Stakeholder management — especially that of secondary stakeholders — is becoming increasingly important in many industries, although its effects may vary from sector to sector and company to company. Multinationals, particularly in natural resource-based industries such as oil and gas, agriculture, mining and forestry, are increasingly under pressure to manage conflicting or difficult to reconcile stakeholder demands. For example, the efforts of St. Louis, Missouri–based Monsanto Co. in agricultural biotechnology have been aggressively contested by secondary stakeholders such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth due to concerns over health, safety and environmental uncertainties (Chataway et al. 2004). In Brazil, concerns have extended to include the impact of biotechnology on farmers’ rights and competencies and the potential domination of an important industrial sector by foreign multinationals (Hall and Matos 2004). Houston-based Shell Oil Co.’s experiences doing business in Nigeria have forced the company to address stakeholder concerns about its relationship with a corrupt and exploitive government. Such thorny issues are now clearly on the minds of many senior managers.
In contrast to primary stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers and shareholders, secondary stakeholders are often difficult to identify beforehand, or they may not be willing or able to engage, negotiate, compromise or clearly articulate their positions — a phenomenon we have referred to asstakeholder ambiguity (Hall and Vredenburg 2003). Although much management literature represents secondary stakeholder... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
Become a premium subscriber today to read this and all MIT Sloan Managmeent Review articles.
Buy this article. Purchase one or more copies of this article in PDF form.
Become a premium subscriber today to read this article and the entire archive of MIT SMR articles.
Upgrade your existing subscription to premium
Sign in if you are a premium subscriber.
Do you subscribe the MIT Sloan Management Review in print? Enter the email address and password you used when ordering. Don't remember? Lookup your subscription account information
- Register for free access to recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Subscribe and read articles from the past three years online.
- Premium subscription give you access to the entire archive of articles.
