Creating Value by Sharing Values: Managing Stakeholder Value Conflict in the Face of Pluralism through Discursive Justification

Abstract

The question of how to engage with stakeholders in situations of value conflict to create value that includes a plurality of conflicting stakeholder value perspectives represents one of the crucial current challenges of stakeholder engagement as well as of value creation stakeholder theory. To address this challenge, we conceptualize a discursive sharing process between affected stakeholders that is oriented toward discursive justification involving multiple procedural steps. This sharing process provides procedural guidance for firms and stakeholders to create pluralistic stakeholder value through the discursive accommodation of diverging stakeholder value perspectives. The outcomes of such a discursive value-sharing process range from stakeholder value dissensus to low (agreement to disagree) and increasing levels of stakeholder value congruence (value compromise) to stakeholder value consensus (shared values). Hence, this article contributes to the emerging literature on integrative stakeholder engagement by conceptualizing a procedural framework that is neither overly oriented towards dissensus nor consensus.

Community-in-the-loop: towards pluralistic value creation in AI, or—why AI needs business ethics

“…What is thus characteristic is the aim of creating shared value instead of unilateral business value in terms of financial profits for firms involved. This is in line with Schormair and Gilbert [129] who present a framework for creating shared value in situations of value conflicts among stakeholders. Comparing approaches of agonistic and deliberative stakeholder engagement, they argue for an integrative approach based on a process of discursive justification.…”

Agonising over industrial relations: Bringing agonism and dissensus to the pluralist frames of reference

“…The equal representation of unions in its governance and their legal power to enforce the agreement ‘create[d] a balance between the interests of labour and corporations … and … rendered governance processes more conflictual’ (Donaghey and Reinecke, 2018: 25). In a similar vein, Huber and Schormair (2019; see also Schormair and Gilbert, 2020) highlight how the multiple perspectives included in the Accord led to it being inherently political and contested. Because it is the more pluralist of the initiatives, the Accord is the primary focus of the present discussion.…”

“…Stakeholder scholarship has sought to understand agonism in the context of relations among non-governmental organisations (NGOs), other stakeholders such as activists and employees, and businesses (Levy et al., 2016). Schormair and Gilbert (2020) advocate for a pluralistic perspective on stakeholder value creation by moderating a purely deliberative approach to managing value conflict with an agonistic approach in order to address power imbalances more effectively and to deal with stakeholder value differences. Dawkins (2015) questions whether either market-oriented stakeholder engagement or the deliberative model thereof adequately addresses the twin problems of power imbalances and conflict, positing that ‘agonistic pluralism’ and associated arbitration mechanisms might better protect powerless stakeholders and their interests.…”

Transnational Representation in Global Labour Governance and the Politics of Input Legitimacy

“…While scholars have begun to develop criteria for assessing the democratic legitimacy of private regulatory processes (Mena & Palazzo, 2012), insufficient attention has been placed on a question that occupies a central role in both political theory (Pitkin, 1967;Scharpf, 1997Scharpf, , 2003Urbinati & Warren, 2008) and business ethics scholarship (Soundararajan et al, 2019)-democratic representation of affected constituents in rule-making processes as central to input legitimacy. By bringing into conversation the business ethics scholarship on private transnational governance (de Bakker et al, 2019;Gilbert & Rasche, 2007;Schormair & Gilbert, 2021) with the scholarship on industrial democracy and normative democratic theory, we developed a conceptual framework that provides a normative orientation for better evaluating the input legitimacy of transnational governance regimes. While accepting that, in empirical terms, the criteria of presence, authorisation and accountability will be insufficiently met, as in our case, the framework nevertheless equips scholars and practitioners with an analytical tool better to assess, evaluate and critique stakeholder representation.…”