IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/62354.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who and what really counts? Stakeholder prioritization and accounting for social value

Author

Listed:
  • Hall, Matthew
  • Millo, Yuval
  • Barman, E

Abstract

Research in stakeholder management has theorized extensively the prioritization of stakeholders as a key dynamic of firms’ value creation, but has paid less attention to the organizational practices involved in the process of deciding ‘who and what really counts.’ We examine changes underpinning managers’ prioritization of stakeholders and focus on how managers’ attention to salient stakeholders is represented and communicated in a firm’s accounting and reporting system. We study the emergence and development of Social Return on Investment (SROI): an accounting methodology intended to permit managers both to incorporate stakeholders’ voices and to communicate the social value created by the firm for those stakeholders. We find that the ability of SROI to account for specific stakeholders, thus categorizing them as salient for the firm, is shaped by managers’ epistemic beliefs and by the organization’s material conditions. Our findings contribute to stakeholder theory by showing that the prioritization of stakeholders is not solely a managerial decision, but instead is dependent on the construction of an appropriate accounting and reporting system, as shaped by managers’ epistemic beliefs and by the organization’s material conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Hall, Matthew & Millo, Yuval & Barman, E, 2015. "Who and what really counts? Stakeholder prioritization and accounting for social value," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 62354, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:62354
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62354/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michelle Greenwood, 2007. "Stakeholder Engagement: Beyond the Myth of Corporate Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 74(4), pages 315-327, September.
    2. Benjamin Neville & Simon Bell & Gregory Whitwell, 2011. "Stakeholder Salience Revisited: Refining, Redefining, and Refueling an Underdeveloped Conceptual Tool," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 102(3), pages 357-378, September.
    3. Andrew H. Van de Ven & Marshall Scott Poole, 1990. "Methods for Studying Innovation Development in the Minnesota Innovation Research Program," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(3), pages 313-335, August.
    4. Cooper, Stuart M. & Owen, David L., 2007. "Corporate social reporting and stakeholder accountability: The missing link," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(7-8), pages 649-667.
    5. Barreiros, Lídia., 1985. "Towards social accounting," ILO Working Papers 992431063402676, International Labour Organization.
    6. Marie-Claude Boudreau & Daniel Robey, 2005. "Enacting Integrated Information Technology: A Human Agency Perspective," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(1), pages 3-18, February.
    7. Thomas Ahrens & Christopher S. Chapman, 2004. "Accounting for Flexibility and Efficiency: A Field Study of Management Control Systems in a Restaurant Chain," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(2), pages 271-301, June.
    8. Burchell, Stuart & Clubb, Colin & Hopwood, Anthony & Hughes, John & Nahapiet, Janine, 1980. "The roles of accounting in organizations and society," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 5-27, January.
    9. Julia Balogun & Claus Jacobs & Paula Jarzabkowski & Saku Mantere & Eero Vaara, 2014. "Placing Strategy Discourse in Context: Sociomateriality, Sensemaking, and Power," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 175-201, March.
    10. Jane Gibbon & Colin Dey, 2011. "Developments in Social Impact Measurement in the Third Sector: Scaling Up or Dumbing Down?," Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 63-72, April.
    11. Williams, John J. & Seaman, Alfred E., 2001. "Predicting change in management accounting systems: national culture and industry effects," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 26(4-5), pages 443-460.
    12. Medawar, Charles, 1976. "The social audit: A political view," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 389-394, October.
    13. Andrew Abbott, 1992. "From Causes to Events," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 20(4), pages 428-455, May.
    14. Wouters, Marc & Wilderom, Celeste, 2008. "Developing performance-measurement systems as enabling formalization: A longitudinal field study of a logistics department," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 33(4-5), pages 488-516.
    15. Burchell, Stuart & Clubb, Colin & Hopwood, Anthony G., 1985. "Accounting in its social context: Towards a history of value added in the United Kingdom," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 381-413, October.
    16. Milena Parent & David Deephouse, 2007. "A Case Study of Stakeholder Identification and Prioritization by Managers," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 75(1), pages 1-23, September.
    17. Hall, Matthew, 2014. "Evaluation logics in the third sector," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 46365, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Colwyn Jones, T. & Dugdale, David, 2002. "The ABC bandwagon and the juggernaut of modernity," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 27(1-2), pages 121-163.
