Bringing stakeholder theory to industrial relations

The purpose of the paper is to propose that stakeholder scholarship should take its rightful role in the acknowledgement of stakeholder value production, the enhancement of stakeholder voice and public stakeholder advocacy. Its focus is on low‐wage workers particularly, although the analysis holds for dependent stakeholders generally.

This paper analyses and develops extant stakeholder theory with regard to employer treatment of low‐wage workers. A general point is made about the need for stakeholder research, writing and advocacy to take more explicit normative stances. This is achieved in three stages: by explaining why low‐wage workers are dependent stakeholders; by considering the strengths and weakness of stakeholder theory as an explanatory framework for low‐wage workers; and by identifying how stakeholder theory should be developed in order to provide an explicitly normative account of low‐wage workers that leads to pragmatic action.

Labour and industrial relations scholarship would benefit from the integration of stakeholder language and scholarship, as the stakeholder concept has gained currency and legitimacy among academics in a variety of fields. Stakeholder theory scholarship would benefit from explicit consideration of power, which is common to work in labour and industrial relations scholarship.

Stakeholder theory can benefit from labour and industrial relations scholarship and practice. Likewise, industrial relations can benefit from understanding and integration of the increasingly ubiquitous stakeholder concept. It is believed that the integration of stakeholder theory with insights from labour and industrial relations scholarship helps further work in both fields.