Stakeholder Engagement in Humanizing Business

Abstract

This chapter aims to provide a humanized understanding of stakeholder engagement. In doing so, we first revise the assumptions of human nature within the conceptualization of stakeholder engagement, and define stakeholders as resourced humans with personal resources such as different values, capabilities, interests, and emotions, which they can activate in value creation. After that, we take a relational view to stakeholder engagement to understand human interactions taking place in stakeholder relationships and value creation. Furthermore, we examine in-group and out-group interactions for humanizing stakeholder engagement, and discuss how to define individuals’ social self-concepts in interactions with other stakeholder groups, and how to simultaneously maintain trust within the stakeholder group. Finally, we argue that humanizing stakeholder engagement necessitates a change in the current business mindset from economic to multiple values, and from the focal firm to a stakeholder perspective.