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This paper focusses on external stakeholders’ perspective of stakeholder management in public–private partnerships (PPP) projects within the context of developing countries where public opposition to PPP projects is prevalent. The purpose of this paper is to identify the key enablers to PPP projects’ success from the perspective of external stakeholders.

Data were collected from two case studies via semi-structured interviews in two PPP project locations in Nigeria. In total, 14 external stakeholders comprising community leaders, trade unionists and human right activist participated in the research.

Five key enablers of external stakeholder management were identified. These are as follows: the choice of project location; transparency of the internal stakeholders; timing of stakeholder engagement; knowledge of PPP; and relationship with internal stakeholders.

External stakeholders’ perspective of stakeholder management in PPP projects within the context of developing countries new to PPP has been established. The practical implications of the five enablers can be used by policy makers and industry professionals to ensure effective stakeholder management of PPP projects.

This research assesses the implications of integrating standardization activities into European research projects to foster the engagement of project internal and external stakeholders and into different project stakeholder management theories.

This paper analyzes the integration of standardization and the engagement of project internal and external stakeholders in standardization activities in a multi-case study of four European Framework Program projects and with the projects Advancing Resilience of Historic Areas Against Climate-Related and Other Hazards (ARCH) and Smart Mature Resilience (SMR) in two separate case studies more deeply. The multi-case study mainly evaluates the stakeholder participation in 10 CEN Workshop Agreements. While in the two case studies, among other things, two project surveys are used to investigate how stakeholder engagement was supported by standardization activities.

The results show that standardization significantly supports stakeholder engagement and lead to a proposal on how standardization can support achieving stakeholder engagement goals in the different research project phases.

This research provides practical information for policy-makers who support standardization as a tool for research, as well as for researchers and project managers who want to use standardization activities efficiently in research projects.

Drawing on theories of organisational identity, social exchange and stakeholder engagement, this study aims to investigate the processes and practices involved in the formation and shaping of identities of social enterprises (SEs) that operate in the Malawian hospitality and tourism industry.

Drawing on an interpretive research paradigm, data collected from 22 semi-structured interviews with four founders of case SEs and stakeholders, and SEs’ reports and other publicly available documents were generated and analysed following a grounded theory approach.

The authors show that the trajectory SEs followed and the exchanges that occurred with the external stakeholders allowed three out of four case SEs to swiftly re-evaluate their pre-existing identities and work towards the formation of their new identities.

This study provides an opportunity for policymakers and other actors in developing countries to frame and place SEs in line with the wider societal realities in such contexts. This may in turn call for policymakers to increase actors’ engagement with SEs and provide the necessary support that can allow SEs to be an effective force for the public good.

This paper highlights the role of exchanges with external stakeholders in identity formation and shaping within SEs in the hospitality and tourism sector in the context of institutional voids. By adopting the social exchange theory, this paper introduces a dynamic lens to identity formation and shaping and helps to explain how, across different tourism ventures, stakeholder engagement and different modes of exchange unfold in the inter-organisational and community domains. It further shows how the ventures’ value orientations on the one hand, and stakeholder engagement practices and the ensuing exchanges, on the other hand, are closely interwoven.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the contribution of stakeholder engagement to firms' innovation orientation within the context of sustainable development. It investigates whether engagement with different stakeholders promotes sustainable innovation.

The empirical analysis is based on an international sample of 656 large companies, drawn from the annual assessment for the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. A logistic regression analysis was performed in order to test the hypothesized relationships between stakeholder interaction, knowledge management and sustainable innovation orientation.

Empirical results showed that knowledge sourced from engagement with internal and external stakeholders contributes to a firm's sustainable innovation orientation, but that this knowledge has to be managed by the firm internally in order to be converted into new ideas for innovation.

Since the present study represents one of the first attempts to characterize stakeholder‐driven innovation in a quantitative way, there are some limitations related to the used database that should be addressed in future research.

