers both practical and theoretical contributions to the stakeholder theory field with insights from social intrapreneurship and organisational stakeholder theory in the context of a specific social problem – energy poverty, energy justice and the just energy transition.