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In this chapter, we update stakeholder salience research using the new lens of stakeholder work: the purposive processes of organization aimed at being aware of, identifying, understanding, prioritizing, and engaging stakeholders. Specifically, we focus on stakeholder prioritization work — primarily as represented by the stakeholder salience model — and discuss contributions, shortcomings, and possibilities for this literature. We suggest that future research focus on stakeholder inclusivity, the complexity of prioritization work within intra-corporate markets, the integration of stakeholder prioritization with other forms of stakeholder work, and the development of managerial tools for multiobjective decision making within the strategic management context.

Partnerships for sustainability involve the cooperation of several direct and indirect stakeholders. Direct stakeholders are project partners who can include sponsoring brands, manufacturers or retailers; and sponsored sports clubs or social institutions, and indirect stakeholders relate to potential customers, the general public and government agencies. The knowledge and competencies of direct and indirect stakeholders are integrated to ensure common project-based sustainability and individual goals. This integration is essentially facilitated by image transfer and self-identification effects, which strengthen stakeholder commitment and trust, and ultimately contributing to a higher relationship quality. However, sustainability partnerships experience several challenges. The challenges lie in selecting suitable partners; formulating partner requirements; determining partner contributions; evaluating and controlling partner integration and, further, enhancing cooperation and relationship quality among selected partners. To attend to these challenges requires a holistic and systematic process for stakeholder integration in sustainability projects. In this chapter, a process model for stakeholder integration for sustainability projects is developed based on the relevant theoretical and empirical research on relationship and sustainability marketing. In particular, the possibilities of digital integration are taken into account in the process. The model can be used to manage co-creation partnerships for sustainability including the selection, evaluation and controlling of stakeholder relationships to derive strategies and measures to improve relationship quality.

Corporate managers must find a way to communicate their CSR activities to stakeholders without creating a boomerang effect where the CSR messages create resentment of instead of support for the corporation. One alternative is to use social media channels because they are low cost and can use a soft sell approach, thereby reducing the likelihood of a boomerang effect. However, using social media messaging about CSR challenges managers to attract followers to those social media channels. This chapter explores the use of gamification, the use of gaming features in the CSR messaging, to present CSR messages. The case study of Kraft’s “Two-Minute Drill” is used to illustrate how gamification can be used to promote social media-based CSR messaging.

A case study method is used to illuminate how Kraft used gamification to increase the audience for its anti-hunger CSR efforts. Kraft used the “Two-Minute Drill” game to attract people to their effort to fight hunger.

The “2-Minute Trivia Drill” seemed to overcome the CSR promotional communication concerns of tone and cost. The dominant message and theme is feeding the hungry. The tone on the Facebook page and the game itself is subtle in relation to the Kraft brand because Kraft appears in the background through its logo, name, and the names of prominent Kraft products. The stakeholders are treated as the drivers of the CSR effort because the individuals playing the game are what create the donations from Kraft. Donations could even be personalized. None of the comments posted to the Kraft Fight Hunger Facebook page questioned the expense of the project. Overall the comments were very favorable suggesting there was no boomerang effect from the game.

The study offers only one case study of gamification in CSR communication. More cases are necessary to draw stronger conclusions about the utility of gamification for CSR communication presented via social media. Moreover, more direct measures are needed to assess how stakeholders feel about CSR messages using gamifications and if the strategy can consistently prevent a boomerang effect.

The implications from the case study are that gamification can be an effective way to attract stakeholders to social media-based CSR messages and to generate positive reactions to the CSR messaging.

This chapter is one of the first detailed explorations of gamification as a means to avoid the dangers of the CSR promotional communication dilemma (stakeholders wanting CSR information but reacting negatively to the promotion of CSR activities).

This study seeks to elicit “organisational manager” and “managerial student” attitudes in Australia, China, and Indonesia, toward the (1) legitimacy, (2) power, and (3) urgency of selected stakeholders.¹ The three attributes constitute stakeholder “prominence” or “salience”, and are based on a stakeholder typology model by Mitchell, Agle, and Wood (1997), using a methodology proposed by Hosseini and Brenner (1992) to generate value-matrix weights.

Organizational crises are complex events for researchers to assess. However, research in this domain remains fragmented, and advanced empirical techniques remain underutilized. In this chapter, we offer an integrated approach to assessing crises. We first specify a behavioral process model of crisis management comprised of three stages: interpretations, responses, and outcomes. Within each stage, we identify areas of opportunity and provide methodological recommendations that enhance our understanding of crises and crisis management. We also provide recommendations that could be applied across stages of the model. Taken together, we present a framework by which researchers can more effectively measure and analyze critical crisis dimensions.

The purpose of this chapter is to explain why ethical evaluation of the impact of a merger or acquisition matters, to place ethical evaluation of M&A in the wider context of knowledge of business ethics and corporate governance, and to develop and demonstrate a framework for evaluating the treatment of stakeholders during M&A. This contribution surveys the relevant governance, ethical and M&A literature. A new stakeholder framework is proposed and then applied to an important case study.

We found that M&A has important consequences for a variety of stakeholders; the strategy and finance literature has concentrated on top management and shareholders and neglected advisers, employees, customers, and suppliers. We also found that a stakeholder analysis framework can be adopted to evaluate each merger or takeover.

This chapter establishes a new framework for evaluating M&A beyond the conventional shareholder value approach; however only one case study is analyzed.

Managers and other stakeholders can use the proposed method to determine the likely impact of an M&A upon themselves and others and consequently weigh up the desirability of doing a deal in a wider context than currently.

The consequences for stakeholders following a merger or acquisition are often profound. The key protagonists ought to be more aware of these consequences which can be detrimental to stakeholders and the organization itself. The approach taken in this chapter provides a new method for both academics and practitioners to evaluate the impact of M&A.

Stakeholder paradigm has been gaining currency over the past few decades and technological breakthroughs have been influential in building its momentum. Hyper-Transparency is emerging as a building block and as an indispensable concomitant of stakeholder paradigm. The crux of a Hyper-Transparent organization is trust. The new paradigm requires substituting translucent and opaque business practices with fully transparent ones under which lasting trust can be built between the organization and its stakeholders. However, the nub of the stakeholder paradigm is the changes inside the organizations as well as changes in relation to their external environment, and transparency is both a driver and a resultant of these changes. Transparency is an integral part of corporate social responsibility debate and an eristic issue for the stakeholders. Moreover, Hyper-Transparency empowers the stakeholders to considerably influence the decision making sphere. In this chapter, transparency, its drivers and tools as well as the power of stakeholders in the new age of Hyper-Transparency alongside a number of case studies are presented.

This chapter guides the reader to an understanding of social responsibility in educational settings, namely on school/university social responsibility (USR). The phenomenon of social responsibility in these settings is nuanced when encountering stakeholders, either external or internal. This chapter conceptualizes school/USR and describes related stakeholders and their management strategies. In addition to this, the chapter discusses eight transition lines of stakeholders developed on the expectations of stakeholders, the degree and the format of engagement and impacts on society and institutions: pupil–student; teachers-academics; parents; alumni; future employers; business sector; funding providers; and society at large. It concludes that a managerial pattern while implementing social responsibility by involving stakeholders differs by educational setting. This is to say that school social responsibility is rather carried out through process, whereas USR concerns both process and outputs. This distinction results in introducing the definition of school/USR as a commitment toward performance based on ethical and other conventional principles that are respectively substantiated in the mission, values and related activities in the interplay with all possible stakeholders in order to create social value foremost.