Managing Stakeholders – The Role of Values Congruence and Affective Commitment

Abstract

When it comes to managing the relationship with stake- holders in order to create value, there are many ques- tions that remain unanswered. Previous studies have concluded that a company which invests more resources in its stakeholders to meet their legitimate demands and needs than strictly necessary may not always be re- warded with greater value creation when compared to other companies that do not invest to the same extent. Nonetheless, the instrumental stakeholder theory shows that over-investing in stakeholders will increase business results since stakeholders will return what they have re- ceived from the company by adopting a positive attitude towards it. Given the inconclusive evidence, our paper at- tempts to provide an answer. In this sense, we argue and propose that only stakeholders with whom there is val- ues congruence will disclose valuable knowledge to the company, thus enabling it to create value and obtain a competitive advantage. We test our proposal empirically by analyzing an express courier transport company and its relationship with stakeholders. The results obtained show that the affective commitment of stakeholders to- wards a company is essential for the latter to obtain pri- vate knowledge from them and hence create value.