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Pivoting the Role of Government in the Business and Society Interface: A Stakeholder Perspective

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Abstract

The growing popularization of stakeholder theory among management scholars has offered a useful framework for understanding the multiple and interdependent roles of government and business in an increasingly challenging political and regulatory environment. Despite this trend, attention to the role and responsibility of government to protect citizen rights has been limited. To the two traditional stakeholder theory views of government where the focal organization remains the firm, we propose to add two views by pivoting the government’s place and making it the focal organization. We thus describe governments as serving four roles in the business–government–society nexus (namely, “framework,” “business partner,” “interfering,” and “advocate”). For each role, we analyze typical governmental activities/behaviors, relationships with firms’ stakeholders, as well as the challenges and limits to these roles. We also focus on the central notion of salience amplification, as a means of checks and balances across stakeholders in order to safeguard citizen rights and reveal the greater good.

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Notes

  1. Here we use the term citizens quite broadly, to include the overall population of a given political or geographic jurisdiction, as well as subpopulations that may be organized as social movements or non-governmental organizations.

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Acknowledgments

Nicolas Dahan would like to sincerely thank his friend and colleague Professor Bernard Leca (Dauphine) for earlier conversations on this article’s topic that framed this contribution.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fox School of Business, Temple University, Alter Hall 552, 1801 Liacouras Walk, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA

    Nicolas M. Dahan

  2. Villanova University School of Business, 800 Lancaster Ave, Villanova, PA, 19085, USA

    Jonathan P. Doh

  3. School of Business, The George Washington University, 2121 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA

    Jonathan D. Raelin

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  1. Nicolas M. Dahan
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  2. Jonathan P. Doh
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  3. Jonathan D. Raelin
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Correspondence to Jonathan D. Raelin.

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Dahan, N.M., Doh, J.P. & Raelin, J.D. Pivoting the Role of Government in the Business and Society Interface: A Stakeholder Perspective. J Bus Ethics 131, 665–680 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2297-2

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