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This study draws upon the cultural values model, institutional theory and comparative capitalism to investigate differences in organizations’ approach to stakeholder management across country boundaries.

The authors developed a multi-dimensional scale, following the stakeholder culture framework (Jones et al., 2007) to identify differences in the prevalent stakeholder cultures in the USA, Italy and Japan. Data were collected in form of a questionnaire from managers of 530 companies in the USA, Italy and Japan.

Results show that there are important differences in the extent to which different stakeholder cultures exist in each of these three countries, and that the prevalence of stakeholder culture types in each country is influenced by the country’s cultural values and institutional arrangements.

Understanding stakeholder management beyond the conventional firm level to a wider institutional setting has important implications for the dissemination of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices across cultures. Developing an understanding of how organizations’ stakeholder management approaches are embedded in the context of the institutional arrangements that exist in a particular country will lead to CSR practices that are better suited to the specific national context. It may also help in a more widespread acceptance of these concepts and practices.

Recent literature has investigated the composition, responsibilities and characteristics of non-profits’ boards, but there is a lack of research on the link between governance practices and preferences related to philanthropic strategy. This study integrates the strategic philanthropy literature with recent works in the area of governance to understand how organisations’ approach to governance can lead to different strategic approaches. The empirical section presents the results of a survey conducted among 144 decision makers (presidents, board members, managers) that belong to the largest Italian foundations. Using perceptual data, the exploratory results show significant associations between selected governance items (satisfaction of decision makers, usefulness of managerial reports, activism of board members) and the four pillars of strategic philanthropy.

The results of the study reveal where and when foundations’ decision makers believe that well-governed private foundations can act more effectively and efficiently than individual donors and poorly governed foundations can. Conclusions facilitate the formulation of guidelines and recommendations to professional players and regulators who are interested in enhancing the social value foundations can create.

The purpose of this study is to examine the similarities and differences in the strategic orientation and innovation patterns of small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and large companies and to investigate their implications for market performance.

Miles and Snow's strategic typology is applied to 592 new products to determine their companies' strategic orientations. Data collected over a two‐year period by 62 companies in the Italian yogurt industry are analyzed.

The results show that, while large firms operate with a “prospector” orientation, SMEs have a “defender” or “reactor” orientation. Only a small number of SMEs can innovate successfully, and an ex post facto investigation reveals that these firms follow an “open innovation model”.

The findings fill a gap in the literature by clarifying the similarities and differences in the strategic orientations, innovation patterns and performance of SMEs and large companies in a dynamic industry environment. The study also provides insights for managers in new food product development who are concerned about low rates of innovation and high rates of failure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between stakeholder culture, stakeholder salience and firm response to stakeholder demands, based on the stakeholder culture framework.

The study was conducted in a field setting involving 292 mid-level managers who completed measures of stakeholder culture and stakeholder engagement activities (SEAs) in their organizations.

Results show that managers in organizations with different stakeholder cultures differentially ascribe and weigh the three attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency when determining stakeholder salience. In addition, stakeholder culture is also associated with how managers respond to stakeholder issues in terms of SEAs.

Findings of the study justify the need to extend the stakeholder salience theory beyond the values of senior managers to include organization-level factors. This study is largely exploratory and the relationships that have been observed are associational in character.

Results show that both ascription of stakeholder salience and the nature of SEAs are associated with stakeholder culture prevalent in an organization. This implies that managers may face constraints in managing stakeholder relationships, regardless of their personal values and beliefs, and may have to make deliberate efforts to modify the culture.

Despite the fact that researchers have been urged to examine how organization-level phenomena guide managerial thinking and decision making with respect to stakeholder relationships, empirical research on the topic is lacking. This study contributes to the emerging research on firm-level perspective on stakeholder management.

Following the line of thinking that a firm is a nexus of contracts between stakeholders, with managers as “the central node,” the purpose of this paper is to examine how managers prioritize stakeholder relationships and to what extent firms engage in disclosures with the stakeholder groups they deem to be important.

Data were simultaneously collected from two different national business contexts, Italy and the USA. The sample for this study consisted of 244 managers.

Results of the study show that the power and legitimacy that managers associate with a stakeholder group cumulatively are the most important determinant of how managers go about prioritizing competing claims. The results also provide some evidence to the effect that the greater the priority accorded to a stakeholder group, the greater the efforts aimed at engaging the stakeholder groups (as evidenced by the voluntary disclosures made in the annual report).

Use of self‐report measures, although widely used in behavioral and strategy research, may raise some concerns about the findings. Also, examining annual report's voluntary disclosures as the single source of assessing the stakeholder engagement efforts creates a potential limitation on the findings of the study.

The stakeholder salience framework as examined in this study offers some practical insights into the understanding of which stakeholders do really matter and why. Furthermore, in attempting to relate stakeholder salience accorded to engagement/disclosure efforts, this study shows some potential limitations that managers may face because of prevalent social values and the need to maintain organizational legitimacy.