The results show the importance for companies of connecting the business functions of stakeholder engagement and innovation, and find flexible mechanisms to combine access and transformation of relevant stakeholder information.

The main contribution of the present research is to prove quantitatively that engagement with different stakeholders is a valid mechanism for promoting sustainable innovation within firms. This is done with a unique dataset, the SAM Group database. In addition, the present study will advance understanding on firm's sustainable innovation processes by framing this phenomenon as an organizational capability.

The aim of this research was to understand how governmental stakeholder engagement facilitates the sustainability of industrial engineering (IE) projects. A model for governmental stakeholder engagement activities is presented.

The authors relied on a single-case study of a mining project in Northern Europe, where a novel collaboration and engagement approach with governmental stakeholders was piloted in the project's front-end phase. The analysis focused on the collaborative practices through which the IE project investor engaged governmental stakeholders during the project's front-end phase and how the engagement contributed to solving challenges in the early planning and permitting process and achieving project plans that balanced economic, social and environmental aspects.

The findings show how four collaborative engagement practices reduced uncertainty and equivocality related to the legal sustainability requirements, enabled the development of sustainable design solutions and overall accelerated the permitting process without compromising the quality of final project plans.

The findings can be used to plan governmental stakeholder engagement and understand related challenges that need to be overcome. The study highlights the need to develop established practices and guidelines for governmental stakeholder engagement.

This study complements prior research on stakeholder engagement and project sustainability by developing an understanding of how governmental stakeholder engagement can be a key mechanism enabling the sustainability of IE project's end product. This research contributes to stakeholder theory by elaborating on a new stakeholder role, intermediary stakeholder.

An increasing number of organizations focus on creating value in economics and growing their aspect, encompassing human, social and environmental perspectives. Traditionally, organizations mostly contained corporate social responsibility (CSR) as their actions only in an economically favorable situation. However, CSR can also be used in an unfavorable time as a strategic process to recover and sustain the organization during a crisis. The purpose of this study is to review six years (2015-2021) articles published on strategic CSR.

The literature review of the current study examines through source data and combination findings the role of strategic CSR during a time of crisis. The search was conducted using Google Scholars, Psych Info, Emerald Insight, Science Direct and ProQuest. The study reviewed six years of articles on strategic CSR (2015–2021).

The paper concludes by suggesting propositions and a model that indicated that effective communication encourages employees and external stakeholders to participate and enhance their contribution during the crisis and help gain a competitive advantage.

The present review demonstrated managing crisis by incorporating strategic CSR initiatives. The role of communication is important for understanding the crisis, which builds a trust-based relationship with employees and external stakeholders and enhances their participation and engagement that can help sustain during the crisis. This study will help the organizations during the time of crisis because strategic CSR initiatives reduce the negative effect of the crisis and help achieve organizational competitive advantages.

The present review bridges the gap in strategic CSR during the COVID-19 crisis interface. This review aims to understand the role of strategic CSR during the time COVID-19 of crisis. This study contributes to the strategic CSR research by giving clarity regarding the managing crises of organizations.

The circular economy (CE) approach has been acknowledged as key for manufacturing organizations wishing to overcome sustainability challenges. However, the transition has been slow. Stakeholder engagement is a driver of the transition, but there is limited knowledge on stakeholder engagement practices in a CE context. The purpose of this paper is thus to explore with whom, on what and how organizations engage with stakeholders to implement CE as part of sustainability efforts.

This study is situated at the intersection of CE, stakeholder theory and supply chain literature. A case study with three Swedish manufacturing organizations was conducted to explore stakeholder engagement practices that facilitate the implementation of CE in organizational practice and the supply chain, considering conceptual differences between stakeholder engagement for sustainability and CE.

This study provides empirical evidence on how manufacturing organizations engage stakeholders to implement CE as part of organizations' sustainability efforts. The study highlights that manufacturing organizations have to move not only from linear to circular resource flows, but also from linear to circular stakeholder engagement. Such engagement can be achieved by extending with whom, expanding on what and leveling up how stakeholders are engaged.

