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Corporate Governance

ISSN : 1472-0701

Article publication date: 20 September 2018

Issue publication date: 4 February 2019

The stakeholder theory is a prominent management approach that has primarily been adopted in the past few years. Despite the increase in the theory’s use, a limited number of studies have discussed ways to develop, execute and measure the results of using this strategic approach with stakeholders. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review of the stakeholder management process.

Design/methodology/approach

Five databases were selected to search articles published from 1985 to 2015. The keywords used were stakeholder management, stakeholder relationship and stakeholder engagement. Starting from 2,457 articles identified using a keyword search, 33 key journal articles were systematically reviewed using both bibliometric and qualitative methods for analysis.

The results highlight that stakeholder management is increasingly embedded in corporate activities, and that the coming of the internet, social networking and Big Data have put more pressure on companies to develop new tools and techniques to manage stakeholders online. In conclusion, synthesizing the findings and developed framework allows the understanding of different streams of research and identifies future steps for research.

Originality/value

While literature reviews are a widespread practice in business studies, only a few more recent reviews use the systematic review methodology that aggregates knowledge using clearly defined processes and criteria. This is the first review on stakeholder management in which the structure is existing knowledge on strategy development, execution and the measurement of performance.

• Stakeholder management
• Systematic review
• Stakeholder engagement
• Stakeholder relationship

Pedrini, M. and Ferri, L.M. (2019), "Stakeholder management: a systematic literature review", Corporate Governance , Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 44-59. https://doi.org/10.1108/CG-08-2017-0172

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Stakeholder management: a systematic literature review

Purpose The stakeholder theory is a prominent management approach that has primarily been adopted in the past few years. Despite the increase in the theory’s use, a limited number of studies have discussed ways to develop, execute and measure the results of using this strategic approach with stakeholders. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review of the stakeholder management process. Design/methodology/approach Five databases were selected to search articles published from 1985 to 2015. The keywords used were stakeholder management, stakeholder relationship and stakeholder engagement. Starting from 2,457 articles identified using a keyword search, 33 key journal articles were systematically reviewed using both bibliometric and qualitative methods for analysis. Findings The results highlight that stakeholder management is increasingly embedded in corporate activities, and that the coming of the internet, social networking and Big Data have put more pressure on companies to develop new tools and techniques to manage stakeholders online. In conclusion, synthesizing the findings and developed framework allows the understanding of different streams of research and identifies future steps for research. Originality/value While literature reviews are a widespread practice in business studies, only a few more recent reviews use the systematic review methodology that aggregates knowledge using clearly defined processes and criteria. This is the first review on stakeholder management in which the structure is existing knowledge on strategy development, execution and the measurement of performance.

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Stakeholder management: a systematic literature review

• Department of Economics and Business Management Sciences
• Faculty of Economics
• Academic Field: Business Administration and Management
• Faculty of Political and Social Sciences

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article

• Stakeholder engagement
• Stakeholder management

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• 10.1108/CG-08-2017-0172

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• Stakeholders Computer Science 100%
• Stakeholder Management Social Sciences 55%
• Systematic Review Social Sciences 33%
• Research Social Sciences 22%
• Knowledge Social Sciences 22%
• Process Social Sciences 22%
• Search Social Sciences 22%
• Databases Social Sciences 11%

T1 - Stakeholder management: a systematic literature review

AU - Pedrini, Matteo

AU - Ferri, Laura Maria

N2 - Purpose The stakeholder theory is a prominent management approach that has primarily been adopted in the past few years. Despite the increase in the theory’s use, a limited number of studies have discussed ways to develop, execute and measure the results of using this strategic approach with stakeholders. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review of the stakeholder management process. Design/methodology/approach Five databases were selected to search articles published from 1985 to 2015. The keywords used were stakeholder management, stakeholder relationship and stakeholder engagement. Starting from 2,457 articles identified using a keyword search, 33 key journal articles were systematically reviewed using both bibliometric and qualitative methods for analysis. Findings The results highlight that stakeholder management is increasingly embedded in corporate activities, and that the coming of the internet, social networking and Big Data have put more pressure on companies to develop new tools and techniques to manage stakeholders online. In conclusion, synthesizing the findings and developed framework allows the understanding of different streams of research and identifies future steps for research. Originality/value While literature reviews are a widespread practice in business studies, only a few more recent reviews use the systematic review methodology that aggregates knowledge using clearly defined processes and criteria. This is the first review on stakeholder management in which the structure is existing knowledge on strategy development, execution and the measurement of performance.

AB - Purpose The stakeholder theory is a prominent management approach that has primarily been adopted in the past few years. Despite the increase in the theory’s use, a limited number of studies have discussed ways to develop, execute and measure the results of using this strategic approach with stakeholders. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review of the stakeholder management process. Design/methodology/approach Five databases were selected to search articles published from 1985 to 2015. The keywords used were stakeholder management, stakeholder relationship and stakeholder engagement. Starting from 2,457 articles identified using a keyword search, 33 key journal articles were systematically reviewed using both bibliometric and qualitative methods for analysis. Findings The results highlight that stakeholder management is increasingly embedded in corporate activities, and that the coming of the internet, social networking and Big Data have put more pressure on companies to develop new tools and techniques to manage stakeholders online. In conclusion, synthesizing the findings and developed framework allows the understanding of different streams of research and identifies future steps for research. Originality/value While literature reviews are a widespread practice in business studies, only a few more recent reviews use the systematic review methodology that aggregates knowledge using clearly defined processes and criteria. This is the first review on stakeholder management in which the structure is existing knowledge on strategy development, execution and the measurement of performance.

KW - Stakeholder engagement

KW - Stakeholder management

UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/126161

U2 - 10.1108/CG-08-2017-0172

DO - 10.1108/CG-08-2017-0172

M3 - Article

SN - 1472-0701

JO - Corporate Governance

JF - Corporate Governance

Stakeholder Management

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• David Bendig   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7805-1487 8  

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Stakeholder management describes a systematic approach of interacting with individuals, groups and organizations who have an interest in an organization. The parties influenced by an organization’s activities are called stakeholders. In the case of business companies, typical stakeholder groups include customers, suppliers, employees, financiers, as well as a local and global community. The process of addressing these groups can be broken down into individual steps. Those range from an initial prioritization of stakeholders, to the realization of a differentiated strategy, up to the measurement of success and associated loops of feedback and learning. This entry yields an overview of such basic stakeholder management activities and frameworks. Still, flexibility in the execution of these steps can help to tailor the solution to a given problem. Moreover, as stakeholder management conceptually aims at actively shaping exchange relationships in a way that integrates interests...

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IU International University of Applied Sciences, Dusseldorf, Germany

Markus Becker

Institute for Entrepreneurship, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany

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Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London Metropolitan University, London, UK

Samuel O. Idowu

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René Schmidpeter

College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

Nicholas Capaldi

International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

Liangrong Zu

Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

Mara Del Baldo

Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

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Becker, M., Bendig, D. (2023). Stakeholder Management. In: Idowu, S.O., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25984-5_34

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Stakeholder management: a systematic literature review

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Stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews: a scoping review

Alex pollock.

1 Nursing Midwifery and Allied Health Professions (NMAHP) Research Unit, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow, G4 0BA UK

Pauline Campbell

Caroline struthers.

2 EQUATOR Network, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, NDORMS, University of Oxford, Botnar Research Centre, Windmill Road, Oxford, OX3 7LD UK

Anneliese Synnot

3 Cochrane Consumers and Communication, Centre for Health Communication and Participation, School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Kingsbury Drive, Bundoora, Victoria 3086 Australia

4 Cochrane Australia, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, L4, 551 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, Victoria 3004 Australia

5 Centre for Health Communication and Participation, School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Kingsbury Drive, Bundoora, Victoria 3086 Australia

Sophie Hill

Heather goodare.

6 Edinburgh, UK

Jacqui Morris

7 School of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Dundee, 11 Airlie Place, Dundee, DD1 4HJ UK

Chris Watts

8 Cochrane Learning and Support Department, Cochrane Central Executive, St Albans House, 57-59 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4QX UK

Richard Morley

9 Cochrane Consumer Network, St Albans House, 57-59 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4QX UK

Associated Data

Not applicable

There is increasing recognition that it is good practice to involve stakeholders (meaning patients, the public, health professionals and others) in systematic reviews, but limited evidence about how best to do this. We aimed to document the evidence-base relating to stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews and to use this evidence to describe how stakeholders have been involved in systematic reviews.

We carried out a scoping review, following a published protocol. We searched multiple electronic databases (2010–2016), using a stepwise searching approach, supplemented with hand searching. Two authors independently screened and discussed the first 500 abstracts and, after clarifying selection criteria, screened a further 500. Agreement on screening decisions was 97%, so screening was done by one reviewer only. Pre-planned data extraction was completed, and the comprehensiveness of the description of methods of involvement judged. Additional data extraction was completed for papers judged to have most comprehensive descriptions. Three stakeholder representatives were co-authors for this systematic review.

We included 291 papers in which stakeholders were involved in a systematic review. Thirty percent involved patients and/or carers. Thirty-two percent were from the USA, 26% from the UK and 10% from Canada. Ten percent (32 reviews) were judged to provide a comprehensive description of methods of involving stakeholders. Sixty-nine percent (22/32) personally invited people to be involved; 22% (7/32) advertised opportunities to the general population. Eighty-one percent (26/32) had between 1 and 20 face-to-face meetings, with 83% of these holding ≤ 4 meetings. Meetings lasted 1 h to ½ day. Nineteen percent (6/32) used a Delphi method, most often involving three electronic rounds. Details of ethical approval were reported by 10/32. Expenses were reported to be paid to people involved in 8/32 systematic reviews.

Discussion/conclusion

We identified a relatively large number (291) of papers reporting stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews, but the quality of reporting was generally very poor. Information from a subset of papers judged to provide the best descriptions of stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews provide examples of different ways in which stakeholders have been involved in systematic reviews. These examples arguably currently provide the best available information to inform and guide decisions around the planning of stakeholder involvement within future systematic reviews. This evidence has been used to develop online learning resources.

Systematic review registration

The protocol for this systematic review was published on 21 April 2017. Publication reference: Pollock A, Campbell P, Struthers C, Synnot A, Nunn J, Hill S, Goodare H, Watts C, Morley R: Stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews: a protocol for a systematic review of methods, outcomes and effects. Research Involvement and Engagement 2017, 3:9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-017-0060-4 .

