Stakeholder Salience Revisited: Refining, Redefining, and Refueling an Underdeveloped Conceptual Tool

Abstract

This article revisits and further develops Mitchell et al.'s (Acad Manag Rev 22(4):853-886, 1997) theory of stakeholder identification and salience. Stakeholder salience holds considerable unrealized potential for understanding how organizations may best manage multiple stakeholder relationships. While the salience framework has been cited numerous times, attempts to develop it further have been relatively limited. We begin by reviewing the key contributions of other researchers. We then identify and seek to resolve three residual weaknesses in Mitchell et al.'s (1997) framework, thereby strengthening its foundations for further development. We argue, first, that urgency is not relevant for ..