    19. Miller, Peter, 1991. "Accounting innovation beyond the enterprise: Problematizing investment decisions and programming economic growth in the U.K. in the 1960s," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 16(8), pages 733-762.
    20. Hines, Ruth D., 1988. "Financial accounting: In communicating reality, we construct reality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 251-261, April.
    21. Natalia M. Mintchik & Timothy A. Farmer, 2009. "Associations Between Epistemological Beliefs and Moral Reasoning: Evidence from Accounting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 84(2), pages 259-275, January.
    22. Donal Crilly & Pamela Sloan, 2014. "Autonomy or Control? Organizational Architecture and Corporate Attention to Stakeholders," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(2), pages 339-355, April.
    23. Gray, Rob, 2002. "The social accounting project and Accounting Organizations and Society Privileging engagement, imaginings, new accountings and pragmatism over critique?," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 687-708, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Millo, Yuval & Barman, Emily & Hall, Matthew, 2016. "Accounting measurement tools and their impact on managerial decision making," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 17(2), pages 17-23.
    2. Matthew Hall & Yuval Millo & Emily Barman, 2015. "Who and What Really Counts? Stakeholder Prioritization and Accounting for Social Value," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(7), pages 907-934, November.
    3. Cooper, David J. & Robson, Keith, 2006. "Accounting, professions and regulation: Locating the sites of professionalization," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4-5), pages 415-444.
    4. O'Dwyer, Brendan & Unerman, Jeffrey, 2016. "Fostering rigour in accounting for social sustainability," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 32-40.
    5. Ahrens, Thomas & Chapman, Christopher S., 2006. "Doing qualitative field research in management accounting: Positioning data to contribute to theory," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(8), pages 819-841, November.
    6. Napier, Christopher J., 2006. "Accounts of change: 30 years of historical accounting research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4-5), pages 445-507.
    7. Berland, Nicolas & Chiapello, Eve, 2009. "Criticisms of capitalism, budgeting and the double enrolment: Budgetary control rhetoric and social reform in France in the 1930s and 1950s," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 28-57, January.
    8. Fasshauer, Ingrid, 2012. "Les interactions entre contrôle et stratégie : redéfinition du rôle des cadres intermédiaires et du levier interactif de contrôle," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/11150 edited by Berland, Nicolas.
    9. Robson, Keith & Bottausci, Chiara, 2018. "The sociology of translation and accounting inscriptions: Reflections on Latour and Accounting Research," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 60-75.
    10. Shapiro, B. P., 1998. "Toward a normative model of rational argumentation for critical accounting discussions," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 23(7), pages 641-663, October.
    11. Constable, Philip & Kuasirikun, Nooch, 2020. "From cosmological to commercial form: A Buddhist theory of ‘form’, ‘space’ and ‘stream of re-becoming’ in mid-19th century Thai accounting," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    12. Nicolas Berland & Marie-Claire Loison, 2008. "Fabricating management practices : "Responsible Care" and Corporate Social Responsibility," Post-Print hal-01682196, HAL.
    13. Radcliffe, Vaughan S., 1998. "Efficiency audit: An assembly of rationalities and programmes," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 377-410, May.
    14. Pflueger, Dane, 2016. "Knowing patients: The customer survey and the changing margins of accounting in healthcare," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 17-33.
    15. Khalifa, Rihab & Scarparo, Simona, 2021. "Gender Responsive Budgeting: A tool for gender equality," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    16. Dambrin, Claire & Robson, Keith, 2011. "Tracing performance in the pharmaceutical industry: Ambivalence, opacity and the performativity of flawed measures," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 428-455.
    17. Ahrens, Thomas & Chapman, Christopher S., 2007. "Management accounting as practice," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-2), pages 1-27.
    18. O’Leary, Susan & Smith, David, 2020. "Moments of resistance: An internally persuasive view of performance and impact reports in non-governmental organizations," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    19. Power, Michael, 2015. "How accounting begins: Object formation and the accretion of infrastructure," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 43-55.
    20. Boedker, Christina & Chong, Kar-Ming & Mouritsen, Jan, 2020. "The counter-performativity of calculative practices: Mobilising rankings of intellectual capital," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social accounting; social return on investment; stakeholder engagement; stakeholder prioritization; stakeholder salience; value creation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • M40 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:62354. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.