Political Stakeholder Theory: The State, Legitimacy, and the Ethics of Microfinance in Emerging Economies

How does the state influence stakeholder legitimacy? And how does this process affect an industry’s ethical challenges? Stakeholder theory adopts a forward-looking perspective and seeks to understand how managers can address stakeholders’ claims to improve the firm’s ability to create value. Yet, ex...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Olsen, Tricia D. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2017
In: Business ethics quarterly
Year: 2017, Volume: 27, Issue: 1, Pages: 71-98
Further subjects:B Business Ethics
B Microfinance
B State
B political stakeholder theory
B Agonism
B Legitimacy
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:How does the state influence stakeholder legitimacy? And how does this process affect an industry’s ethical challenges? Stakeholder theory adopts a forward-looking perspective and seeks to understand how managers can address stakeholders’ claims to improve the firm’s ability to create value. Yet, existing work does not adequately address the role of the state in defining the stakeholder universe nor the implications this may have for subsequent ethical challenges managers face. This article develops a political stakeholder theory (political ST) by weaving together the political economy, stakeholder theory, and legitimacy literatures. Political ST shows how state policies influence stakeholder legitimacy and, in turn, affect an industry’s ethical challenges. This article integrates the concept of agonism to address the perennial tension between markets and states and its implications for firms and their managers. Political ST is then applied to the case of microfinance, followed by a discussion of the contributions of this approach.
ISSN:2153-3326
Contains:Enthalten in: Business ethics quarterly
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/beq.2016.59