MANAGING STAKEHOLDERS IN THE SOCIAL ENTERPRISE. DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A SCALE FOR THE STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

The effect of stakeholder relationship on the ongoing success of all organizations is well recognized; managers always need to articulate the shared sense of the value they create, and what brings its stakeholder together (Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Jones, 1995; Jensen, 2002 Carroll, 1991; Bishop, 2000; Hendry, 2001; Freeman, Wicks & Parmar, 2004). Freeman (1984:46) defined a stakeholder as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement organisation’s objectives”. For a social enterprise there are various groups of stakeholders, some of which are specific of this kind of organizations, both from a social perspective (e.g. social clients and their families, donors and social financers, partners, volunteers) and from a business perspective (e.g. market clients, managers, suppliers) (Verdeyen, Put & Buggenhout, 2004; Lumpkin, 2010). Despite the evidence that stakeholder management is crucial for the social enterprise sustainability and performance, there is not yet an established measure of stakeholder engagement that can be used to foster the design of the effective organizational practices to manage the stakeholder relationship in the social enterprise context. Based on stakeholder theory, human resource management literature, and the main research streams on engagement, this study aims to develop and validate a scale of stakeholder engagement specifically suitable for the social enterprise domain.