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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.

The purpose of this research was to study senior and middle-level executive perspectives on ethical decision-making exploring stakeholder cross-impact analysis (SCIA). Given the complexities of business today, stakeholder identification, prioritisation and complexities of reciprocal stakeholder influences have become very important. Various philosophical approaches raised questions than responses to these problems. There was a clear need to find ways through which the worldview of agents could be assimilated and understood.

This study used the original hypothetical short case and brought in middle and senior executive reflections of Indian fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) managers. Reflections of ten senior and 178 middle-level Indian FMCG managers were presented, exploring ethical dilemmas using short hypothetical case. These reflections have been analysed using the SCIA framework. The paired t-test was performed to compare the reflections of senior and middle-level executives.

The study results indicated that differences emerged regarding stakeholder identification, prioritisation and reciprocal stakeholder influences between Indian middle and senior FMCG executives. Hence, this study paved a reflective space for SCIA. The findings were in line with the tenets of agents’ dilemmas depicted in agency theory.

This study made contribution to theory by integrating the perspective of ethical dilemma confronted by organisational decision-making units (DMUs) with respect to stakeholder influence and prioritisation. Specifically, theoretical contribution was made towards SCIA.

This study would help middle and senior executives to better understand the needs and complexities of stakeholder identification, prioritisation and complexities of reciprocal stakeholder influences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was one of the first studies from an emerging market context country like India that applied SCIA in the FMCG sector. Organisational DMUs while facing ethical dilemma undertook stakeholder influence vis-a-vis stakeholder prioritisation.

The purpose of this study is to examine how athletic fundraising managers perceive status and seek to use status to identify, prioritize and manage stakeholders within college athletics.

To test this purpose, the researchers use the Gioia methodology to interview 19 college athletic department fundraising officers within National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) institutions. Following interviews, the data were analyzed by the researchers and structured within a first-order and second-order concept designation.

Interviews show that status is an effective concept for explaining how athletic fundraisers identify and prioritize donors. Officers relied on economic (capacity) and social (passion and interest) factors to rank order donors. The results also show that athletic departments use status to manage stakeholders by rewarding their giving and escalating their commitment. Status is used in four strategies to manage the donor hierarchy: benefits, recognition, membership and access. Each strategy highlighted exclusivity and rank order.

There is a need to empirically test the application of status within the stakeholder theory context. These findings also contribute to the evolution of stakeholder management beyond the use of social identity theory or stakeholder salience. It helps our understanding of the evolving relationship between fundraiser and donor by recognizing the importance of capacity, passion and interests when identifying and prioritizing donors. Further, status-markers such as exclusive benefits, recognition, membership and access can be used to manage donors toward the organization's goals.

The need for stakeholder theory has been widely highlighted in the literature to develop solid strategies for a large organization. However, there is still a lack of user-friendly visualization tools and no unique approach exists to identify and engage stakeholders. This paper aims to propose a general methodology to co-design the sustainability ecosystem at the local scale, to explore it and to assess the impact of a large organization within the identified ecosystem.

The methodology consists of two main processes: identifying an ontological map of the sustainability topics network and designing the local sustainability stakeholders ecosystem. Both processes are based on a nodes identification phase and a nodes prioritization phase. The identification phase was achieved by engaging 160 citizens, for the topics network and nearly 40 relevant stakeholders, for the stakeholders’ ecosystem, with a collaborative participatory mapping process. The prioritization phase was conducted because of three indicators, i.e. the closeness, the betweenness and the eigenvector centrality.

Betweenness centrality results to be the best indicator to assess the importance of a stakeholder with respect to the whole network, while eigenvector centrality highlights the quality of the already engaged stakeholders of an organization, as it mainly depends on the number of links of the first order neighbors. On the contrary, the closeness centrality, when applied to a small network, seems to be not appropriate to assess the centrality of a stakeholder.

This approach revealed some criticalities in the mapping process, as in the weighting link procedure. Further investigations are needed to generalize the approach to a dynamic one, to allow real-time mapping and to develop a robust interconnection among centrality degrees and the power, interest and legitimacy concept of stakeholder theory.

Obtained results for a case study, i.e. the position of the University of Turin Green Office within the City of Turin sustainability ecosystem, are discussed showing how social network analysis centrality degrees can be used to quantitatively assess the role of an organization within a stakeholders’ ecosystem.

Centrality analysis allows identifying emergent topics/stakeholders within a network of words/actors that, at a first sight, should not be considered by decision-makers and managers.

A new methodology for stakeholder identification and prioritization is proposed exploiting online data visualization tools, participatory mapping and social network analysis.

Many problems in science and engineering fields involve decision making. Usually these decision‐making processes are based on several criteria that represent various experts' knowledge. Stakeholder prioritization is useful for assisting in decision‐making situations where various stakeholders have competing interests, resources are limited, and stakeholder requirements must be appropriately balanced. When these conflicts arise it is important to the success of the organization that it has prioritized each stakeholder according to the situation. To date, few researchers tried to resolve this question, mostly are based on intuitive and very simple reasoning methods which are error prone. The purpose of this paper is to propose a multi‐criteria decision analysis process to help decision makers when evaluating and prioritizing stakeholders.

In this process, Mitchell et al.'s model is used for identifying criteria on which stakeholders will be evaluated and the fuzzy Choquet integral as an aggregation operator. This research also tested and discussed the proposal using a case study from Toulouse city subway.

The results show the applicability of this process and the effectiveness of using the fuzzy Choquet integral than a traditional multi‐criteria evaluation method for human subjective evaluation, or when criteria are not mutually independent.

The highly subjective nature of criteria weights and rapid elicitation can lead to questions of validity. Also, results are not always widely accepted.

