Stakeholder engagement toward value co-creation in the F&B packaging industry

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a food and beverage packaging company manages internal and external stakeholders to achieve sustainable innovation outcomes, as well as to contribute to the spread of sustainability paths along the supply chain, on which it operates.

A case study approach was chosen and applied multiple methods of semi-structured interviews and a documentation review.

Results reveal a structured stakeholder relationship management, according to which the packaging company acts through a stakeholder engagement process to both acquire and share new knowledge to address stakeholder pressure. Co-creation models result in a winning strategy to exploit knowledge, above all in a supply chain context, where actors should act as a part of a strictly interlinked system, involving external stakeholders (also suppliers) and internal stakeholders in joint eco-innovation projects. The case study shows the potential strategic role of a packaging company in affecting relevant actors of the supply chain through the promotion of a sustainability culture.

The first limitation is linked to the chosen case study approach, which does not allow for results to be generalized. Future works could arrange panel data analysis to investigate in depth the behavior of several packaging companies regarding stakeholder relationship management.

Managerial implications mainly underline that, to fully address market stakeholder pressure, managers should recognize the relevance of acquiring and sharing new knowledge from external sources, without underestimating the need to integrate it with internal stakeholders (employees) for its exploitation.

The present work is original for the food and beverage industry, with specific attention on the packaging sector, which, until today, has been widely investigated regarding food and waste loss reduction strategies, but less often from the perspective of stakeholder relationship management in addressing sustainability.