Managing stakeholders: An integrative perspective on the source of competitive advantage

Abstract

Despite the enormous amount of academic work contributed to research on competitive advantage, a comprehensive framework that includes both internal and external attributes of the firm still remains undeveloped. This paper seeks to use a stakeholder perspective to examine the source of competitive advantage. Competitive advantage can be viewed as a firm's ability to contribute more customer value than its competitors. It endeavors to drive the largest gap between the buyer's willingness-to-pay and the supplier's opportunity cost. If stakeholders can be categorized by their relative potential on threat and cooperation, strategies for managing stakeholders are used to maximize their cooperative potential and minimize their potential threat so as to capitalize on value creation.