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s13643-018-0852-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The concept of active involvement in research of people with a healthcare condition, their families, friends and carers, was founded on the principle that people affected by the condition have a moral right to contribute to decisions about what research is undertaken and in what way [ 1 – 3 ]. The active involvement of other stakeholders (meaning patients, the public, health professionals, health decision makers and funders) grew from a desire to address the lack of real-world relevance of research and to ensure more effective implementation of research findings into practice [ 4 , 5 ]. It is now widely accepted in many parts of the world that the active involvement of many of these groups (that we collectively refer to as ‘stakeholders’) is beneficial to the quality, relevance and impact of health research [ 2 , 3 ]. Accordingly, many funding bodies, including government and charities, now mandate that researchers actively involve patients and the public in their research, including systematic reviews [ 6 – 9 ], although there is evidence of international variation in the extent to which patients and the public are involved [ 10 ].

Systematic reviews aim to inform and support the delivery of evidence-based practice, by finding and bringing together, in an explicit and transparent way, all the research evidence that addresses a particular topic or healthcare question. Stakeholder involvement within systematic reviews has been proposed as a way to enhance the actual and perceived usefulness of synthesised research evidence, addressing barriers to the uptake of evidence into practice [ 11 ]. In this paper, we define (based on a number of published definitions, e.g. [ 1 , 12 , 13 ]) ‘active stakeholder involvement’ as the contribution of people who are not researchers throughout the process of production and dissemination of a systemic review, including the planning and conduct of an individual systematic review. While there are a number of examples of active stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews, the approaches to, and extent of, involvement have varied considerably [ 14 – 16 ] and synthesised evidence and resources to guide practice is lacking. As well as active involvement within individual systematic reviews, stakeholders may also get involved at the level of organisations which commission or carry out systematic reviews. A recent review explored examples of consumer involvement within organisations (such as Cochrane) that support production of systematic reviews [ 17 ], but evidence relating to relevant activities and roles of individual researchers and how they may involve stakeholders in their reviews remains scant [ 18 ].

As part of a wider project to provide guidance to researchers about how to involve stakeholders in systematic reviews [ 19 ], we undertook a mixed-method evidence synthesis, first completing a scoping review to create a broad map of evidence relating to stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews, followed by two contingent syntheses [ 20 ]. Here, we report the results of the scoping review. The aims of this paper are therefore to:

• Document the evidence-base relating to stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews
• Use this evidence to describe key features of how stakeholders have been involved in systematic reviews

We carried out a scoping review, following a protocol [ 20 ]. We followed the methodological steps outlined by Arksey and O’Malley [ 21 ] and used an iterative team approach, with regular team meetings to discuss progress and reach consensus on next steps, to ensure clarity of purpose and balance between breadth and comprehensiveness of the review [ 21 – 23 ]. Protocol deviations, with justifications, are described in Additional file  1 .

Search strategy

We implemented a stepwise approach [ 24 ] to promote efficient identification of up-to-date literature, balancing the expected large volume of literature with available time and resources. Details of this approach, including pre-agreed criteria and contingencies to inform decisions relating to the extent of the searches, have previously been described [ 20 ]; below we report the actual steps of searching and brief justification for these steps.

We used a comprehensive search strategy, adapted for each database (see Additional file  2 ). In step 1, we searched a comprehensive set of databases (CENTRAL (CDSR, DARE, HTA, Cochrane Methodology Register), Embase (Ovid), MEDLINE (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), AMED, Joanna Briggs Database and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (handsearched)), within a narrow time period (from 01 January 2014 to 09 April 2016). The aim of step 1 was to, in an efficient way, identify the databases most likely to include relevant papers. In step 2, we searched a more limited set of databases (Embase, MEDLINE, CINAHL and HTA) for a longer time period (01 January 2010 to 31 December 2013) with the aim of exploring whether there was justification for extending the search beyond 2010.

Searching and application of inclusion criteria was applied to each step prior to progression to the next step. For step 1, we noted the source database (or databases) of each identified record, and the databases from which the greatest number of included papers were identified. The results of these explorations were discussed and review team consensus reached on which databases to include in step 2. After step 2, the review team explored the publication dates of records meeting our inclusion criteria. The majority of papers meeting our inclusion criteria (63%) were published in either 2014 or 2015 (see Additional file  3 ). The sharp drop in numbers of included papers from 2014 to 2013 and relatively stable number of included papers between 2013 and 2010 were key factors in the team decision not to extend electronic searching to before 2010.

Additional sources we searched include the reference lists of recent relevant reports and reviews (e.g. [ 6 , 17 , 25 ]), the reference lists of all included studies and articles published in the journal Research Involvement and Engagement . To identify unpublished reports, we contacted authors of published papers and promoted this review via social media.

Selection criteria

Selection criteria for inclusion were purposefully wide. We included any paper, published or unpublished, regardless of study design, including commentaries, letters and expert opinion, which investigated, reported or discussed any aspect of stakeholder involvement in a systematic review. We anticipated that we would include (but would not be limited to) evidence such as published systematic reviews which reported involvement; reports of methods of involvement in an individual systematic review; studies quantitatively or qualitatively evaluating involvement in individual systematic reviews; and opinions, commentary and discussion relating to involvement in systematic reviews.

We excluded papers that focussed on stakeholder involvement in the generation of research priorities (unless they were specifically generating questions for a systematic review) and in both research more broadly, and guideline development, unless there was an explicit mention of involvement in systematic reviews. Systematic reviews that focussed on synthesising the evidence related to stakeholder involvement in primary research were also excluded. We excluded titles without abstracts and review protocols; this was a pragmatic decision made in light of the high volume of search results.

Definition of key terms

We used the following operational definitions, pre-stated in the protocol [ 20 ], to support the application of the selection criteria:

• Stakeholder— any person who would be a knowledge user of research but whose primary role is not directly in research . Potential stakeholders include a broad range of people, including those who are actual or potential recipients of health or social care, where this may include patients, carers and family members, or people interested in remaining healthy who are seeking information about a health condition or treatment for personal use [ 26 ]; members of organisations that represent people who use services; people with a professional role in health and social care; policy makers and managers. We documented the types of people involved within any evidence included in this review, highlighting where this included patients, carers and family members, and where this included other stakeholders only.
• Systematic review— a research process in which literature relevant to a stated question is identified and brought together (synthesised) using explicit methods [ 27 ], including reporting of inclusion/exclusion criteria, search methods and details of included studies . We accepted systematic reviews regardless of the type of evidence synthesised (i.e. quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods) and the type of question addressed (e.g. intervention effectiveness, diagnostic test accuracy, patient experiences).
• Involvement in a systematic review— any role or contribution of stakeholders toward the development of a review protocol, completion of any of the stages of a systematic review or dissemination of the findings of a review .

Methods of applying selection criteria

One review author (PC) ran the search strategy and excluded any obviously irrelevant titles. Two reviewers (PC, AP) independently reviewed the abstracts and applied selection criteria to the first 500 records; agreement was explored and a full team discussion held to clarify the selection criteria. This clarification led to a number of post hoc exclusion criteria (described above under selection criteria and within Additional file  1 ). Subsequently, we agreed that two independent review authors (PC, AP) should review a further 500 records using the clarified criteria and that if agreement between independent reviewers was greater than 95% when using these refined criteria, then subsequent selection of papers would be performed by one reviewer only; this agreement was 97%, and therefore, one reviewer (AP) screened the remaining abstracts. The full papers from abstracts included after the screening process were considered at the data extraction and judgement stages (see below); if a paper was found not to meet the inclusion criteria at this stage, it was excluded.

Data extraction and synthesis

Data extraction.

For all included papers, one reviewer (AP) extracted and categorised data into structured tables. Extracted data included bibliographic information, type of paper, stated aim, topic/focus of systematic review, study/review methodology, description of reported involvement, details of people involved, stage in review process at which people involved and any formal research methods used. Retrospective categorisation of data included focus of review and type of evidence synthesised (see Additional file  1 , protocol deviations). Details of the operationalisation of these data extraction items are provided in Additional file  4 .

Judgement of comprehensiveness of description

Our review aim was to describe key features of how stakeholders have been involved in systematic reviews; consequently, we were principally concerned with the comprehensiveness of the description of methods of involvement, rather than appraising the quality of the methods of the reviews. We devised a method for judging the comprehensiveness of the description of the method or approach to involvement, given that there are no standardised tools for such a task. Criteria for categorising the comprehensiveness of the description provided within papers were developed, adapted from Pollock [ 28 ]. Initially, two reviewers (AP, CS) assigned these criteria independently for a random sample of 20% of papers identified from step 1 of searching; this was 42 of 210 papers. There was agreement between independent reviewers for 57% (24/42) of the assessed sample. The agreement between reviewers, implications relating to disagreements and perceived risk of bias to the review results are reported in Additional file  5 . Following discussion and clarification of criteria (see Additional file  5 ), it was agreed that one reviewer would assign judgements to the remaining papers, using the following criteria:

• ‘Green’—comprehensive description of one (or more) specific method or approach to the involvement of stakeholders in systematic reviews. Description sufficient to enable replication of methods
• ‘Amber’—a brief or partial description of one (or more) specific method or approach to the involvement of stakeholders in systematic reviews. Description sufficient to enable partial replication of methods
• ‘Red’—few details provided and/or inadequate description of the method or approach of involvement of stakeholders in systematic reviews. Description insufficient to enable any replication of methods

Detailed description of methods or approaches to involvement

Additional, more detailed, data extraction was performed for papers that were judged as ‘green’ for comprehensiveness of description. In addition to a narrative description of the methods or approaches to involvement, one reviewer (AP) extracted and tabulated the stated aim of involvement, number and characteristics of people involved, methods of recruitment, format of involvement (e.g. face-to-face meeting, telephone meeting, written consultation, online survey), amount of involvement (number of meetings, number of days involved), details of ethical approval and financial compensation given to stakeholders, evaluation of the involvement and tools used for reporting involvement.

Stakeholder involvement in this systematic review

One consumer (HG) and two consumer representatives (RM, CS) were members of the project and author team for this systematic review. All contributed to face-to-face discussions which led to the development of the review protocol, and read, commented on and had authorship of the published protocol. All contributed to project teleconferences throughout the review, particularly when making decisions relating to the stepwise search methods. Additionally, CS independently applied judgements of comprehensiveness to a sample of full papers. All three discussed the key findings of this review and contributed as authors to the final manuscript.

