| Employees as Critical Stakeholders: A Conceptual Model of Workplace Aggression |
| | Marrs, Mary B. | Idaho State U. | marrmary@isu.edu | 208-236-3024 |
| | Greening, Daniel W. | U. of Missouri | greening@missouri.edu | (573) 882-1932 |
| | The stakeholder management concept has continued to be one of the most important components in the
corporate social performance model (Wood, 1991; Clarkson, 1995; Freeman, 1984). There is agreement
among most business and society scholars and practitioners alike that employees are a very important
stakeholder and there is evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, that a qualified, talented, and educated
workforce is becoming more and more important to organizational success and will continue to be
important in the next millennium (Carroll, 1996; Pfeffer, 1996). A particular understudied area regarding
the employee as stakeholder has to do with increasing violence and aggression in the workforce (O'Leary-
Kelly, Griffin, & Glew, 1996). Aggression in the workplace has implications for organizations from a
stakeholder perspective as well as a moral and ethical perspective.
This paper develops a model of organizational antecedents and outcomes of one type of workplace
aggression, verbal aggression. Specifically, it is proposed that an organization's climate, the extent to
which the orgnaization undergoes change such as downsizing, management style (autocratic v. democratic),
and the organization's structure (mechanistic v. organic) can influence the level of verbal aggression in the
workplace. Moreover, verbal aggression can negatively impact the job satisfaction, the organizational
commitment, and increase intentions to leave of employees thereby negatively impacting a firm's ability to
utilize human resources as a source of competitive advantage. Additionally, costs to the organization in the
form of liability, employee deviance (e.g. sabotage, theft), and a damaged reputation may also result from
high levels of verbal aggression. |
| | Keywords: stakeholder; aggression; employee |
| Stakeholder Activism and the Corporation: An Organizational Field Approach to Rationalization |
| | O'Connell, Lenahan Louis | U. of Kentucky | locon0@engr.uky.edu | 606 299-3915 |
| | Stephens, Carroll U. | Virginia Tech | cstephen@vt.edu | (540)-231-6353 |
| | Betz, Michael | U. of Tennessee | mbetz@soc.utn.edu | (423) 974-7030 |
| | Shepard, Jon M. | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State U. | jshep@mana.vpi.edu | (540) 231-7751 |
| | Hendry, Jamie R. | Virginia Tech | hendry@vt.edu | (540)-231-9624 |
| | This paper contends that rationality is more properly viewed as a property of an organization's field than of the organization alone. We predicate our approach on the observation that other stakeholders can hold goals quite distinct from those of owners and top managers. And these too can be rationally pursued. We build upon Weber's classic distinction between wertrational and zweckrational and upon the "new institutionalist" perspective of Powell and DiMaggio (1983, 1991), as the latter recognizes the importance of an organization's field and does not equate rationality with considerations of efficiency and optimizing profit alone. With the field as an organizing concept, we make these points. (1) Corporate cooperation with external stakeholders is not a non-rational activity. (2) Stakeholder activism promotes institutional isomorphism. (3) More than mere window dressing, such isomorphism leads to substantial achievement of stakeholders' goals by the firm. (4) Stakeholders employ a variety of direct and indirect mechanisms to rationalize relations with the firm. We discuss four: internal subunits; legislated stakeholder participation; legislated access to information; and direct stakeholder activism. These developments appear to be blurring the distinction between the environment and the organization and to be producing a more responsive corporation. We offer some examples of this greater responsiveness. |
| | Keywords: stakeholder activism; organizational field; rationalization |
| If Fairness is the Problem, is Consent the Solution? Integrating ISCT and Stakeholder Theory |
| | Van Buren III, Harry John | U. of Pittsburgh | HarryVB@aol.com | (203) 777-7709 |
| | Work on stakeholder theory has progressed on a variety of fronts; as Donaldson & Preston (1995) have noted, such work can be parsed into descriptive, instrumental, and normative research streams. In a normative vein, Phillips (1997) has made an argument in favor of a "principle of fairness" as a means of identifying and adjudicating among stakeholders (and their interests). In this paper, I propose that a reconstructed principle of fairness can be combined with the idea of consent, as outlined in integrative social contract theory (ISCT),
to bring about a more normative stakeholder theory. The reconstructed principle of fairness has
ramifications for future stakeholder research, managerial practice, and corporate governance. |
| | Keywords: stakeholders; social contract theory; fairness |