OSIM Spring 2025 Research Seminar Series - Dr. Don Lange

Stakeholder Strategy in Practice: Navigating Prioritization and Integration

Abstract:  This is a conceptual exploration of dual paradigms within the stakeholder management literature—prioritization and integration. We propose a model that reconciles these approaches based on managerial decision-making across various scenarios. The model explains how managers navigate stakeholder interests, ranging from making trade-offs (prioritization) to attempting to satisfy all stakeholders simultaneously (integration). Managers respond to objective features of the decision situation, particularly resource limitations and structural imbalances among stakeholders. The conceptual model includes three primary factors that moderate these objective pressures, which can either dampen or intensify the main effect. These factors are Organizational Support for Integration; Managerial Skills and Disposition Favoring Integration; and the Manager’s Internalization of the Conflict. The framework details how managers may shift along the prioritization-integration continuum based on specific decision scenarios and highlights within-subject variance, acknowledging that the same manager might employ different approaches in different contexts.