Managing Stakeholder Engagement: Reaching Beyond The Rhetoric

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7, European Business School - International University Schloß Reichartshausen Oestrich-Winkel, course: Seminar zur Unternehmensentwicklung, language: English, abstract: Freeman published his book „Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach” in 1984. Since then, stakeholder theory has been severely discussed and has dominated the literature of business ethics as organizations are more and more in the focus of the media and society. Stakeholder theory suggests that managers cannot limit their attention to the needs of stockholders only. Instead, today’s manager has to attend to the needs of a vast variety of stakeholder groups and has to meet all sorts of social, environmental, economic and ethical expectations. A lot of research addresses the problems resulting from the vague term “stakeholder”, but little research goes beyond the mere recognition of this fact. As the concept alone leaves many questions unanswered, this paper tries to explore the difficulties and possibilities stakeholder management might posses.