Purpose: The stakeholder theory is a prominent management approach that has primarily been adopted in the past few years. Despite the increase in the theory’s use, a limited number of studies have discussed ways to develop, execute and measure the results of using this strategic approach with stakeholders. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review of the stakeholder management process.Design/methodology/approach: Five databases were selected to search articles published from 1985 to 2015. The keywords used were stakeholder management, stakeholder relationship and stakeholder engagement. Starting from 2,457 articles identified using a keyword search, 33 key journal articles were systematically reviewed using both bibliometric and qualitative methods for analysis.Findings: The results highlight that stakeholder management is increasingly embedded in corporate activities, and that the coming of the internet, social networking and Big Data have put more pressure on companies to develop new tools and techniques to manage stakeholders online. In conclusion, synthesizing the findings and developed framework allows the understanding of different streams of research and identifies future steps for research.Originality/value: While literature reviews are a widespread practice in business studies, only a few more recent reviews use the systematic review methodology that aggregates knowledge using clearly defined processes and criteria. This is the first review on stakeholder management in which the structure is existing knowledge on strategy development, execution and the measurement of performance.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the points of convergence between intellectual capital and corporate responsibility reports with a focus on human capital issues.Design/methodology/approach: To investigate this degree of integration the paper analyzes the common elements between human capital accounting and the Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines 2002. The assessment methodology consists of a study of which indicators for employees proposed in GRI guidelines are frequently used in 20 international best practices for intellectual capital reports.Findings: Results show a large overlapping of indicators around three issues: the description of human capital, the reporting on diversity and opportunity, and the measurement of the quality and intensity of training.Research limitations/implications: The research is focused on human capital that is one of the three dimensions of intellectual capital. It could also be interesting to study the points of convergence between corporate responsibility and the remaining two dimensions of intellectual capital: network capital and organizational capital.Practical implications: The results demonstrate that the opportunity exists to integrate intellectual capital and corporate responsibility report in a global report, that will be useful to orient the sustainability practices in developing human capital.Originality/value: This paper sustains the possibility that a correct management of corporate responsibility practices will be an opportunity to develop intellectual capital and a source of value creation.
4 December 2013 in The International Journal of Human Resource Management
By sustainability-driven change, we mean the transformation of a company into an active agent of broad sustainable development. This paper focuses on two key features of this transformation: (i) the key role played by the company's human resource (HR) management system within that process; and (ii) the fact that the transformation involves a variety of agents and that, among others, HR and sustainability managers are pivotal to the success of the process. Gaining consensus between them on those aspects of the HR system that support sustainability-driven change is a key success factor, as it results in a ‘strong' HR management system that sends coherent messages to the organization. In addition, consensus between the two managers can be critical in preparing a compelling business case for sustainability for the senior management of the organization. This paper explores the level of consensus between the HR and sustainability managers using a survey of 89 managers in Italian companies committed to sustainability. The results of our research indicate which elements of an HR management system are seen as important for sustainability-driven change by both the HR and the sustainability managers and what differences in perception exist between them. Based upon our findings, implications for HR practice and research are then advanced and discussed.