Results of the search

We screened 12,908 titles and abstracts and applied selection criteria to 672 full papers. Three hundred sixty-nine of these 672 full papers were excluded: 118 as they were abstracts only, 18 as they were protocols, 16 as they were duplicates and 217 as they did not meet our inclusion criteria. Reasons that these 217 did not meet our inclusion criteria are listed in table of excluded studies (Additional file  6 ); main reasons for exclusion were that the paper was a systematic review but there was no involvement of people (approximately 30%), the paper did not describe or report a systematic review (approximately 25%) or the paper described involvement in research other than a systematic review (approximately 25%). This left 291 papers that met our criteria for inclusion in the scoping review (see Fig.  1 ).

PRISMA flowchart

Characteristics of included papers

Details of the 291 included papers are provided in the table of included studies (Additional file  7 ). A brief summary is described below.

Type of paper

Thirty-one percent of included papers were published systematic reviews; 54% were reports of a guideline or recommendation in which a systematic review component was described; and 5% were papers specifically describing methods of involving stakeholders in a systematic review.

Stakeholders involved

Thirty percent of the included papers involved patients and/or carers within the systematic review process, while 41% involved other stakeholders (e.g. health professionals, academic experts, representatives of patient organisations) but not patients or their family members. In almost one third of the included papers (29%), it was not clear who the stakeholders involved in the review were and whether this included patients and/or carers.

One third (31.6%) of papers were from the USA, one quarter (26.1%) from the UK and 10.0% from Canada. Of the remaining papers, 22.7% were from Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France or Spain, and 9.6% from a further 15 countries with between 1 and 4 papers each (see Table  1 ).

Country in which stakeholder involvement took place/country of lead author

*Austria, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Iran, Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan

Stage of the review process

In almost half of the papers (47.8%), the stage of the review process at which stakeholders were involved was unclear. In just over one quarter (27.5%), stakeholders were involved in interpreting the results after the evidence had been synthesised. In around one fifth (22.3%), stakeholders were involved either throughout the whole review process or during one or more stages of review completion (see Table  2 ).

Stage of the review process in which stakeholders were involved

*Percentages are calculated as percentage of the 291 papers with involvement at that stage. Total adds up to > 100%, as 18 papers involved stakeholders at both setting scope/review questions and interpreting results after review completion and have therefore been counted within both of these categories

Focus of the review

Seventy-one percent of the included systematic reviews were judged to be focussed on one of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10) categories (Table  3 and table of included studies (Additional file  7 )). Most frequently (10%), this was ‘factors influencing health status and contact with health services’, where reviews covered topics such as the effectiveness or implementation of care pathways for specific population (e.g. paediatrics, geriatrics, emergency care). The specific diseases or health areas covered by the greatest numbers of reviews were mental and behavioural disorders (8.6%), neoplasms (6.9%), diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (6.2%) and certain infectious and parasitic diseases (5.5%). Thirteen percent of the reviews which did not fit one of the ICD-10 categories were focussed on a specific intervention, most commonly medical or surgical interventions (8.6%) and public health interventions (5.2%). Ten percent of reviews were focussed on an area of research, rather than a specific health or disease area or intervention; more than half of these (55%, n  = 29) were focussed on methods of stakeholder involvement or engagement, while the remainder focussed on other areas of research methods, such as methods of statistical tests within primary research. The remaining 7% were unable to be categorised within any of these groups and focussed on, for example, areas such as teaching, data protection and criminal justice.

Focus of review

Note: no papers were categorised as XVI Certain conditions originating in the perinatal period; XVIII Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified

*III Diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs and certain disorders involving the immune mechanism; VII Diseases of the eye and adnexa; VIII Diseases of the ear and mastoid process; XVII Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities; XX External causes of morbidity and mortality; ICHI Functioning intervention

Comprehensiveness of description of method or approach to involvement

Table  4 shows the assigned judgements of the comprehensiveness of the description of the method or approach to involvement. Figure  2 illustrates the proportion of different types of paper which were judged to be ‘green’, ‘amber’ or ‘red’, when patients/carers were involved and at different stages in the review process.

*18 papers involved stakeholders at both setting scope/review questions and interpreting results after review completion; 3 were judged as ‘green’, 11 as ‘amber’ and 4 as ‘red’

Bubble plot illustrating proportion of papers in which patients/carers were included, the stage of the review process at which people were involved and the comprehensiveness of the description of the method of involvement

In total, 59% of the included papers were judged to provide few or inadequate details (‘red’), with only 10% judged to provide a comprehensive description of one, or more, method or approach to involvement (‘green’).

The 30 papers which were judged as providing a comprehensive (‘green’) description of their methods or approaches to involvement included 14 ‘methods’ papers describing an experience of stakeholder involvement in one (or more) systematic review [ 25 , 29 – 41 ]; 11 systematic reviews in which the stakeholder involvement was concurrently described [ 42 – 52 ]; 2 guidelines or clinical recommendations, in which the involvement in the systematic review component was described [ 53 , 54 ]; and 1 paper which described the development of a tool to report stakeholder involvement [ 55 ]. Two of the papers each described two different systematic reviews [ 37 , 55 ], meaning that there are a total of 32 systematic review described. Table  5 summarises the key characteristics of these 32 systematic reviews, and Table  6 summarises the data relating to stakeholder involvement and a brief narrative summary of key features is provided below.

Key characteristics of ‘green’ systematic reviews

Note that within this table there are 32 reviews described, as 2 of the 30 included papers describe 2 reviews, and data has been extracted separately for these at this stage (Oliver et al. [ 37 ] ‘correlational’ review and ‘views’ review; Saan et al. [ 55 ] review 1 and review 2)

*Focus of review categorised as either: Health/disease of focus according to ICD-10 categories; OR, if review was not focused on a specific health topic/disease, then review was categorised as either: Medical or surgical intervention, Public health intervention, Functioning intervention, Research, or Other

**Type of evidence synthesised categorised as qualitative, quantitative, mixed (i.e. both qualitative and quantitative) or unclear

Summary of data relating to stakeholder involvement in ‘green’ systematic reviews

Review aim/focus

Table  5 states the aim and focus of the 32 systematic review. Sixty-eight percent were focussed on one of the ICD-10 categories; with mental and behavioural disorders being the most common health topic (22%). Sixteen percent were focussed on a specific intervention rather than a disease area, most commonly on a public health intervention (12%). The remaining 16% were focussed on either research or another topic.

A majority of the reviews (56%) synthesised both qualitative and quantitative evidence, while 19% only included quantitative studies and 12.5% only included qualitative studies. The type of evidence included was unclear for 12.5%. Two of the reviews described using a ‘realist’ review methodology, and 2 were Cochrane reviews of randomised controlled trials.

People involved

Seventy-eight percent of the systematic reviews involved patients, carers or family members, while in one (3%), the people involved were peer support workers. In 19% of systematic reviews, the only people involved were professionals or academic experts, although one of these [ 56 ] aimed to recruit patient representatives, but failed to do so. Where there were face-to-face meetings, the number of stakeholders involved ranged from 2 to 27; where there were one-off events, often advertised as open to the general public, the numbers of stakeholders involved ranged from 15 to 81; where involvement did not require a face-to-face meeting, for example using an electronic Delphi or survey, the numbers invited ranged from 29 to 340 (see Table  6 ).

Geographical location (from which stakeholders were recruited)

The majority of the involvement occurred in the UK, with two thirds (66%) of papers describing UK-based activities. Of the remaining 34%, 2 recruited people from across Europe, 3 were carried out in Canada, 3 in the Netherlands and 1 in Australia, USA and Spain.

How people were recruited

For 69% (22/32) of the systematic reviews, people were personally invited to be involved. This involved personal invitations to known people (in 12/22; [ 29 , 31 , 39 , 41 – 44 , 48 , 54 , 55 , 57 ]); personal invitations to an existing group or groups (in 6/22; [ 34 , 35 , 37 , 46 , 58 ]); or purposive sampling, using similar methods as sampling for qualitative research (in 4/22; [ 32 , 38 , 40 , 56 ]). For a further 7/32 of the systematic review, involvement opportunities were advertised to the general population, often snowballing information out via target groups and organisations, and anyone who volunteered could get involved [ 25 , 36 , 47 , 49 , 50 , 52 , 53 ]. A combination of different recruitment strategies was used for 1 systematic review [ 33 ], and the method of recruitment was unclear for 3 systematic reviews [ 30 , 45 , 51 ].

Format of involvement

The format of involvement comprised direct, face-to-face interaction in 81% and an electronic Delphi method or survey in 19% of the systematic reviews. The face-to-face interaction was either in the format of a meeting (53%; [ 29 , 31 , 32 , 34 , 35 , 38 , 40 – 44 , 46 , 50 , 52 , 55 , 58 ]), a larger workshop or public event (19%; [ 25 , 36 , 37 , 47 , 49 ]) or a combination of both of these (9%; [ 33 , 45 , 48 ]). In each of the 6/32 systematic reviews which used an electronic Delphi method, there was a specific and focussed aim of stakeholder involvement; in 4/32 [ 30 , 53 , 54 , 56 ], this was broadly related to reaching consensus on factors, recommendations or statements arising from the results of the systematic review, and in 2/32 [ 39 , 55 ], this was to reach consensus on the topic or focus of the systematic review.

Amount of involvement

Where there was direct face-to-face interaction, there could be between 1 and 20 meetings or events. The majority (83%) of the 24 reviews providing this information held 4 or less meetings (median 2 meetings), while one held 5 meetings plus 3 public workshops [ 45 ]. Three held multiple meetings (12, 15 and 20 respectively by [ 25 , 46 , 58 ]); in each of these three examples, the approach is described as ‘participatory’. Where reported, the length of face-to-face meetings varied from 1 h to ½ day. Generally, the Delphi approach involved three rounds of an electronic survey, although in one example after two rounds of Delphi voting there was a direct face-to-face consensus meeting [ 54 ].

Ethical approval

Details of ethical approval were reported for 31% of systematic reviews; for details, see Table  6 . One paper reported that ethical approval was sought but not required [ 44 ]. No details relating to ethical approval were provided by the remaining 66% of papers.

Financial compensation

Expenses (such as travel, accommodation and care costs for family members) were reported to be paid to people involved in 25% of systematic reviews; in two, this was expenses only, while in six money or a voucher was provided in addition to expenses (see Table  6 ). No details relating to financial compensation are reported in the remaining 75% of systematic reviews.

