Strategic Challenges in Stakeholder Networks

Abstract

Shareholders of a company must increasingly share power with other social actors that control access to critical resources. These social actors are stakeholders because they have stakes in firms’ operations, either through being affected by them or through being able to affect them. Stakeholders are embedded in networks of relationships in which resources are shared, combined, exploited or restricted, and informal governance modes emerge. Strategic maneuvering in stakeholder networks is critical for assuring a firm’s access to valuable resources and resulting performance. Managers deciding on the strategic course of a firm embedded in a stakeholder network face multi-dimensional problems with multiple causes. It is argued that a three-way integration of the resource dependence theory, social network analysis, and stakeholder theory yields important insights for managers on options of strategic maneuvering in stakeholder networks. We highlight previous attempts to integrate pairs of these theories. Building on Boutilier’s typology of stakeholder network structures, we describe emerging governance patterns, and propose a set of possible moves aiming to address strategic challenges in gaining access to resources controlled by stakeholders.

Keywords

• social network analysis
• stakeholder theory
• resource dependence theory
• network governance
• strategic challenges