engleski

TOP MANAGEMENT TEAMS, STAKEHOLDER ORIENTATION AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR COMPANY PERFORMANCE: THE CROATIAN CASE

Stakeholders, at least in what is commonly regarded, are defined as those groups or individuals who can affect or are affected by the achievement of company’s objectives. Stakeholder groups’ involvement in strategic decision making or stakeholder participation has its normative, but also its instrumental argumentation. Stakeholders participate in the decision making processes because it is ethical and socially responsible (normatively right) but also because stakeholder participation in company’s objectives and strategy formulation processes will facilitate strategy implementation and achievement of company’s goals. Therefore, proponents of the instrumental stakeholder theory suggest that taking stakeholder interests, demands, needs and expectations into consideration when formulating company’s objectives and strategy is crucial for improvement of company’s competitive position and gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Stakeholder orientation has rarely been quantified. In this paper we use survey methodology and perceptual measures of stakeholder orientation and empirically test the relationship between top management teams’ characteristics, stakeholder orientation and firm’s competitive position. With respect to theoretical and empirical contributions of researchers within the field of stakeholder theory and context specificity in which Croatian companies exist we have identified eight relevant stakeholder groups to capture multiple stakeholder orientation in Croatian companies: (1) shareholders, (2) employees, (3) customers, (4) suppliers (including creditors), (5) government, (6) communities, (7) media and (8) universities. The results of our research indicate that there are differences in stakeholder orientation regarding company’s competitive position, but also regarding important characteristics of top management teams. In addition, we use different contextual factors to provide a frame for stakeholder picture in Croatian companies.

Top management teams; Stakeholder orientation; Company performance

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