ABSTRACT
The chapter demonstrates that the nature of top-management teams is influenced by changing stakeholder pressures, and that top managers influence organisational outcomes. The empirical literature on stakeholder theory has always assumed that stakeholder actions elicit organisational outcomes. The stakeholder theory literature that has been developed to date has several important foci. The central role of top managers in a stakeholder framework resonates with Dow Jones's assertion that 'top managers are at the centre of a "hub and spoke" stakeholder model of the firm because they contract with all other stakeholders'. The idea that behavioural explanations for the phenomena under study were supported gives currency to the idea that managers are chosen and perform in ways that balance instrumental and non-instrumental needs. Given the value of institutional theory in explaining the phenomena under study, it is valuable to pause and consider how other ideas from institutional theory might be woven into stakeholder theory.