Tools or method of reporting involvement

Thirty-four percent of the included papers had a clear method of reporting involvement. Four used some sort of tool, framework or checklist: Concannon et al. [ 42 ] developed and used a 7-item question for reporting stakeholder involvement in research, Liabo [ 46 ] used a framework for considering impact of involvement, Martin et al. [ 36 ] reported an evaluation based on reporting standards within Guidance for Reporting Involvement of Patients and the Public (GRIPP) checklist [ 59 ] and Saan et al. [ 55 ] developed and used a Tool for Recording and Accounting for Stakeholder Involvement (TRASI). Seven specifically reported activities which groups of stakeholders were involved in within a specific section of text, tables or supplementary files [ 30 , 35 , 37 , 38 , 47 , 50 ]. Within the remaining 66% of systematic reviews, information about methods of involvement was not reported within a particular section, table or file, but was distributed throughout the paper.

Evaluation of the methods of involvement

None of the 32 studies carried out any formal evaluation of the impact of involving stakeholders; however, 28% collected data relating to the views and experiences of people involved. Of these, four used a questionnaire to elicit the views and experiences of stakeholders [ 29 , 30 , 36 , 41 ]; three held a discussion with stakeholders in which they were encouraged to share or reflect on their experiences and perspectives [ 31 , 33 , 47 ]; and two had both a questionnaire and a discussion [ 38 , 44 ]. In addition, Liabo [ 46 ] reported data arising from audio recordings and minutes of all meetings, Hyde et al. [ 34 ] described ‘impact’ within a table, while the reflections of the researchers on the process of involvement were discussed by others [ 35 , 37 , 40 , 52 ].

Key findings: evidence-base relating to stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews

We identified 291 papers describing stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews. Approximately two thirds of published examples describe UK activities, but we found examples from at least 24 countries. Reporting of who was involved, in what ways and at what stage in the review process was generally very poor, and the majority of the papers (59%) were judged to provide few details and/or an inadequate description of the method or approach of involving stakeholders. Thirty percent of systematic review teams clearly involved patients/carers, but in many cases (41%), the stakeholders involved health professionals, academic experts or representatives of patient organisations, but not patients or their family members.

We identified 30 papers, describing 32 systematic reviews, which we judged to have sufficiently comprehensive reporting to allow a more in-depth synthesis of methods or approaches to the involvement of stakeholders in systematic review. We have described key features of how stakeholders have been involved in systematic reviews, using data from these 32 examples. However, it was notable that, despite the selection of systematic reviews which were judged to provide a comprehensive description of one or more method of involvement, there was still inadequate (or absence of) reporting of a number of features in which we were interested. For example, the majority of papers did not provide any information relating to ethical approval or financial compensation to the stakeholders involved. A key contributing factor to the poor reporting relating to aspects of how stakeholders were involved may have been the lack of a tool or standardised method for reporting. On the few occasions where a particular tool has been used to support reporting of information relating to involvement, the tool has often been developed specifically by the systematic review authors. In many cases, the method of reporting comprises a written description of the activities in which stakeholders have been involved, but we found inconsistencies in the type of information presented and the location of this information within published papers.

Implications: methods of involving stakeholders in systematic reviews

The evidence which we have synthesised demonstrates that actively involving stakeholders within systematic reviews is feasible, and can be incorporated into a wide range of different types of systematic review. While there can be considerable variation in how stakeholders are involved, and the types of stakeholders who are involved, and there is currently an absence of evidence to directly inform choices for methods of stakeholder involvement within future reviews, a number of implications can be drawn from our synthesised evidence. In particular, evidence drawn from the 32 examples explored in this review can highlight some of the methodological decisions which may be made when planning stakeholder involvement in future reviews. These include:

• Will people directly affected by the healthcare topic addressed within the systematic review (i.e. individual patients, carers or family members) be involved? Will health professionals, academic experts or representatives from patient organisations be involved?
• How to find people to involve? Within our 32 examples, we found two key methods of recruiting stakeholders to be in systematic reviews; in the majority of our examples, there were personal invitations to known individuals or groups, but in some cases, recruitment occurred through advertising to the general population in order to get stakeholders to volunteer to be involved.
• How will people be involved? Within our 32 examples, two distinct methods of involving people in a systematic review were identified: (i) face-to-face meetings or events or (ii) electronic Delphi method. Where there were face-to-face meetings, these could be attended by invited participants only or could be an open event or workshop to which members of the public are invited to attend. Invited participants may only attend a small number (often between 1 and 4) of meetings during the course of a systematic review, but this may be much more where a participatory approach is used.
• How many stakeholders to involve? The current evidence base indicates that the number of stakeholders depends on the way in which they will be involved. Evidence from the 291 papers in our synthesis shows that 1 stakeholder may be a co-author on a systematic review, 2–10 stakeholders may be members of a steering group, 5–50 stakeholders may attend face-to-face meetings or focus groups and 20–400 stakeholders may participate in Delphi rounds or attend events or conferences.
• Use of research methods? Our examples highlighted that the following research methods have sometimes been incorporated into stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews: focus groups, interviews and a number of consensus decision-making techniques such as Delphi, Nominal Group Technique and voting/ranking processes.

Other issues to consider when planning stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews are whether ethical approval will be required and resources for payment of expenses and any other financial compensation or reward.

Although there is insufficient evidence to directly inform choices relating to who to involve and in what way, the findings arising from the 32 papers identified in this review have been used to produce, in collaboration with Cochrane Training, freely available online learning material and resources [ 60 ]. There have been many urgent calls for high-quality training materials, reporting guidelines and examples of best practice to support active stakeholder involvement and to enhance the relevance, usefulness and accessibility of systematic reviews [ 2 , 16 , 18 , 33 , 61 ]; the evidence from this review therefore can arguably currently play a key role in learning and support relating to active stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews.

Implications: reporting stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews

Recording and reporting of stakeholder involvement is important, both to ensure transparency in relation to the contributions and roles of different stakeholders within the review process and to contribute to the evidence base relating to this field. This scoping review highlights that the current reporting of involvement in systematic reviews is very poor and sometimes absent, and rarely provides a comprehensive description of who was involved and in what way. While there are a number of tools and frameworks which review authors could consider using (e.g. [ 36 , 46 , 55 ]), there is not currently any tool, guidance or recommendations specifically designed to support reporting of involvement within systematic reviews. Generic guidance relating to the reporting of stakeholder involvement in research has recently been updated (GRIPP2, [ 62 ]); however, this guidance has not been specifically tested for use with systematic reviews and has lacked international input during development. It is clear that there is an urgent need for improved reporting of involvement of stakeholders in systematic reviews. Such reporting should enhance the ability to develop evidence-based guidance around how to involve stakeholders in systematic reviews, and to explore and evaluate the impact of involvement.

Limitations

Identification of relevant systematic reviews and data extraction.

It is unlikely we identified all relevant examples of stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews, as we adopted a pragmatic search approach aimed at efficiency within project time and resource constraints. This was compounded by poor reporting and inconsistent terminology in this area. We believe it is highly likely that there are many systematic reviews where stakeholders played a key role that our methods could not identify. Our decision to exclude titles without abstracts and review protocols at the study selection stage may have introduced publication bias into our results, with a bias toward inclusion of papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Only one review author extracted data from the included studies, and there is the potential that this may have introduced bias and errors in extraction. In an attempt to improve transparency and reduce data extraction errors, we copied and pasted data verbatim from included papers into an electronic data extraction sheet. This is reported in the table of included studies (Additional file  7 ).

Judgement to identify those with most comprehensive description

The agreement between independent reviewers when applying the ‘comprehensiveness’ judgement to a subset of papers indicated that there were disagreements on around 17% of ‘green’ categorisations. We did not have the time or resources to have independent judgement on a higher proportion of studies. We are therefore not confident that our subset includes all papers which may provide an adequate description of some parts of the methods of involving people in a review. However, as the aim of this phase was to identify and describe methods of involvement from examples of systematic reviews, the impact of potentially falsely including or excluding a paper from this subset was perceived to be low. We present the included ‘green’ papers as examples of systematic reviews in which there was involvement of stakeholders and take care to stress that these are examples rather than a comprehensive sample.

Our judgement of the comprehensiveness of the description of the methods was not a judgement of the quality of the involvement methods and only relates to the depth of the description of stakeholder involvement provided in the identified paper. Over half (54%) of the 291 included papers were reports of a guideline or recommendation, but only 2 of these were judged as ‘green’ for comprehensiveness of description. A potential explanation for this finding could be that stakeholder involvement is generally a core component of guideline development, but the primary focus of related journal publications is often the key clinical messages and implications, rather than the methods of the guideline, which are often fully described elsewhere. A judgement of ‘amber’ or ‘red’ for the comprehensiveness of the description of the method of involvement in the published paper is not an indication either that the quality of the methods was poor or that details of methods of stakeholder involvement are not available elsewhere.

This systematic review summarises evidence relating to the involvement of stakeholders in systematic reviews. We identified a relatively large number (291) of papers reporting stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews, but the quality of reporting was generally very poor. The level of reporting of involvement of stakeholders in systematic reviews, and the inconsistencies in which this is reported, must be improved so that guidance around how people can be involved in systematic reviews can be developed and the impact of involvement explored. This scoping review lends support to calls for high-quality training materials and examples of best practice to support active patient and public involvement and enhance the relevance, usefulness and accessibility of systematic reviews [ 2 , 16 , 18 , 61 , 63 ]. We identified a subset of 30 papers which we judged to provide a comprehensive description of stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews, and used these examples to summarise different ways in which stakeholders have been involved in systematic reviews. These examples arguably currently provide the best available information to inform and guide decisions around the planning of stakeholder involvement within future systematic reviews. This evidence has been used by Cochrane Training to develop online learning resources relating to how to involve people in systematic reviews [ 60 ], and has been used to develop a framework for describing stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews (Pollock A, Campbell P, Struthers C, Synnot A, Nunn J, Hill S, Goodare H, Morris J, Watts C, Morley R: Development and application of a framework to describe how stakeholders have been involved in systematic reviews, submitted).

