A Network Perspective on Stakeholder Management: Facilitating Entrepreneurs in the Discovery of Opportunities

Abstract

The problem of opportunity discovery is at the heart of entrepreneurial activity. Cognitive limitations determine the search for and the analysis of information and, as a consequence, constrain the identification of opportunities. Moreover, typical personal characteristicslocus of control, need for independence and need for achievement -suggest that entrepreneurs will tend to take a central position in their stakeholder environments and thus fail to adapt to the complexity of stakeholder relationships in their entrepreneurial activity. We approach this problem by adopting a network perspective on stakeholder management. We propose a heuristic approach of stakeholder analysis, which requires two mappings of the entrepreneurial constituents. The first mapping focuses on current interactions between the entrepreneur and their stakeholders, while the second focuses on a specific issue and the stakeholders that constitute it. In eect, such a stakeholder analysis requires entrepreneurs to use the complexity of stakeholder relationships in order to go beyond their cognitive limitations and thus facilitate the discovery of new opportunities. As we will argue, this has clear implications for the ethics and activities of entrepreneurs.

Who is Who? Identifying the Different Sub-groups of Secondary Stakeholders within a Community: A Case Study of the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria Communities

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The Youth Olympic Games: the best of the Olympics or a poor copy?

“…Ibarra, 1993;Inkpen & Tsang, 2005;Kogut, 2000;Vandekerckhove & Dentchev, 2005). According to the IOC President Jacques Rogge (2008), each member of the Olympic Family plays an important role for both the OG and YOG.…”

Motivation and Entrepreneurial Cognition

“…For instance, the financial costs of failure not only affect the entrepreneur but can also negatively impact the firm's stakeholders and even the entrepreneur's family. Indeed, stakeholders are generally people who are important to the entrepreneur and his or her venture (Mitchell et al 1997;Seldon and Fletcher 2015;Vandekerckhove and Dentchev 2005), friends and family often make equity investments in the business (Kotha and George 2012), and entrepreneurs frequently develop close relationships with their employees (Breugst et al 2012). Thus, financially costly failures are likely to upset investors who could potentially lose more money (Amit et al 1990;Mason and Harrison 2002), employees who could lose their jobs (or have to end relationships with people who are let go) (Fineman 1999;Jordan et al 2002), and other stakeholders who could potentially lose their reputation and/or social standing (Sutton and Callahan 1987).…”