The paper is original in considering the stakeholder prioritization problem as a multi‐criteria decision analysis problem; using a simple and well‐known model to classify stakeholders, i.e Mitchell et al.'s model; and in using Choquet integral as an aggregation operator which allows considering interaction between criteria.

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.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) involves firms working in partnership with non-profit organizations (NPOs). While CRM offers a range of potential benefits to NPOs, some managers are reluctant to partake in these ventures. The purpose of this paper is to uncover their concerns and highlight what can be done to improve their experience of CRM.

This paper uses semi-structured interviews with 160 UK NPO managers and a stakeholder theory framework to document their experience of the CRM process and investigate what they can do to improve it.

It identifies three types of concerns relating to issues of: organizational identity, alliance risks, and the prioritization of NPO stakeholders. The analyses also uncover a number of strategies used by NPO managers to safeguard their organisations.

By focusing not only on the measurable outcomes of CRM but also on its processes, the authors provide a more thorough analysis of CRM and its impact on NPOs.

By emphasizing potential NPO stakeholder dissent, the authors' study provides a list of pitfalls that may help NPO managers select more suitable corporate partners, come better prepared to the negotiation table, improve the selection and training of negotiators, and generally manage the CRM process more efficiently.

Studies of CRM have been predominantly from the corporate perspective. Consequently, the understanding of CRM from an NPO viewpoint remains limited both theoretically and empirically. The authors' paper complements this literature by investigating NPO managers' concerns about the process of CRM.

Marketers often presume that the statement “the customer always comes first” is an axiom. Other specialists usually do the same with their own stakeholder priorities. Other than for internal political and prestige purposes, this is helpful neither to marketing nor to stakeholder strategic management. This research did show that customers are regarded as key stakeholders generally, and also for the achieving of most corporate objectives. They were in effect regarded as a type of default priority stakeholder. However, two other stakeholder groups – managers and employees – were ranked as just as important or more important to the achieving of organisational success generally and several of the corporate objectives. Slogans about customers always being No. 1 need to be dismissed by professional marketers. Equally important, the research indicates that marketing might well need to give as much attention to the strategic management of managers and employees as it does to customers.

Further understanding of how stakeholder marketing explains firm performance through greater customer satisfaction, innovation, and reputation of a firm.

Grounded in stakeholder theory, the study provides a conceptualization of stakeholder orientation based on cultural values that is distinctive from stakeholder responsiveness and examines the relationship of stakeholder responsiveness to firm performance. The study determines the mediating role of marketing outcomes on the impact of stakeholder responsiveness on firm performance. Multiple regression analysis tests hypotheses using a data set consisting of qualitative data obtained from corporate documents and quantitative data from respected secondary sources.

Our findings provide support for stakeholder marketing creating a strong relationship to organizational outcomes. There exists a positive relationship between stakeholder responsiveness and firm performance through customer satisfaction, innovation, and reputation.

Our definition implies that stakeholder responsiveness is acting in the best interests of the stakeholder as a responsible business. This study shows that stakeholder marketing may not always represent socially responsible marketing. Further research could explore how and why firms may not respond ethically and responsibly to stakeholders.

We further the discussion whether stakeholder marketing equates to sustainability. Marketers can build on expertise of managing customer relationship and generating customer value to develop a stakeholder marketing approach that addresses the economic, social, and environmental concerns of multiple stakeholders.

We further the discussion whether stakeholder marketing equates to sustainability. Marketers can build on expertise of managing customer relationship and generating customer value to develop a stakeholder marketing approach that addresses the economic, social, and environmental concerns of multiple stakeholders.

This paper aims to introduce a new integrated strategic framework entitled, “The corporate identity, total corporate communications, stakeholders’ attributed identities, identifications and behaviours continuum” and elucidates the central and strategic importance of corporate identity apropos corporate communications, corporate image, attributed stakeholder identifications and resultant behaviours. The strategic importance of corporate identity is noted. The continuum incorporates a variety of disciplinary/theoretical perspectives.

The paper/framework is informed by corporate marketing and strategic perspectives; legal theory of the firm; social identity branch theories; and stakeholder theory. The effects and management of corporate identity are seen as a continuum. The framework accommodates Tagiuri’s (1982) scholarship on corporate identity.

This paper formally introduces and explicates “The corporate identity, total corporate communications, stakeholders’ attributed identities, identifications and behaviours continuum”. Corporate identity management is an on-going strategic senior management/strategic requisite. Notably, the legal theory of company law – routinely overlooked – and its impact on corporate identity management is accepted, acknowledged and accommodated. The importance of stakeholders and stakeholder identification (a derivative of social identity theory) is underscored.

Via the explication of the continuum, managers can comprehend the nature and importance of corporate identity; appreciate that corporate identity adaptation/change is on-going; comprehend its interface/s with corporate communications, stakeholder attributed identities, identifications and the business environment; understand the need for on-going fidelity to an institution’s legally based core purposes and corporate identity traits (juridical identity); cognise the efficacy of constant stakeholder and environmental analysis. Corporate identity sustainability requires corporate identity to be advantageous, beneficial, critical, differentiating and effectual. Stakeholder prioritisation is not solely dependent on power, legitimacy and urgency but on legality, efficacy, ethicality and temporality.

The resultant framework/approach, therefore, aims to make a meaningful advance on the territory and, moreover, seeks to be of utility to scholars and practitioners of corporate marketing, strategy and company law. Arguably, therefore, the framework is more ambitious than extant framework on the domain. The resultant framework/approach, therefore, aims to make a meaningful advance on the territory and seeks to be of utility to scholars and practitioners of corporate identity, communications, images, identification, stakeholder theory, company law and, importantly, corporate strategy.