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Although Mitchell et al. (1997) recognize salience attributes as variables, the salience framework based on a dichotomous representation of salience attributes does not explain why, in some instances, a latent stakeholder is assigned more salience than a definitive stakeholder. This paper explains this riddle by bringing the debate to the organizational population level and suggests a new perspective for understanding the process of stakeholder identification and prioritization.

The authors compare two organizational populations, i.e. “for-profit and not-for-profit” which are distinguishable from one another based on the dominant institutional logic that each endorses. The authors, therefore, mobilize the institutional theory and bring the debate of the stakeholder salience to the organizational population level.

The authors propose that members of an organizational population endorsing similar institutional logic develop salience attributes of similar potential values, which are radically different from those of the members of other organizational populations; these potential values act as precursors that determine the perceived values of salience attributes for a manager; and dominant and recessive salience attributes work, at the organizational population level, to determine stakeholder prioritization.

The original model of Mitchell et al. (1997) has been cited more than 9,000 times, but the process of stakeholder evaluation remains a black box (Bundy et al., 2013; Tashman and Raelin, 2013). This paper contributes to the debate and suggests a change in the level of analysis (to the organizational population) and a focus on the institutional logic perspective.

To study relationships between focal organisations and their stakeholders in a generic way, beyond the agency/transaction cost approach usually used in business research. The domain was political parties and their stakeholders.

Study participants were officials and activists in five major Irish political parties. They were asked to nominate their most important stakeholders, to rate these stakeholders on salience as represented by power, legitimacy and urgency and to describe extent and intensity of their party engagement with these stakeholders.

Stakeholders considered more important to the organisation receive higher levels of engagement from the parties than those stakeholders thought to be less critical. The results suggest that high levels of stakeholder engagement can yield beneficial electoral results for political parties. The importance of looking after “internal stakeholders” is also supported. The three attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency do not seem to describe completely the salience of stakeholders to all organisations in a generic sense. The adequacy of the three attributes is most supported in mainstream organisations with a focused pragmatic orientation toward “winning”. However, it appears that more ideologically oriented organisations may assign higher salience to stakeholders who fit their ideology, as opposed to those who possess power, legitimacy and urgency.

The ideological dimension of stakeholder salience which emerged in this study is worthy of further exploration, especially in its implications for actual stakeholder engagement and behaviour with respect to corporate social responsibility.

In the business arena – the study suggests that high levels of stakeholder engagement can yield beneficial results. It also demonstrates the importance of looking after internal stakeholders.

Discovery of dynamics between a focal organisation and its stakeholders in a more generic way than offered in traditional business research.

The purpose of the study is to investigate differences between the perceptions of the Mayors and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of local government authorities (LGAs) with regards to the attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency of different identified stakeholder groups regarding their claims and needs concerning infrastructure assets. Stakeholder groups are categorised into those at the public level and those at higher-tier government level.

A survey of 420 LGAs throughout Australia was undertaken using an instrument developed from the constructs in Mitchell et al.’s (1997) theory of stakeholder identification and salience.

The results first reveal that there are more similarities than differences between the perceptions of the Mayors and CEOs with regard to stakeholder attributes of different stakeholder groups. Second, both Mayors and CEOs view stakeholders in infrastructure decision-making as largely “expectant dependant”. However, there is evidence that some biased priority may be accorded to the “public stakeholder” category over “higher-tier government” category because the CEO’s perception of the power of “public” stakeholders, together with the Mayor’s managerial values, is significantly positively related to their perceptions of the salience of these “public” stakeholders, but not “higher-tier government” stakeholders. However the results of the analysis change in the combined sample of the Mayor and CEO, making both categories of stakeholders as “definitive” in infrastructure decision-making.

The results of this study are subject to the usual limitation of mail surveys, including biases that can arise in respondents’ rating based on their perceptions. The findings have implications for the process of infrastructure decision-making in local governments.

This paper contributes to the literature, providing evidence on how Mayors and CEOs of local governments prioritise the needs, interests and claims of different stakeholders with respect to infrastructure assets.

The purpose of this research is to understand how accounting information mobilises stakeholder salience at an industry level.

