195: Innovating for the Future: Giving Voice to Stakeholders (17131)

Friday, August 9, 2024

16:00 – 18:00 CT (GMT-5/UTC-5)

Location: Marriott: Huron

Session Number: 195
PDW (workshop)
Orientation: Theme,Diversity
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/k97r9p

Organizer(s)

HV

Harry J. Van Buren

U. of Tennessee, Chattanooga, United States
AH

Anna Hannula

Tampere U., Finland
JK

Johanna Kujala

Tampere U., Finland
SS

Sybille Sachs

U. of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich, Switzerland

Presenter(s)

FB

Flore Bridoux

Erasmus U., Netherlands
BP

Bidhan Parmar

U. of Virginia, United States
NP

Nicholas Poggioli

Appalachian State U., United States
SW

Sandra A. Waddock

Boston College, United States

Voice is an implicit, inherent, and basic assumption in stakeholder theory (Freeman, 2009). The exercise of voice is how stakeholders express their identities and further their interests (Van Buren & Greenwood, 2009). Voice has also been linked to stakeholder engagement processes (Billiet et al., 2023), even in the very early stage of an endeavor (Alvarez & Sachs, 2023). Wicked issues such as social injustice, climate change, or migration call for innovating with stakeholders, which requires that managers are able and willing to listen to diverse stakeholder voices. Further, stakeholder voice also has normative implications. When stakeholders lack voice, there is a danger that their interests will be marginalized (Van Buren & Schrempf-Stirling, 2023). When stakeholders perceive themselves as lacking voice, distrust can be the result (Siebold et al., 2023). In practice, managers prioritize some stakeholder voices (generally, those stakeholders that possess power; see Mitchell et al., 1997), meaning that stakeholders who lack the capacity to exercise voice are often ignored by managers – with deleterious effects on the former’s interests. However, stakeholder voice has not been as well conceptualized and studied as is merited given its importance in various steams of social issues in management (SIM) research. Therefore, this research-oriented PDW aims to engage organization and management scholars to discuss how the concept of voice in stakeholder theory can be deconstructed and reconstructed through new ways of theorizing and conducting empirical research.