Additional files

Protocol deviations. (DOCX 31 kb)

Search strategy. (DOCX 23 kb)

Year of publication of included studies. (DOCX 25 kb)

Data extraction (scoping review). (DOCX 35 kb)

Agreement between independent reviewers for judgements. (DOCX 32 kb)

Table of excluded studies. (DOCX 50 kb)

Table of included studies. (XLSX 166 kb)

Acknowledgements

The review has been funded by the Learning and Support Department and Consumer Network Co-ordinator, within Cochrane’s Central Executive Team. Findings from the review will be used to develop a learning resource to encourage and enable Cochrane Review Groups in involving consumers in Cochrane systematic reviews. Two authors are members of the funding body (RM and CW) and have been involved in conceptualising the design of the study and its outputs.

Availability of data and materials

Abbreviations, authors’ contributions.

AP led this review and paper. PC, AS, JN, SH, JM, HG, CW and RM contributed to the conception of the review objectives. AP and PC developed the research methods and design, with comments and feedback from CS, AS, JN, SH, JM, CW and RM. AP and PC ran the searches and applied the selection criteria. CS acted as the third reviewer. AP extracted and synthesised the data and wrote the first draft of the manuscript; PC, AS, JN, SH, JM, HG, CW and RM commented on this draft. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Authors’ information

All authors are involved with Cochrane (an international not-for-profit which publishes systematic reviews).

Alex Pollock is a senior research fellow at the Scottish Government funded ‘Nursing Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit’ (NMAHP RU) and has been involved in systematic reviews of complex interventions for over 15 years. She is an associate editor of the Cochrane Stroke Group and an author on 12 Cochrane reviews. She has implemented innovative ways of involving stakeholders within Cochrane reviews.

Pauline Campbell is a research fellow at NMAHP RU, with particular responsibility for completing systematic reviews relating to nursing and healthcare interventions, including rapid reviews commissioned by the Scottish Government’s Chief Nursing Officer. She is an author on 7 Cochrane reviews and has involved stakeholders in reviews using a range of methods.

Caroline Struthers is the education and training manager for the EQUATOR Network, responsible for developing educational resources, courses and training materials for a wide range of users, including researchers, editors, peer reviewers and the general public. Previous roles have included Information Specialist, Managing Editor and Training Coordinator for Cochrane, and she was also manager of an NHS-funded public engagement project for the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Group. At the time of this work, she was a member of the Cochrane Consumer Network Executive.

Anneliese Synnot is a research fellow and editor with Cochrane Consumers and Communication. Her research interests include innovations in evidence synthesis, both in terms of novel methods to involve consumers and others in the review production and dissemination and innovative review types, such as Living Systematic Reviews.

Jack Nunn is a researcher in the Public Health Department in the Centre for Health Communication and Participation at La Trobe University. He has recently worked on projects with Cochrane Australia, the World Health Organisation and the Australian Department of Health. He has previously worked for the UK National Institute of Health Research and Macmillan Cancer Support (UK) where he led the development and implementation of an internationally recognised model for building partnerships between the public and researchers.

Sophie Hill is the Head of the Centre for Health Communication and Participation ( www.latrobe.edu.au/chcp ), at La Trobe University, a centre she has established from the foundation of the Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group ( http://cccrg.cochrane.org/ ). The Centre has an applied focus, with three roles: coordinating the production and publication of evidence on interventions to communicate with people about health; innovative research on communication issues that have been neglected, such as multimorbidity; and a knowledge translation function, for getting evidence into practice and policy.

Heather Goodare is a Cochrane consumer reviewer for breast cancer and stroke; she was the first patient representative on the BMJ Editorial Board (1995–1999) and is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Originally an academic book editor, Heather trained as a counsellor after her own experience of breast cancer and of a flawed research study (Chilvers et al. [ 64 ]) in which she was a patient (see Goodare [ 65 ]).

Chris Watts is the Learning and Support Officer for Cochrane Training. He works on a range of Cochrane learning projects including design and development of learning materials and pathways to support learners in a variety of Cochrane roles, particularly through online resources and initiatives for distance learners. Chris is a researcher by background and previously worked at the Royal College of Nursing in the UK, where he led a team of Research Analysts delivering evidence synthesis and evaluation projects supporting professional development and policy.

Richard Morley is the Consumer Coordinator for Cochrane, supporting consumer involvement in the production and dissemination of Cochrane evidence. He has extensive experience of public engagement and partnership working in the voluntary, public and education sectors.

Jacqui Morris is a Reader in Rehabilitation Research with a particular interest in how systematic review evidence can be implemented in allied health professionals practice. She is a co-author on several Cochrane reviews.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Consent for publication, competing interests.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Alex Pollock, Email: [email protected] .

Pauline Campbell, Email: [email protected] .

Caroline Struthers, Email: [email protected] .

Anneliese Synnot, Email: [email protected] .

Jack Nunn, Email: [email protected] .

Sophie Hill, Email: [email protected] .

Heather Goodare, Email: [email protected] .

Jacqui Morris, Email: [email protected] .

Chris Watts, Email: gro.enarhcoc@sttawc .

Richard Morley, Email: gro.enarhcoc@yelromr .

Stakeholder management: a systematic literature review

Matteo Pedrini and Laura Maria Ferri

Matteo Pedrini is based at Abstract Universita` Cattolica del Purpose – The stakeholder theory is a prominent management approach that has primarily been Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy. adopted in the past few years. Despite the increase in the theory’s use, a limited number of studies have Laura Maria Ferri is discussed ways to develop, execute and measure the results of using this strategic approach with Assistant Professor at stakeholders. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review of the stakeholder management process. Universita` Cattolica del Design/methodology/approach – Five databases were selected to search articles published from Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy. 1985 to 2015. The keywords used were stakeholder management, stakeholder relationship and stakeholder engagement. Starting from 2,457 articles identified using a keyword search, 33 key journal articles were systematically reviewed using both bibliometric and qualitative methods for analysis. Findings – The results highlight that stakeholder management is increasingly embedded in corporate activities, and that the coming of the internet, social networking and Big Data have put more pressure on companies to develop new tools and techniques to manage stakeholders online. In conclusion, synthesizing the findings and developed framework allows the understanding of different streams of research and identifies future steps for research. Originality/value – While literature reviews are a widespread practice in business studies, only a few more recent reviews use the systematic review methodology that aggregates knowledge using clearly defined processes and criteria. This is the first review on stakeholder management in which the structure is existing knowledge on strategy development, execution and the measurement of performance. Keywords Stakeholder management, Systematic review, Stakeholder engagement, Stakeholder relationship Paper type Literature review

Introduction The past century has seen increased attention around stakeholders in both the academic and the managerial contexts. The stakeholder concept was first introduced by a memo of the Stanford Research Institute in 1963, and it referred to “those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist.” Since then, the definition has evolved and increasingly moved toward more active and influencing relationships between stakeholders and firms. Thus, some scholars have focused their attention on the influence that companies and stakeholders could exert on each other (Savage, 1991; Freeman, 1984), while others have underlined the juridical relationship (Carroll, 1989; Donaldson and Preston, 1995) or the role in the value-creation process (Clarkson, 1995; Freeman, 1994). It is, however, the seminal work by Freeman in 1984 that determined a turning point. The author proposed a view of a firm as the convergence of interests and expectations that needed to be considered and integrated into the firm’s strategy. Since then, the attention has moved to stakeholder management (SM) and focused on the methods through which Received 27 July 2017 firms could build and organize relationships with the different stakeholders to improve their Revised 9 August 2017 ability to respond to their expectations (Habisch et al.,2011). More recent developments 30 March 2018 Accepted 28 June 2018 have started to consider how SM relates to firm performance, investigating how the

PAGE 44 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019, pp. 44-59, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1472-0701 DOI 10.1108/CG-08-2017-0172 understanding of stakeholders’ claims could serve business objectives (Rana¨ngen and Zobel, 2014; Heikkurinen and Bonnedahl, 2013; Matos and Silvestre, 2013). In addition, SM has gained increasing attention among practitioners. The growing importance is mainly driven by the escalating stakeholders’ awareness of the impacts related to the business activity and by the need to demonstrate a commitment to good business behaviors. Moreover, it is becoming more and more evident to managers that SM makes good business sense and leads to better performance. In light of these advancements, this article presents the results of a systematic literature review, which offers a comprehensive view of the published works on SM. Earlier efforts have mainly adopted a narrow and specific perspective, thus extending the knowledge about the various facets of SM. However, an integrated examination of SM is missing, which is what this work aims to achieve through a novel broader perspective. To meet this objective, 2,457 articles have been searched, and 33 of them have been selected using a keyword search that allowed SM in for-profit organizations to be emphasized. The review was run using both bibliometric and qualitative methods. In so doing, the paper contributes to the literature, as it delineates the state-of-the-art of the studies on SM, proposes a structured outline and identifies possible future directions of study. The aspiration is to contribute to promoting greater efforts in both research and practice. The remainder of the article is structured as follows. The next section builds the theoretical framework around the definition of SM to identify the main elements that constituted the base for the analysis. Afterwards, the research methods that guided the work are described, and the results of the systematic review are presented through descriptive and thematic analyses. The article ends with the discussion of results and suggestions for future developments, and limitations are proposed.

Stakeholder management: theoretical background SM has its roots in the stakeholder theory, formalized by Freeman in 1984. According to this theory, profit maximization is not the sole objective of the business activity, but equilibrium among stakeholders’ expectations is identified as the necessary condition for the survival and success of the firm in the mid-long term (Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Clarkson, 1995; Post et al., 2002). Although originally considered opposed to the shareholder view (Friedman, 1970), the debate has more recently moved away from the idea that stakeholders and shareholders’ satisfaction are competing objectives, in favor of a view in which they are mutually beneficial (Berman et al., 1999). To reach equilibrium, firms cannot rely on the spontaneous growth of stakeholder relationships, but they need to develop a managerial approach through which to establish durable and sustainable ties (Freeman, 1999). In this sense, a firm must commit to develop a wide network of relationships – not limited to shareholders, employees or clients – and invest in nurturing them to make them relentlessly more effective (Perrini and Tencati, 2006). Extant literature links SM to both economic and normative rationales. As far as the former is concerned, previous studies defined SM as a system that helps an organization improve decision-making (Freeman and Evan, 1990; De Colle, 2005; Kaltoft et al.,2007)or accountability process (Bowman et al.,1992; Campbell et al.,2006; Scott et al.,2003). Again, some scholars mainly focused on the opportunity to reduce risks (Fama, 1970; Godfrey et al.,2009; Graves and Waddock, 1994) or to strengthen one’s reputation and trusting relationships (Barringer and Harrison, 2000; Fischer and Reuber, 2007; Jones, 1995). The normative rationale instead looks at SM as a system motivated by the firm’s moral orientation and institutional view (Friedman and Miles, 2006; Jones and Wicks, 1999), its commitment to respect property rights and social contracts (Phillips, 2003; Freeman and Evan, 1990; Donaldson and Preston, 1995), to contribute to the common good (Argandon˜a, 1998), or to promote principles of equitable justice (Phillips, 1997; Clarkson, 1995).

VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j PAGE 45 According to these considerations, the present literature review considers SM the continuous and systematic process through which a firm establishes positive and constructive relationships with its stakeholders to integrate their expectations into business strategy and activity (Habisch et al.,2011; De Colle, 2005).

Research methods Method This research is based on systematic review methodology (Fink, 1998; Thorpe et al., 2005; Tranfield et al.,2003), which differs from conventional reviews in that it is transparent, focused equal and accessible and allows for the unification of research and practitioner communities, leading to overall synthesis (Thorpe et al.,2005). A systematic review points out the most significant gaps, contributing to theory development (Tranfield et al., 2003). For this study, systematic review methodology was applied to SM in for-profit firms. Using the process used by Seuring et al. (2005) and Klewitz and Hansen (2014), the systematic literature review will consist of six procedural steps. Each step is illustrated in Table I and described in further detail below. Search process: Steps 1-4 Step 1. The keywords for the search were composed of three definitions obtained from the theoretical discussion above. Domains of research were operationalized through three keyword clouds, namely, stakeholder (e.g. stakeholder and interested party), management (e.g. management, integration and involvement) and for-profit (e.g. business and firm). Overall, a total of 18 keywords were used (Table II). Target articles needed to match at least one word in each cloud. This review does not claim to cover all publications primarily dealing with the concept of SM. Step 2. Although systematic reviews can include other types of publications, to guarantee quality and reduce the sample to a manageable amount, like in other literature, the analysis

Table I The steps of a systematic literature review Overall process Step Individual steps Analysis resulting No. of articles

Search process 1 Identification of keywords (SM, Previous research / Stakeholder engagement, Stakeholder and reviews relationship) 2 Development of exclusion and inclusion // criteria 3 Specification of relevant search engines Title and abstracts 13,567 and execution of the search (5 engines: (automated based ABI/INFORM COLLECTION, A WEB OF on keywords) SCIENCE, EMERALD, WILEY, SCOPUS) 4 Development of A-, B-, and C-list: C-list / 2,457 B-list Title and abstracts 118 (manual) A-list Full text 31 Narrative inclusions (Moore and Full text Manring, 2009; Pastakia, 1998; Schaltegger, 2002; Hall et al., 2008) Descriptive and 5 Descriptive categories (e.g., journals 33 thematic covered, methodologies applied) analysis 6 Deductive and inductive categories to 33 identify central themes and interpret results

PAGE 46 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 Table II Keywords operationalized for the search Search clouds Stakeholders Management Firms Exemplary search string

stakeholder*, management, strategy, execution, relationship*, business*, for- (stakeholder* OR “interested part*” OR “related interesting engagement, communication, involvement, profit, part*”) AND (management OR strategy OR part*, related integration, improvement, enhancement corporation*, execution OR relationship* OR “engagement” OR part* enterprise*, firm* “communication” OR “involvement” OR “integration” OR “improvement” OR “enhancement”) AND (business* OR for-profit OR corporation* OR enterprise* OR firm*)

in this study concentrated on peer-reviewed academic journal papers written in English (Seuring and Mu¨ller, 2008). Researchers have argued that the concept of stakeholder has most recently received prominent attention in practice and international research since the publication of Freeman’s (1984) book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Therefore, this review covers academic papers published from 1985 to 2017. Steps 3 and 4. This review includes the following major research databases: ProQuest ABI/ Inform, EMERALD Current, ISIWeb of Science Core Collection, Scopus and Wiley Online. Each database and related search engine worked differently, and thus, adapted searches were necessary. The research started out with the objective of structuring three types of lists: C, B and A. The initial list of 2,457 articles (C-list) was reduced to 118 relevant articles (B-list) based on the title and abstract analysis. Next, the 118 articles were downloaded in PDF format and renamed. These papers were analyzed in an iterative process, concentrating on the title, abstract and relevant parts of the full text. The most common reason for selecting articles for the A-list was a strong focus on SM. Articles were both practical and theoretical. The A-list, with 33 articles, was then further examined using both descriptive and thematic analyses. Descriptive and thematic analyses: Steps 5 and 6 The results are structured into two parts. First, the research provides a quantitative descriptive (bibliographical) analysis to get an overview of the research agenda. Second, the research presents a qualitative thematic analysis to provide an in-depth perspective of the data. Step 5. For the descriptive analyses, categories that defined the articles were selected, such as the year of publication, journal, countries focused on in studies, the classification of papers, methodology, findings and theory (Seuring and Mu¨ller, 2008). Step 6. The aim of the thematic analysis was to systematically categorize the content of the papers and identify relationships (Lane et al.,2006). This synthesis process is inductive and interpretative, but as Thorpe et al. (2005, p. 261) pointed out, “the adoption of an explicit and rigorous approach to reviewing allows others to understand how and why studies were selected and themes build up.” The results were structured into two parts. First, we provided a quantitative descriptive (bibliographical) analysis to get an overview of the research agenda on SM. Second, we presented a qualitative thematic analysis to provide an in-depth analysis of SM.

Results of the descriptive analysis Figure 1 shows the distribution of articles by years of publication. Although the number of the published articles on the topic at hand is still very limited throughout the considered period, it is possible to note a relatively positive trend from 2007. The review also highlighted that SM is present in different journals, both sustainability- oriented (i.e. Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business Society) and

VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j PAGE 47 Figure 1 Studies by year of publication

4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1998 2000 2001 2002 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017

focused on innovation (i.e. The Strategic Management Journal and Management Decision). This result underlines that the topic has gained attention among the whole managerial field, suggesting that it is perceived as relevant to contribute to several firm activities. The descriptive analysis also highlighted that the studies in this research focused on diverse countries from almost all continents. Most studies adopted a single-country focus, but it is interesting to observe that nine articles presented a “multi-country” perspective, thus suggesting that the relationship between SM and the context where it is implemented is an interesting research direction focus. Figure 2 shows the methodology used in the 33 studies. Among the different methods adopted, 7 papers (a total of 14) were action research and single-case studies, followed by 6 being conceptual papers. Quantitative studies are still very limited, likely due to the difficulties related to the data collection. This could also indicate that SM is at an early research stage, and a rise in the number of papers based on the larger data set is desirable in the future. As far as the theoretical background of the articles, the ST was cited in all the papers analyzed in this study. However, most of the papers also referred to an additional theory, mainly the ethical and agency theories (seven articles each), followed by the network theory being applied in a total of six studies. This result, together with what has been observed with regard to the journals, underlines the need to link SM to existing managerial theories to strengthen the understanding of its contribution to corporate practices and value-creation process.

Results of the thematic analysis The purpose of the thematic analysis was to organize a comprehensive view of the published works on SM in the for-profit context. Using an inductive method, the selected

Figure 2 Studies by methodology

Single case study 7

Action research 7

Conceptual paper 6

Literature review 5

Mixed method 3

Empirical research 2

Comparative case studies 2

National comparation 1

PAGE 48 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 articles have been classified according to two criteria. The first classification is focused on the process of managing stakeholders, namely, strategy development, strategy execution and performance measurement. The second taxonomy considered the scopes of SM, which has been related to communication, decision-making, innovation, relationship management and risk management . Table III summarizes the results of the classification. The following paragraphs review and analyze the articles included in each group and discuss their contribution to literacy development. The process of stakeholder management. The inductive approach applied to the analysis of the articles has allowed three phases of the process to manage the stakeholders to be defined. The first is strategy development, in which managers set specific goals and objectives of SM and allocate necessary resources to different activities. The second is strategy execution, which refers to the implementation of the activities previously identified by leveraging on allocated resources. The third looks at performance measurement, during which managers collect, analyze and report data on the performance of the activities of SM. The analysis showed that extant studies focus on one or two phases of the managerial process, whereas a holistic approach is still missing. Hence, the papers were classified according to the three abovementioned phases. Stakeholder strategy development. The articles referring to the strategy development phase show a common trend in that they consider the factors that must be carefully considered in designing the overall approach to stakeholder relations. The first group of articles initially proposes that the characteristics of the local context should be considered when firms define their SM strategy. Foo (2007) and Shah and Bhaskar (2008) identified the institutional context as a relevant determinant of SM in this phase. The former discussed the necessity to assess and balance diverse stakeholder’s cultures and to adopt an SM strategy in different institutional contexts. More specifically, Foo observed that SM is heavily influenced by Western countries and underlined the need for corporations that want to have a competitive advantage in emerging economies to develop specific strategies to manage local stakeholders. In the same year, Shah and Bhaskar (2008) developed a study on the Indian context and found that the ancient Indian scriptures had discussed the idea of SM, thus indicating that the idea of managing relationships with interesting parts is influenced by national culture. More recently, Wu and Wokutch (2015) argued that the cultural context can determine one’s attitude toward SM. Specifically, the authors considered geographical areas with the presence of Confucianism and suggested that it constitutes a specific normative base for SM. The second stream of studies applied an internal perspective and explored whether the organizational culture plays a role in SM strategy development. In line with this, Bourne (2011) focused on the need to change managers’ mindset to develop an SM strategy to maintain robust relationships with important stakeholders. Later, Minoja (2012) outlined how the development of an SM strategy is the result of ethical factors, which overcame the economic perspective in the overall business strategy. The third set of researchers investigated the relationship between SM and the development and appraisal of strategic resources. In this stream, Harrison and Qureshi (2000) stated that via SM, firms could consider the views of stakeholder groups and the multiple objectives of each group and obtain relevant information to support decision-making. Again, Kolk and Pinkse (2007) said that an SM strategy is strictly related to the overall strategy of the firm. The authors discussed that the strategy of firms largely depends on the availability of critical resources, and that SM could help access those held by stakeholders. Stakeholder strategy execution. The second group of papers has a common focus on how SM is implemented. Similar to the previous classification, in this case, three main groups of studies can be identified. Some authors focused their attention on the antecedents of the effectiveness of the SM. For example, Bartkus and Glassman (2007) found that the inclusion of stakeholders in the mission statements does not guide decision-making and actions of

VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j PAGE 49 Table III Studies by influence on strategy, processes and performance Steps/Authors Scope Findings

Strategy definition Bartkus and Decision-making A relationship between firms with mission statements that mention specific Glassman stakeholder groups (employees, customers, and community) and behaviors (2007) regarding these stakeholders does not exist Foo (2007) Decision-making Only when firm stakeholder interactions are overwhelmingly rule-governed, then the true and cooperative relationships with stakeholders result in competitiveness Harrison and Decision-making The views of various stakeholders increase the effectiveness of data and information Qureshi (2000) provided to support decision-making in natural resource management Minoja (2012) Decision-making The development of a theoretical framework that links together SM, stakeholder commitment to cooperate with the firm, key decision makers’ ethical commitment, and firm strategy Wu and Decision-making Confucianism forms an additional normative basis for stakeholder theory and the Wokutch (2015) inclusion of stakeholder expectations in strategy Bourne (2011) Relationship A structured process of stakeholder engagement leads to the development of timely, management appropriate, and effective communication Habisch et al. Relationship The institutional context favors the adoption of stakeholder-management strategies (2011) management Kolk and Pinkse Relationship The climate strategy of a company depends on the type of stakeholders that a (2007) management company manages more proactively, which is in turn determined by the extent to which these stakeholders control critical resources Shah and Relationship The ancient Indian scriptures prove that the concept of SM owes its origin to India Bhaskar (2008) management and it is part of the Indian firms’ strategy Strategy execution Helin et al. Communication A description of methods used by the corporation to manage conflicting stakeholder (2013) interests de Colle (2005) Decision-making Presentation of a ten-step model of SM to improve decision-making processes within an organization, by enabling managers to identify and respond to legitimate stakeholders’ interests Jack and Green Decision-making Business Support Optimization is an approach to improving alignment between (2004) environment and business at the moment in time and suggests how it can be operationalized using value mapping to realize stakeholder expectations Dentoni and Innovation Insight on the process used by Unilever that led the company to develop and Veldhuizen implement a corporate sustainability strategy working with multiple stakeholders (2012) Watson et al. Innovation Engaging stakeholders in innovation requires three capabilities: specific operational (2018) capabilities, dynamic capabilities to manage the engagement, and dynamic capabilities to make use of contrasting ways of seeing the world to reframe problems Olander and Relationship Identification of the factors affecting the SM process, positively or negatively, from Landin (2008) management the perspective of project implementation Smudde and Relationship The retrospective analysis reveals the effectiveness of stakeholder approaches in Courtright management strategic planning (2011) Walley (2013) Relationship The approach identified the stakeholder mechanisms that caused one project to fail management Performance Coombs and Decision-making SM has a negative effect on CEO salaries, but a positive effect on firm’s financial Gilley (2005) performance. These results indicate that CEOs may jeopardize their personal wealth by pursuing stakeholder-related initiatives Fong (2010) Decision-making The CEO pay fairness influences future SM. This relation becomes stronger as the ratio of inside directors on the board increases Hillman and Decision-making SM leads to improved shareholder value, while social issue participation is negatively Keim (2001) associated with shareholder value Longo and Decision-making The development of a measurement system to measure the intangible resources Mura (2008) related to employees and that represents a control tool that may support managers in planning and monitor the social investments of the firm (continued)

PAGE 50 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 Table III Steps/Authors Scope Findings

Perrini and Innovation The development of the sustainability evaluation and reporting system (SERS), an Tencati (2006) integrated methodology aimed at monitoring and tracking the overall corporate performance according to the stakeholder Bendheim et al. Relationship The existence of differences in SM within industries and between industries are (1998) management observed Malvey et al. Relationship The proposition of a systematic method for the evaluation of key SM using a (2002) management stakeholder report card Madsen and Risk To improve corporate relationships with various stakeholders, companies need to be Ulhøi (2001) management able to identify these stakeholders and assess their influence Alpaslan et al. Risk In the context of crises, SM increases the opportunity for proactive and/or (2009) management accommodating crisis management behavior, and a stakeholder theory of crisis management is suggested Strategy development and execution Boerner and Decision-making Methods are used to define strategies and manage stakeholder interests in the Jobst (2011) process of program planning Walters (2011) Innovation An emphasis on the stakeholder-management strategy implemented by the football club, demonstrating a lack of opportunities for involvement in decision-making processes Pacagnella Relationship A description of how the management team of a project identified key stakeholders Ju´nior et al. management and established strategies to increase their engagement, get resources and make (2015) use of capabilities during the project lifecycle Eskerod and Risk A description of how a project management team worked with its stakeholder Vaagaasar management relationships (2014) Strategy development and performance Guo and Saxton Communication Elaboration of new forms of targeted stakeholder communication, a new type of (2014) organizational resource, and the relationship between the two Strategy execution and performance Ferdinand et al. Communication A definition of the network structure of online stakeholder discussions in the planning (2015) stage of a public project Chen et al. Decision-making The development of a prototype (Business Stakeholder Analyzer) that helps (2009) managers and analysts identify and classify their online stakeholders

SM. Later, Olander and Landin (2008) discussed that the outcome of SM mainly depends on how well the managers make stakeholders aware of the benefits of intended action or project. Walley (2013) stressed the necessity to have a clear scope to initially engage stakeholders, maintain effective communication during the involvement of stakeholders and dedicate time and managerial resources to manage and overcome the resistance to change, confirming an earlier study by Dentoni and Veldhuizen (2012). More recently, Pacagnella Junior et al. (2015) pointed out the leading role that managers have in SM, underlining that when the project team is concerned from the beginning to understand stakeholders and in exploiting the features and specific capabilities of the main stakeholders, the effectiveness of a project management increases. Finally, Habisch et al. (2011) compared the stakeholder dialogue in different countries and found that the institutional context affects the type and effectiveness of the initiatives realized by companies. Another group of studies was dedicated to defining models for SM. At the organizational level, De Colle (2005) proposed a ten-step archetypal to enable managers to identify and respond to stakeholders’ interests and to improve decision-making within an organization. Focusing on single activities of the firm, Jack and Green (2004) presented the concept of business support optimization, a tool that describes how SM could be operationalized using value mapping. Subsequently, Boerner and Jobst (2011) underlined that conflicts among stakeholders exist, and they formalized different strategies that could be used to overcome

VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j PAGE 51 these conflicts. In the same year, unpacking the execution of management of the relationship with stakeholders, Smudde and Courtright (2011) discussed the nature of reactive and proactive SM and the relevance of tools, such as the identification, the hexad and the Iron Law of History. Eventually, Helin et al. (2013), starting from a solitary case study on a state-owned company in Sweden, identified two different rhetorical models that can be used to interact with stakeholder: one that is information-oriented and the second that is communication-oriented. They pointed out that the rhetorical information model is the main one used by companies because of its effectiveness in enhance firm’s legitimacy and reputation, thereby securing the corporate license to operate. The third group took into consideration the capability development for SM. Watson et al. (2018) found that to engage stakeholders, firms must own three layers of capabilities effectively: specific operational capabilities, first-order dynamic capabilities to manage the engagement (engagement management capabilities) and second-order dynamic capabilities to make use of contrasting ways of seeing the world to reframe problems, combine competencies in new ways, co-create innovative solutions (value framing) and learn from stakeholder engagement activities (systematized learning). Performance of stakeholder management. As far as the literature considering SM performance, the review has identified two main streams: one dedicated to assessing and reporting of efforts in SM the other focused on the measurement of the impact generated by SM. There are just two studies that focused on assessing the efforts of firms in SM by identifying and applying dedicated proxies and indicators. Initially, Malvey et al. (2002) proposed to use a balanced scorecard named a “stakeholder report card” and tested it in the health- care service. Later, Perrini and Tencati (2006) presented an integrated methodology aimed at monitoring, from a qualitative and quantitative viewpoint, overall performance in SM. The second stream of research aimed at investigating the measurement of the impact of SM on firm performances. The first contribution was from Bendheim et al. (1998), who assessed some best practices toward five group of stakeholders at the industry level and found that those relationships are important for corporate social performance. Hillman and Keim (2001) found evidence that efforts in SM lead to improved shareholder value while social participation/philanthropy has a negative association. Alternatively, Coombs and Gilley (2005) explored the relationship between SM and CEO salaries and found a significant negative effect. Moreover, the authors suggested that SM reduces the rewards CEOs get for increasing levels of financial performance. Another study by Fong (2010) investigated the topic of SM and CEO salary, and the author showed that CEO pay fairness has an effect on future SM. In particular, when CEOs are underpaid, SM decreases, and vice-versa. A different focus has been proposed by Longo and Mura (2008), who developed a measuring and control system to evaluate the factors that affect the system of resources of value developed by employees of a company that has developed an SM policy. To conclude, focusing on risk management, Madsen and Ulhøi (2001) have explored the relationship between SM and environmental commitment and found that the ability to correctly identify stakeholders’ pressure determine corporate environmental actions. In this field, Alpaslan et al. (2009) discussed the impact that a change from a shareholder-based to stakeholder-based risk management could increase the effectiveness of crisis management because of the different nature of corporate governance available systems. The scopes of stakeholder management While we analyzed the identified papers, it became clear that authors not only focused their attention on one (or more) steps of SM previously discussed but they looked to the analyzed SM process by taking a specific perspective driven by a defined scope of SM. Having adopted an inductive approach, five different scopes were identified: corporate communication, decision-making, innovation, relationship management and risk management. As for processes of SM, the relation

