Premium
Stakeholders, reciprocity, and firm performance
Author(s) -
Bosse Douglas A.,
Phillips Robert A.,
Harrison Jeffrey S.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
strategic management journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 11.035
H-Index - 286
eISSN - 1097-0266
pISSN - 0143-2095
DOI - 10.1002/smj.743
Subject(s) - reciprocity (cultural anthropology) , reciprocal , microeconomics , organizational justice , perception , work (physics) , value (mathematics) , norm of reciprocity , economics , economic justice , stakeholder , business , organizational behavior , law and economics , sociology , social psychology , management , computer science , psychology , organizational commitment , mechanical engineering , social capital , linguistics , philosophy , social science , neuroscience , machine learning , engineering
The assumption that economic actors behave in a boundedly self‐interested manner promises fruitful new insights for strategic management. A growing literature spanning multiple disciplines indicates most actors' selfish utility maximizing behaviors are bounded by norms of fairness. Rather than being purely self‐interested, people behave reciprocally by rewarding others whose actions they deem fair and willingly incurring costs to punish those they deem unfair. Economists show that employers who are perceived as distributionally fair by their employees generate comparatively more value due to the positively reciprocal behavior of those employees. The organizational justice literature distinguishes two additional types of fairness assessed by employees. Drawing from both these bodies of work, we employ stakeholder theory to propose how perceptions of fairness result in reciprocity (1) extending to all stakeholders of the firm and (2) affecting firm performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.