A case study method using an explanation building approach was applied to gather information surrounding dairy industry stakeholder uses of accounting information to communicate their salience, in the historical context, leading to, and the events surrounding the milk price “war” in Australia. The Mitchell et al. (1997) stakeholder salience framework was used to advance our understanding of the different ways accounting can be mobilized by stakeholders with different types of salience attributes, at an industry level.

This empirical analysis produces two insights into the relation between accounting and stakeholder salience. First, there is evidence as to how accounting information impacted on stakeholder salience at an industry level by demonstrating how accounting information (in)directly communicated and justified the increase of a stakeholder’s level of salience. Second, the Mitchell et al. (1997) model is extended by attributing levels of importance to each stakeholder attribute. It was found that, in this setting, power was the most salient attribute of the three, usurping legitimacy and urgency, leading to the outcomes observed.

This paper acknowledged the usual method limitations related to this style of qualitative research, including investigator bias and lack of statistical generalization. In addition, a second set of limitations critiques the paper’s operating framework. While the Mitchell et al. (1997) stakeholder salience model proved to be a suitable choice for this research, it is limited in the way in which stakeholder attributes are presented and used to identify stakeholders. In addition, further light may be provided on the distinctions between the different magnitudes of power, legitimacy and urgency between stakeholders after suggesting that they are not equally weighted.

The milk price “war” remains a high-profile discussion amongst the general public. This research contributes to a better understanding of how different players (stakeholders) have their salience claims mobilized through accounting information. Practitioners in the dairy industry might reflect on the findings to enhance their legitimacy pursuits in future negotiations with their counter-parties, and better deploy accounting to achieve the same.

The findings speak more broadly to notions of social equity in stakeholder relations, for the production and distribution of a product that is ubiquitously used in society (dairy – milk). The findings from this study therefore have potential to assist policymakers better understand the strategies adopted by stakeholders to impose their influence and defend their claims in a public forum, using accounting information.

The authors contend that the article provides evidence at an industry level, that is lacking in extant management accounting research (Collier, 2000). To this extent, an original contribution is claimed. The paper is also valuable to management accounting and management researchers studying stakeholder salience, and is one of the first to investigate this issue at an industry level, as well as express how accounting mobilises this salience.

This study investigates the relationship between managers' risk perception and the adoption of sustainable water consumption strategies and analyzes the moderating effect of stakeholders' salience attributes on this relationship.

A conceptual framework that builds on the stakeholder theory was developed to illustrate the direct and moderating role of the study variables. The derived hypotheses were tested quantitatively using multiple regression analysis.

Results indicate that managers' risk perception and the three stakeholder salience attributes were significantly associated with sustainable water consumption strategies, and that the legitimacy attribute was a successful moderator between the study variables.

The limited ability to generalize results as the study is centered on the hospitality sector. Although the results were comparable to other studies, it is not possible to claim that the findings represent the views of the majority of managers in different industry sectors.

The research highlights to managers in the hospitality sector, the significant influence of risk perception and stakeholder salience attributes on the adoption of sustainable water consumption strategies.

The research revealed that media, consumers and competitors are powerful, legitimate and urgent stakeholders, respectively. Therefore, the research findings will guide policymakers and nonprofit organizations to support those stakeholders in order to strengthen their power, legitimacy and urgency attributes.

Although it has been claimed that risk perception has the potential to influence sustainable consumption of natural resources, few studies empirically investigated the association of risk perception of a specific environmental threat with responsible consumption. Moreover, even though there is general agreement in the literature that the adoption of sustainable water consumption strategies is shaped by the degree to which stakeholders exercise their salience attributes, studies that empirically examine the influence of these attributes within the hospitality sector are lacking. Therefore, this study fills a gap in the current literature by empirically examining the influence of managers' risk perception and stakeholder's salience attributes on firms' adoption of sustainable consumption strategies.

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.

Stakeholders affect, and are affected by, the decisions taken by companies. They have varied and often conflicting interests, so it is essential for managers to know both who they are, and what are their attributes. This work has the aim of determining the main attributes of stakeholders with regards environmental issues, and how these attributes influence stakeholders’ environmental salience (i.e. the attention and priority accorded to them by managers). In order to do this we surveyed environmental managers from 277 Spanish manufacturing firms for their perceptions of stakeholders’ power, legitimacy, urgency and salience, with regards environmental issues.

