Critical points of CSR‐related stakeholder dialogue in practice

Abstract

This paper examines the roles of dialogue in the process of communication with stakeholders. The conceptual frameworks of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholder relationships frequently present the initiation of a dialogue with stakeholders as a way for an organization to respond to criticisms of its social and environmental policies and actions. The paper discusses dialogue in the stakeholder and CSR literature. This is followed by the analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews in the empirical section. Theoretical discussion and empirical examples demonstrate that the role of stakeholder dialogue in implementing CSR strategy is crucial in many ways. The case examples taken from the interviews with the heads of two large companies and two non-governmental organizations illustrate the practical difficulties that may be encountered in applying the principle and practice of dialogue to the implementation of CSR programs in the real world.

Illustrating Conflicts among Project Stakeholders in Sustainable Project Management

“…Successful project vastly depends on how the project managers analytically and intuitively identify key stakeholders (Bourne & Walker, 2005) and work with them to frame their expectations and influence upon the overall project outcome (Golob & Podnar, 2014;Hörisch et al, 2014;Moriarty, 2014;Ni et al, 2014). In this context, a stakeholder is someone affected by a project and having a right to influence its outcome by any means (Cobb, 2012).…”

“…The ability to recognize the influence of various stakeholders is a significant skill for successful project managers (Chakhar & Saad, 2014;Garriga, 2014;Bourne & Walker, 2005), however without consideration to the conflicting needs and expectations of a diverse range of project stakeholders at various project phases (Golob & Podnar, 2014;Hörisch et al, 2014), a project will not be considered sustainable despite the fulfillment of time, budget and scope-commonly known as the "iron triangle" of any project (Bourne & Walker, 2005). The multi-stakeholder perspective is often deemed as the sustainable perspective for the project management (Silvius et al, 2012), nevertheless the underpinning conflicts among the project stakeholders inevitably exist with due scale and scope-tackling which determines the project success end of the day (Retolaza et al, 2014;Scheer et al, 2014).…”

“…Herein, a conflict is a construction and composition of the project interface (Grossman, 2001) visualized by the project manager in one context and captured otherwise by the project team internally and externally in another context depending on the internality and externality background and several varied constructions of stakeholders of several typed and tycoons (Adderley & Mellor, 2014;Retolaza et al, 2014;Scheer et al, 2014;Yang et al, 2014;Alladi & Vadari, 2011). "Management for stakeholders" perspective as elucidated by Eskerod and Huemann (2013) delineates the focus on the stakeholders scoping out the underlying conflicts among them in order to device the project management strategies to cope up with them and thus accommodating a balanced approach eventually (Golob & Podnar, 2014;Hörisch et al, 2014;Moriarty, 2014).…”

“…This avoids the CSR deficit (Werther & Chandler, 2011) which is caused in more conflicting and imbalanced situations among the economic and social stakeholders with an array of non-aligned influences and demands (Golob & Podnar, 2014;Hörisch et al, 2014) creating a conflicting obstacle for sustainable project management (Silvius et al, 2012).…”

“…With this evolutionary, emerging and changing properties of conflicts in the project management context (Tukiainen et al, 2010), therefore understanding the different set-ups of conflict also becomes significant for the sustainable project management (Adderley & Mellor, 2014;Ayuso et al, 2014;Carlon & Downs, 2014;Chakhar & Saad, 2014;Garriga, 2014;Golob & Podnar, 2014;Hörisch et al, 2014;Moriarty, 2014;Ni et al, 2014;Oriordan & Fairbrass, 2014;Retolaza et al, 2014;Scheer et al, 2014;Yang et al, 2014). Okoye et al (2013) have examined the nexus of corporate disclosure of social performance on corporate stakeholder conflict management where stakeholder groups represent divergent interests in the activities of any corporation.…”