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Stakeholder: Essentially Contested or Just Confused?

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Abstract

The concept of the ‘stakeholder’ has become central to business, yet there is no common consensus as to what the concept of a stakeholder means, with hundreds of different published definitions suggested. Whilst every concept is liable to be contested, for stakeholder research, this is problematic for both theoretical and empirical analysis. This article explores whether this lack of consensus is conceptual confusion, which would benefit from further debate to try to reach a higher degree of elucidation, or whether the stakeholder concept is essentially contested, rendering the quest to seek a singular definition unfeasible. The theory of essentially contested concepts was proposed by Gallie (Proc Aristot Soc 56:167–198, 1956). The seven criteria Gallie prescribes for evaluating essentially contested concepts are applied to the stakeholder concept. The analysis suggests that this concept is an essentially contested concept and this explains the degree of definitional variation.

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Notes

  1. Swanton (1985) argues that researchers need to differentiate the concept from interpretations or conceptions of the concept; the concept per se is not vague or ambiguous as there is just one concept, but there are multiple conceptions which create the ambiguity.

  2. Clarke (1979) refutes Lukes claims that power is an essentially contested concept, as power reflects a contest between differing value positions, rather than being an ECC.

  3. Whilst these appear to be mere synonyms, with the exception of ‘management’, there are subtle differences between organisations, corporations and enterprises, for example a charity, public sector organisation or co-operative are organisations but are not corporations.

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    Samantha Miles

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Miles, S. Stakeholder: Essentially Contested or Just Confused?. J Bus Ethics 108, 285–298 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-1090-8

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