This study provides an enhanced conceptual understanding of stakeholder engagement in the CE context and discusses differences regarding stakeholder engagement based on linear thinking. The study emphasizes the role of circular stakeholder engagement practices for the transition toward CE in manufacturing organizations.

This study aims to explore the strategies corporations use in engaging stakeholders to sustain healthy corporate partnerships and create value for the corporate entity and the society in which they operate and their influence on the corporate manager’s cognitive abilities and decision-making.

The authors used an interpretive research approach leveraging the strengths of qualitative method of content analysis and comparative and critical analyses to report the results. Interpretive methods incorporate social theories and standpoints that view reality as the social construction of understandable events in the context of organizational communication.

The findings of this study suggest that corporations are assumed to follow and execute the principles of engaging stakeholders to achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) claiming to manage a sustainable and responsible business practices that recognize local cultures, human rights and protect the environment. However, little attention has been paid to the cognitive reasoning of the individuals responsible for CSR and corporate sustainability (CS) as opposed to the growing concerns about strategies corporations use in engaging stakeholders to sustain healthy corporate partnerships and create value – especially the processes that take place during engagement and decision-making including cognitive offloading.

Stakeholder engagement requires practical approaches that enable corporations and individuals charged with decision-making responsibilities to understand, respond and fulfill their CSRs. To achieve CSRs, corporations and managers responsible for relevant decision-making would need to involve stakeholders in social performance planning, as social reporting/auditing has long been advocating for preventing managerial biasness, groupthink and increased information dissemination via detailed reporting practices toward more collaborative stakeholder relationships. Thus, it is crucial for corporations to implement enhanced stakeholder and managerial decision-making strategies such as integrative approaches to achieve balance in the trio elements of sustainability as well as the growing use of paradox perspective to understand the nature of the tensions being sought to balance and, in the process, provide opportunity for a better evaluation of complex sustainability issues for innovative approach to resolving them. While cognitive decision-making is at play, in practice, managers tasked with making decisions must ensure the most effective stakeholder engagement strategies that are transparent and inclusive are used.

The main contribution of this study is its argument regarding the tools corporations use in engaging key stakeholders and the cognitive reasoning of the individuals responsible for CSR and CS. The study further contributes to interpreting the integrative approach to achieving balance in the trio elements of sustainability as well as the growing use of paradox perspective to understand the nature of the tensions being sought to balance and, in the process, provide an opportunity for a better evaluation of complex sustainability issues for an innovative approach to resolving them.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a food and beverage packaging company manages internal and external stakeholders to achieve sustainable innovation outcomes, as well as to contribute to the spread of sustainability paths along the supply chain, on which it operates.

A case study approach was chosen and applied multiple methods of semi-structured interviews and a documentation review.

Results reveal a structured stakeholder relationship management, according to which the packaging company acts through a stakeholder engagement process to both acquire and share new knowledge to address stakeholder pressure. Co-creation models result in a winning strategy to exploit knowledge, above all in a supply chain context, where actors should act as a part of a strictly interlinked system, involving external stakeholders (also suppliers) and internal stakeholders in joint eco-innovation projects. The case study shows the potential strategic role of a packaging company in affecting relevant actors of the supply chain through the promotion of a sustainability culture.

The first limitation is linked to the chosen case study approach, which does not allow for results to be generalized. Future works could arrange panel data analysis to investigate in depth the behavior of several packaging companies regarding stakeholder relationship management.

Managerial implications mainly underline that, to fully address market stakeholder pressure, managers should recognize the relevance of acquiring and sharing new knowledge from external sources, without underestimating the need to integrate it with internal stakeholders (employees) for its exploitation.

The present work is original for the food and beverage industry, with specific attention on the packaging sector, which, until today, has been widely investigated regarding food and waste loss reduction strategies, but less often from the perspective of stakeholder relationship management in addressing sustainability.