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Building Chains and Directing Flows

Building Chains and Directing Flows This article aims to deepen the understanding of the processes and specific actions aimed at influencing and shaping business practices through dynamic stakeholder relationships. An inductive, longitudinal study of all players involved in a stakeholder conflict identified four clusters of influence tactics that were used by both secondary stakeholders and their target firms: issue raising, issue suppressing, positioning, and solution seeking. The stakeholders studied built elaborate influence chains and worked to direct influence flows. The study contributes to stakeholder theory by offering a refined understanding of both bilateral and mutual-influence tactics, expanding the theory's focus beyond bilateral relationships, and highlighting the use of dependence relationships among multiple embedded organizations to build influence over a specific target, and more generally, an organizational field. These findings are discussed in light of work on social movement organizations and institutional theory. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Business & Society: Founded at Roosevelt University SAGE

Building Chains and Directing Flows

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References (61)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
Copyright © by SAGE Publications
ISSN
0007-6503
eISSN
1552-4205
DOI
10.1177/0007650307306641
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article aims to deepen the understanding of the processes and specific actions aimed at influencing and shaping business practices through dynamic stakeholder relationships. An inductive, longitudinal study of all players involved in a stakeholder conflict identified four clusters of influence tactics that were used by both secondary stakeholders and their target firms: issue raising, issue suppressing, positioning, and solution seeking. The stakeholders studied built elaborate influence chains and worked to direct influence flows. The study contributes to stakeholder theory by offering a refined understanding of both bilateral and mutual-influence tactics, expanding the theory's focus beyond bilateral relationships, and highlighting the use of dependence relationships among multiple embedded organizations to build influence over a specific target, and more generally, an organizational field. These findings are discussed in light of work on social movement organizations and institutional theory.

Journal

Business & Society: Founded at Roosevelt University – SAGE

Published: Mar 1, 2008

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