A primary issue in the field of business and society over the past 25 years has been the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance. Recently, Griffin and Mahon (1997) presented a table categorizing studies that have investigated this relationship. Motivated by concerns with this table, as well as a desire to account for progress in research in this area, the authors reconstructed it. The authors present a portrait of this relationship that is (a) substantially different from that shown in the Griffin and Mahon table and (b) more consistent with the latest research on the topic.
An “interest-based” view of stakeholder action—a view that stakeholders act against organizations to safeguard or promote their own interests—underlies much research in stakeholder theory. In this article, the author uses two motivation theories—equity theory and expectancy theory—to address the general research question, “What are the conditions under which stakeholders will take action against an organization?” Doing so allows for a more explicit elaboration of an interest-based approach to understanding stakeholder action. Applying these theories, the author develops propositions concerning the conditions that are likely to precipitate stakeholder sanctions directed at a focal organization and develops a basic framework for understanding when such stakeholder action is likely. Finally, the author discusses the theoretical and practical implications of this work.
Although the possibility that a firm's stakeholders may take damaging measures against it in response to its activities has been an underlying assumption of stakeholder theory from inception, the conditions that predispose stakeholders to act against firms remain largely unexplored in the literature. Based on work in equity theory, expectancy theory, and resource dependence theory, we present and test hypotheses concerning stakeholders' propensities to impose sanctions upon-or to supportfirms. Using a vignette-based experiment, we found strong confirmation of the criticality of fairness in the firm-stakeholder relationship: stakeholder equity perceptions were unequivocally associated with the proclivity to sanction the firm, or to engage in prosocial behaviours of benefit to it. Stakeholder expectancy perceptions and resource dependence were related to only certain forms of stakeholder action, indicating that researchers should take care to differentiate between types of stakeholder response when investigating questions surrounding stakeholder mobilization. Our results also suggest specific avenues for stakeholder dialogue that could help firms mitigate the likelihood of stakeholders taking damaging action against them.
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