PAGE 52 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 between each article and the focused topic is available in Table III, and in the next session, we summarize the main evidence we have regarding each topic. Communication emerged as one of the scopes considered in SM research, and studies in this field mainly focused on choices of channels, tools and techniques to share information with stakeholders by effective and efficient modes. Among others, Ferdinand et al. (2015) examined the network structure of online stakeholder discussions during the planning stage of a UK public mega project, demonstrating that stakeholders’ opinions tend to converge toward a positive or negative judgment toward a single project. More recently, Helin et al. (2013), focusing on the management of relationship crisis with stakeholders, suggested the necessity to shift the style of communication in which more genuine stakeholder dialogues are performed and firms communicate with stakeholders rather than just inform them. More recently, Guo and Saxton (2014) focused on the effectiveness of online communication tools for SM, and they suggested that focusing online efforts in communication on choosing the degree to which a stakeholder group should be targeted. A second thematic topic emphasized is decision-making, addressing how managers make decisions regarding the management of stakeholders. Harrison and Qureshi (2000) were the first to discuss the role of SM as a process to collect information and data available to support the quality of decisions at the firm level. Following this study, de Colle (2005) developed a process to manage the relationship with stakeholders to effectively identify their needs or interests and improve the quality of SM by the opportunity to have better responses to the stakeholder’s expectations. Using an experimental design, Chen et al. (2009) developed a tool to support managers to identify and classify the stakeholders of one firm gathering and analyzing data from the Web. Subsequently, Boerner and Jobst (2011) conducted a study to analyze how stakeholder interests are managed in the planning of one project, demonstrating that managers’ ethical values and adopted criteria for stakeholder’s segmentation determined the decision. Eventually, Minoja (2012) discussed a theoretical framework that links together SM, stakeholder commitment to cooperate with the firm, key decision-makers’ ethical commitment and firm strategy. Other studies have focused on innovation, underlining that the development of a good relationship with stakeholders could be a source of corporate innovation and allows for developing new products and services. In this field of research, Dentoni and Veldhuizen (2012) discussed the Unilever case, discussing how this company is in a unique position to develop a radical innovation based on to the involvement of multiple stakeholders and is basing the company’s competitiveness. Recently, Watson et al. (2018) discussed the mediating role of firm’s capabilities in the relationship between SM and innovation. They highlighted the relevance of dynamic capabilities to allow a company to take advantage of the contrasting perspectives that emerged from various stakeholders. One more scope addressed by studies is the role of SM in relationship management and, mainly, the criteria to balance stakeholders’ interests. As observed by Bendheim et al. (1998), at the company level, key stakeholders are treated differently within industries and between industries. Moreover, each corporate unit should relate in a unique way with different company’s stakeholders. Malvey et al. (2002), assuming the specificity of SM for different organizational units, proposed a systematic method to evaluate key SM using a stakeholder report card. Other studies have focused on relationship management in single projects. Olander and Landin (2008), conducting research on two railway projects in Sweden, showed how the management of the relationship with local communities was vital to the success of projects. Walley (2013) found that the lack of SM could have been one the main causes of failures of specific projects. Finally, Pacagnella Ju´nior et al. (2015) discussed a case of a Brazilian Science Park, showing how the management team of the project identified key stakeholders and established strategies for engagement and collaboration.

VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j PAGE 53 The last addressed scope of research on SM is risk management. The studies that adopted this point of view demonstrated that SM could be effective in overcoming crises or scandals that may impact the company. In this field, a pillar contribution comes from Madsen et al. (2001), who stated that companies need to be able to identify stakeholders’ expectation and assess their influence on firms. For this reason, having many receptors linked to stakeholders helps managers define a strategy that contains the risk of damage to the firm. Following that, Alpaslan et al. (2009) discussed the role of SM as an activator of proactive and accommodating behaviors from stakeholders during crisis management. More recently, Eskerod and Vaagaasar (2014) provided detailed descriptions of how a project management team could exploit stakeholder relationships to build trust among subjects involved in a project and manage project-related risks.

Discussion Although the concept of SM has been around for a long time, this review has shown that the literature development is still at an early stage. The descriptive analysis revealed that the number of published articles is still limited, thus calling for a growing commitment of academics. Moreover, most considered works are case studies or conceptual development, whereas research aimed at exploring broader data sets is missing. Hence, more research efforts are needed to further the understanding of SM with regard to every aspect dealt with in the present review. This conclusion has both academic and managerial implications. As far as academia is concerned, associations and journals should support the realization of projects and publications on the topic. In this sense, more call for proposal and papers would facilitate future development. Data collection on SM requires considerable efforts in both time and economic resources as stakeholders are often dispersed in different geographical areas and their involvement may require different tools and methods. Hence, academic associations could support researchers in the realization of broader studies through facilitating the creation of consortia or groups, the organization of events dedicated to SM and the availability of research funds. On the other hand, journals could promote the publication of more quantitative studies using broad data sets to facilitate the extended understanding of the SM dynamics. Moreover, the results of the thematic analysis have offered some food for thought. The first observation comes from the limited research on the communication activity. More research is, therefore, necessary on both communication strategies toward stakeholders and tools’ effectiveness. Specifically, the review has shown that extant studies mainly considered the traditional methods of doing SM, taking into consideration focus groups, interviews, workshops and surveys and mainly direct stakeholders closer to the organization. On the contrary, insufficient energy has been devoted to the investigation of the new opportunities related to online communication. However, the rise of social networks and the growing development of information and communication technology suggest that this will be a growing issue for the future development of SM. Three main challenges are proposed. First, as online tools are less expensive and allow reaching a larger number of stakeholders, future research should investigate the related implications for the operationalization of SM. Accordingly, questions could include the following: “Does online communication change the dynamics of SM?,” “Should/must companies change their policies and criteria for stakeholder selection and prioritization?” and “Does the role of stakeholder change as a consequence of this broader, more frequent and massive communication?” Consideration on future research comes from the communication and risk management perspectives on SM; an additional consideration could be made. As the latter has been related to the need for a company to have receptors through which to identify and assess stakeholders’ influence, communication could offer significant support. Studies could then investigate how the different communication tools toward stakeholder contribute to improving a company’s capability to anticipate or reduce the probability of a risk to occur.

PAGE 54 j CORPORATE GOVERNANCE j VOL. 19 NO. 1 2019 The third observation relates to the learning process and competence development in SM. Studies have investigated how SM can influence the development of resources, but two areas of potential investigation have been neglected: “Is information collected through SM actually used in decision-making processes and how?” and “What role does SM have in the innovation process?” Future studies could then start from these questions and further the understanding of the importance of SM as a managerial tool to support strategy development and value creation. Moreover, the literature on Big Data analysis techniques could be applied to SM and further the understanding of how firms could gather information and data on the needs and expectations of stakeholders without having direct dialogue with them. Fourth, this review has revealed that the analysis of the measurement of SM performance and impacts is still in its infancy. Although some scholars have proposed models and processes of analysis, the question involving how the effectiveness of SM can be measured is still open and calls for increased research efforts. The topic is of utmost importance for both academics and practitioners, as it may help boost the performance of SM and the commitment of companies to SM practices. Another implication of the study comes from the recent stream of research focused on the impact of the institutional setting on SM. This stream is of importance if applied to the investigation of the behaviors of multinational companies toward stakeholders in the different contexts. In line with this, future studies could consider questions such as: “How can multinational companies balance the different stakeholders’ necessities when they are located in different institutional contexts?,” “What advantages and barriers may multinational companies encounter when having to operationalize SM in different institutional contexts?” or “What kind of capabilities are required to maximize the synergies among SM policies and practices in different contexts and minimize the potential inconsistencies?” Finally, the last observation originates from the fact that most of the previous works have focused on large companies, whereas small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been scarcely considered. The literature on SMEs has often underlined their orientation to the more informal behavior of these firms compared to large ones, and previous studies have often found the existence of a strong tie to the local community. Hence, future studies could further explore the differences between the SM realized by large and SMEs, starting from questions such as “What are the similarities and differences in the approach to SM of large companies and SMEs?” or “What could large companies and SMEs learn from each other in terms of SM operationalization?” In the same research stream, another interesting focus could be centered on entrepreneurship and new ventures and, specifically, on “hybrid organizations,” which are both market-oriented and structurally interested in balancing stakeholders’ expectations. In this sense, relevant research could respond to questions such as: “Is SM a driver of business model innovation?” “How can SMEs radically change processes, products, and organizational forms to successfully integrate stakeholders into their core business?” Despite the numerous implications derived from the study, this work has several limitations. First, it does not include all possible academic sources, but it is focused on major databases of scientific journals. Relevant knowledge may also come from studies that are not included in the selected list, such as conference proceedings, textbooks, working papers or editorial contributions. Second, the cloud of keywords could be enriched or modified to extend the coverage of potentially interesting articles. Indeed, some studies may use different labels of keywords to refer to SM depending on the theoretical development, which constitutes the foundation of the study. Third, the qualitative analysis is based on two dimensions: building blocks and the thematic focus. Finally, the qualitative analysis could suffer from the potential subjective interpretation of the authors, although the analysis was conducted at two levels, with every single author first reviewing the articles independently and then comparing their results to reduce potential bias.

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Further reading Fleisher, C.S. and Blenkhorn, D.L. (Eds) (2003), Controversies in Competitive Intelligence: The Enduring Issues, Praeger, Westport, CT.

Freeman, R.E. (2001), “A stakeholder theory of the modern Corporation’”, in Beauchamp, T. And Bowie, N. (Eds), Ethical Theory and Business, 6th ed., Prentice Hall, NJ. Friedman, A.L. and Miles, S. (2001), “Developing a stakeholder theory”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 1-21. Friedman, M. (1962), Capitalism Management and Freedom, University of Chicago ress, Chicago, IL. Gilad, B. (2004), Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies, American Management Association, New York, NY. Prescott, J.E. and Miller, S.H. (Eds) (2001), Proven Strategies in Competitive Intelligence: Lessons from the Trenches, Wiley, New York, NY.

Corresponding author Matteo Pedrini can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Stakeholder management: a systematic literature review

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Stakeholder Engagement: Past, Present, and Future

The development of corporate governance literature in malaysia: a systematic literature review and research agenda, global drivers for esg performance: the body of knowledge, conditional acceptance of digitized business model innovation at the bop: a stakeholder analysis of ekutir in india, crises conducting stakeholder salience: shifts in the evolution of private universities’ governance in latin america, strategic management: the stakeholder approach, efficient capital markets: a review of theory and empirical work*, strategic management: a stakeholder approach, the stakeholder theory of the corporation: concepts, evidence, and implications, the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, related papers (5), an overview of previous studies in stakeholder management and its implications for the construction industry, toward the future of stakeholder approaches in evaluation, review of the application of social network analysis (sna) in construction project management research, toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: defining the principle of who and what really counts, trending questions (3).

Stakeholder approach involves developing, executing, and measuring strategies to manage stakeholders effectively, especially in the context of corporate activities and online interactions.

The paper does not mention any specific literature reviews that searched papers with different stakeholders-related keywords.

The paper does not provide specific information on how stakeholder relations and strategic communication can be used to improve business performance.