Efficacy of Stakeholder Models in a Changing Global Landscape

Recent global trends demonstrate that stakeholders have a significant impact on corporate communities. As a result, there has been much discussion regarding the nature and scope of relationships between stakeholders and other business actors. In conjunction with global developments in the corporate landscape, stakeholder models and frameworks have progressed and are supported by the concepts of value creation and distribution. This review paper analyses various stakeholder models against global business trends and expectations. Secondary data from journals, books, scholarly discussions, debates, symposia, and conferences were used in this review. The stakeholder models and frameworks investigated include Freeman's stakeholder model, Freeman's Stakeholder Management Model, Rowley's Stakeholder Salience model, Mitchell, Agle, and Wood's stakeholder network approach, and Civera and Freeman's Multi-stakeholder Value Map. These models and frameworks were found to be inadequate in addressing emerging issues such as dealing with powerful and marginalized stakeholders, short-term focus to the exclusion of long-term views in line with sustainability expectations, lack of implementation frameworks, decentralized objective approaches, and unbalanced social and economic value considerations across the stakeholder spectrum. This study suggests new avenues for the development of robust, integrated stakeholder models.