Previous studies have proposed that correctly managing stakeholders with certain attributes can benefit project management; however, robust theoretical elaborations and empirical investigations of this topic have been lacking. The purpose of this study is to empirically test the effects of two stakeholder attributes – contractor-perceived contractor salience and contractor project position – on the criticality of five typical contractor-related risks: risk of (1) injuries and accidents, (2) quality defects, (3) work delays, (4) cost overruns and (5) breaches of contract.

Questionnaire data were collected from 118 Chinese contractor managers. Regression models were run in Mplus 7.11 to test the hypotheses.

The data show that higher contractor-perceived contractor salience and a more supportive contractor project position were both related to lower criticality of contractor-related risks, including risk of (1) injuries and accidents, (2) quality defects, (3) work delays, (4) cost overruns and (5) breaches of contract. Contractor salience also mediated the negative relationship between a supportive contractor project position and the criticality of contractor-related risks.

The authors’ research design is cross-sectional and thus cannot establish causation in the relationships among the studied variables. The single item measure of contractor project position was used for the first time in the present study; thus, its reliability and validity still await more empirical examinations.

The findings advance the understanding of the value of stakeholder management in projects by specifying that prioritizing stakeholders' claims and securing their support for the project reduce the criticality of stakeholder-related risks. By providing empirical evidence from the construction context, the findings also add to knowledge on the instrumental power of stakeholder management in enhancing project risk management performance.

Stakeholder thinking has contributed considerably to the organizational literature by demonstrating the significance of the environment in managing organizations. Stakeholders affect and are affected by organizations’ daily operations and decisions. They have varied and often conflicting interests, making it necessary for managers and organizations to know who they are as well as their attributes. Consequently, Mitchell et al. (1997) developed the stakeholder salience theory to help managers and organizations identify the power of certain stakeholders and their salience to the organization. With a few exceptions, the mainstream stakeholder salience theory is in many ways still largely static, short-term oriented, and firm-centered. The aim of this paper is to revisit certain conformist assumptions concerning the role of marginalized stakeholders, or “dormant” stakeholders, in stakeholder thinking. Overall, this chapter is a call to a new conceptualization of stakeholders that reintroduces stakeholder dynamics at the core of stakeholder thinking to overcome its restrictive shortcomings. We argue that managing stakeholder relationships is not simply meeting stakeholder demands but also involves taking into account the long-term dynamics of stakeholder interactions.

Can marginalized stakeholders whose issues with the firm are unaddressed because of their resource and legitimacy constraints (low salience) increase their salience by capitalizing on certain inherent properties of their stakeholder environment? The purpose of this paper is to examine this question using a real life case of the Coca-Cola controversy in Kerala, India, where a group of local aboriginals succeeded against all odds in shutting down a Coca-Cola plant which was allegedly polluting their water resources. The analysis of the longitudinal data collected in this case supported the hypotheses that the ability of marginalized stakeholders to increase their salience by influencing other stakeholders depends both on the attributes of other stakeholders (favorable, unfavorable and indifferent), and the triadic relationships among them. The triadic relationships among stakeholders show a tendency toward balance, and become particularly relevant when the marginalized stakeholder’s issues are perceived to have low legitimacy due to their normative nature (which makes them difficult to be translated into economic terms). The findings offer important insights to both marginalized stakeholders and firms, on proactively managing their stakeholder environments.

The authors use a single case: the controversy surrounding Coca-Cola in Kerala, India, and conduct a longitudinal study examining both qualitative and quantitative data.

The findings indicate that marginalized stakeholders can capitalize on certain inherent properties of their stakeholder networks and increase their salience to influence the focal firm. Specifically, the authors find that stakeholder salience is a function of both the dyadic relationships between stakeholders, and the triadic relationships among them. These triadic relationships tend to a state of balance over time. The authors also find that when the stakeholder issue is normative in nature the triadic relationships are more important in increasing stakeholder salience.

The authors conduct an original case study research, with primary qualitative data collected by the authors. The authors also develop a quantitative model to examine this data to arrive at the findings. Therefore the authors contribute both theoretically and empirically to stakeholder salience literature.