A more sustainable society through stakeholder salience: Furthering stakeholder theory by exploring identification and prioritization processes with a focus on intraorganizational perceptions in an SME

• Main Authors: Yacobucci, Ian, Jonsson, Niclas
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS) 2019
• Subjects: stakeholder salience; stakeholder identification; stakeholder prioritization; stakeholder theory; SMEs; Intraorganizational Perceptions; Sustainable Development; Social Sciences; Samhällsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21068

Stakeholder salience has emerged from the ambiguity of stakeholder theory and is intended to better describe the aspects of identification and prioritization of stakeholders. Despite the fact that 95% of businesses worldwide are SMEs and comprise 99.8% of all European enterprises, the stakeholder salience aspects of identification and prioritization, in relation to SMEs, are empirically underdeveloped and mainly focused on the owner/manager perspective. Therefore, this qualitative single-case study has explored the stakeholder salience aspects of identification and prioritization in order to better understand the intraorganizational perceptions of stakeholders, processes, and motivations, within a European SME. The findings revealed that intraorganizational perceptions focused on a narrow view of stakeholder identification, which contradicts the broad view advocated by researchers in relation to stakeholders and sustainable development. Furthermore, there is a need to develop broader intraorganizational understanding of stakeholders in terms of claims and processes if businesses are going to be able to create holistic strategies with a sustainable development focus.