ABSTRACT
Scholars have advocated the integration of stakeholder theory within non-market strategy literature as a means to test claims that corporate responsibility (CR) increases trust in, and support of, organizations (e.g. Galbreath 2010; Barnett 2007; Doh and Guay 2006). However, despite the volume of recent work (for a review, see Peloza and Shang 2011; Laplume et al. 2008), stakeholder studies continue to be challenged in two ways. First, stakeholder theory currently presents a set of pragmatic approaches rather than offering testable theories about the nature or development of relationships with stakeholders (Carvalho et al. 2010; Bhattacharya et al. 2009; Basu and Palazzo 2008; Friedman and Miles 2002; Jones 1995). Second, research often focuses on the perspective of the organization and lacks the involvement of actual stakeholders in the conceptual development and empirical measurement of theory (Fisher et al. 2009; Vaaland et al. 2008; Friedman and Miles 2002). Lack of involvement of real-world stakeholders prevents scholars from acting with confi dence when advising practitioners on non-market strategies of CR (Carvalho et al. 2010; Basu and Palazzo 2008; Starkey and Madan 2001).
