Stakeholder theory as a theory of organizations

Abstract

There have been so many studies on organization between the 1980s and 2010, borrowing from so many different sources, that it would be vain to attempt to demonstrate how stakeholder theory has attempted to appropriate or influence any given model. Nevertheless, 30 years were needed to jettison the evolutionist notion of the “one best way” in organization studies, a notion that can be traced from Max Weber to Henry Mintzberg. Stakeholder theory has contributed to this process of deconstruction. In effect, systemic approaches (other than Gestalt theory and theories related to Michel Crozier’s “concrete action system”) have cast the organization, and particularly the corporation, as an ensemble of independent parties articulated with a single objective in mind. Thus, the vast majority of studies produced in the field of organization studies have promoted an essentialist view of an entity focused on its own mode of functioning, describing a structure centered on determinants (Mintzberg 1979, 1983; Mintzberg et al. 1998). In this regard, the objectifiable and finite character of the organization suggests “a coordinating entity with identifiable frontiers functioning in a sustainable manner while at the same time attempting to achieve one or more objectives shared by the participants” (Robbins 1987). But structure is not appropriate to a fluid (and fundamentally plastic) conception of the organization based on stakeholders. Far from being a fortress founded on structural determinants, the organization is porous. And stakeholder theory dispenses with the biological and engineering foundations of systemic analysis, reconstructing the approach on properly managerial and political bases. With stakeholder theory, the study of organizations turns its attention to the notions of interest, the negotiation of issues, and the management of more or less stable relations both within and outside the organization. In this sense, the organization is a kind of “collectivity sharing one or more common interests and engaging in shared activities.” It is thus “a coalition of groups with variable interests which elaborates objectives by means of negotiation” (Scott 1987).