The main contribution of this paper lies in testing and extending an inferential theory of stakeholder management. The research highlights the unique role that managers play in managing firm‐stakeholder relationships.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the descriptive, instrumental, and strategic approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) are related to corporate performance (CP) and to determine the nature of this relationship, if any.

Using data collected by KLD Research Analytics and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the study examines the association between companies' choice of approaches to the CSR and CSR‐CP relationship.

Results of this study indicate that each of the three approaches to CSR – descriptive, instrumental, and strategic – are associated with CP, but in different ways. While the instrumental approach to CSR has a positive association with short‐term measures of CP, the strategic approach is associated with short‐term and medium‐term measures of CP, and the descriptive approach has no definite association with CP at all.

This study integrates the prevailing justifications for CSR with the taxonomy of approaches to CSR – instrumental, descriptive and strategic – suggested in the literature. It has been argued that these frameworks influence managers' conception of what constitutes effective stakeholder management and make a difference in how decision makers in an organization think and act in crafting the company's social initiatives and in deciding what the company aims to achieve through these initiatives. By examining the association between companies' approaches to CSR and stakeholder management of the CSR‐CP relationship, the study offers another perspective of the ongoing debate in the social accounting literature about the accountability relationships between business and society.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what factors in addition to the needs of financial markets drive the voluntary disclosure practices of companies in Italy and in the United States.

Information provided in the management discussion and analysis section of the annual reports of 72 companies was content analyzed to determine the volume and the quality of voluntary disclosures.

Results show that in addition to investors' information needs, factors such as company emphasis on stakeholder management, relevance of intangible asset, and market complexity affect both the volume as well as the quality of voluntary disclosures.

The study is based on the voluntary disclosures made in a single year, which makes this study a snapshot. The size of the sample used in this study is relatively small. Future research aimed at examining country differences in voluntary disclosures made by companies needs to examine the business contexts in a comprehensive manner, so that differences observed across country boundaries can be adequately explained.

The comprehensive framework developed in this study for organizing and evaluating voluntary disclosures is an initial step in the direction of examining voluntary disclosure from the stakeholder perspective.

While results of this study confirm the findings of previous researchers, they also identify new drivers of voluntary disclosures and give some evidence about the similarity and differences in these factors across country contexts.

Purpose – Grant-giving foundation leaders are increasingly concerned with understanding the primary role their institutions are pressured to play in financing the growing nonprofit sectors. The main objective of the chapter is to determine whether effective governance plays a major role in driving foundations’ innovation and value-creation processes.Methodology – Building on the idea that foundations should act as financial partners, managerial experts, and innovator facilitators who deal with the projects proposed by nonprofit organizations, this chapter uses a survey and the annual reports of Italian grant-giving foundations to isolate their records in term of governance, innovation attitude, and performance.Findings – The results of this chapter contribute to improving understanding of the drivers that help foundations to improve the sophistication level of the grant-giving process. In particular, the analysis of governance provides relevant insights about the path foundations follow to incorporate selected tailored methods and practices from the “for profit” competitive arena to improve foundations’ output and nonprofit grantees’ outcomes.Social implication – Many academics, political leaders, and practitioners expect foundations to play the unique dual role of merchant bank and venture capitalist to foster the positive impact of nonprofit organizations on societies and people. The findings of this chapter facilitate this process.Originality/value of the chapter – The main contribution of this study lies in proposing and testing a theoretical framework that foundations can implement to disseminate liquidity and managerial expertise efficiently among selected grantees and to improve grantees’ social outcome.

This paper examines the role that effective governance plays in driving the strategies of grant-giving foundations as it relates to supporting various types of charitable and philanthropy activities of public interest. Today, foundations are more than ever active as pivotal element of the so called ‘private welfare state’ all around Europe and the United States. While other forms of organizations involved in philanthropy and public welfare face competition (i.e. corporations), budget constrain (i.e. governments) or fundraising imperatives (i.e. NGOs), private foundations do not feel such a pressure and can, therefore, tackle social issues that other organizations may not. Despite this privileged position, the role of governance in such non-profit organizations is far from certain. Prior literature review shows the lack of empirical analysis related to the role of governance in foundations as they attempt to shape various projects of strong public interest.

Given foundations’ unique societal role and obligations and the fiscal advantages enjoyed by them, the objective of this study is to explore the factors that drive their decision-making and resource allocation process and to examine the efficacy of their financial and non-financial resource allocation decisions. Using the data collected from 112 large Italian foundations, this paper studies the relationship between the governance mechanism and philanthropic strategies of private foundations.

The significance of the study is based on the fact that in the non-profit sector, more than in the for-profit one, board members are called to play a strong advisory role at the top of their traditional monitoring role. In other words, active boards are expected to screen relevant public needs and to properly invest foundations’ resources in meritorious projects; while inert boards risks to pursuit private goals, camouflaged as public interest, and to dissipate resources by unconditionally financing unrelated grant requests.

This paper aims to empirically examine if and how different governance attributes associate with different philanthropic strategies. The choice of Italian foundations represents an ideal research environment considering the strong reduction of governmental social spending due to the financial crisis and the simultaneous increase in the social relevance of private foundations to support social causes of significance.