ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship and response between focal stakeholders—a public-interest group—and a particular firm, most commonly thought of as a large, publicly held organisation. It suggests that future research investigates not only the relationships proposed but how these relationships might generalise to those between different kinds of stakeholder with larger, complex firms and also in relationships with smaller to medium-sized firms. The chapter also suggests that a finer-grained analysis that breaks stakeholders into meaningful categories might yield insight into why certain stakeholders take integrative or distributive, direct or indirect responses in their relationships with specific firms. A stakeholder group pursues a path of influence—either direct or indirect—as a result of the stakeholder's perceptions regarding its salience to the firm. There are numerous types of stakeholder, with non-trivial implications for the explanation of stakeholder action. The chapter describes four styles of stakeholder action: collaboration, mediation, coercion, and subversion.
