From stakeholder management strategies to stakeholder management styles: Serendipitous research on organizational configurations

How health care managers make sense of stakeholders and act strategically within these inter-organizational relationships has significant impact on organizational survival and performance. Existing research on stakeholder management has focused on managing dyadic relationships with individual stakeholders. We propose, based on serendipitous findings from a prior research study, that organizations exhibit distinct configurations - stakeholder management styles - in the ways in which they manage their kwy stakeholders. To explicate this notion, we review potential theoretical configurations of stakeholder management styles, including a well-known stakeholder typology, which focuses on the concepts of threat and cooperation. Based on this review, we develop a typology that shifts the focus from individual stakeholders to a focus on the organizations and their orientation toward managing a portfolio of stakeholders. We use secondary data analyses of a national sample of 686 medical group executives to conduct an exploratory study of how and whether stakeholder management styles are likely to impact multiple indicators of organizational performance. We conclude with propositions for future research, as well as implications for managerial practice.