Building Understanding and Knowledge: A Case Study in Stakeholder Orientation

Accumulation of knowledge and understanding is the goal of scientific research. Such accumulation requires that areas of interest be approached with a theoretical base and replicable processes and methodologies. Recent reviews of stakeholder theory (Laplume et al, 2008; Mainardes et al., 2011) have delineated a number of issues in this area of study. In particular, they identify that if this area of research is to move toward deeper understanding, then areas of interest need to be studied in different contexts and with validated measurement instruments. This paper provides an example of a replication and methods development of stakeholder orientation from the manager's perspective in small firms