Understanding stakeholders : towards a theory of responsiveness in organizations

Abstract

This study investigates the nature of responsiveness in organizations and its relation to dialogue as a reflective mode of conversation. Responsiveness as a theme emerged from the practical experience of the author in an organization development project with a residential care provider for people with physical and sensory disabilities. While consulting strategy, stakeholder management and organizational learning literature acknowledges the relevance of responsiveness, none of the approaches proposes a comprehensive concept of responsiveness and its implications for communication with stakeholders. The implicit model of responsiveness in all three literatures consists in a reactive, behaviorist stimulus-response model. Therefore, it is suggested to explore dialogue as an appropriate conversational mode that holds promise to facilitate reflective conversations with and among stakeholders. The process quality of responsiveness and dialogue requires an interpretive case study approach as the outer frame and a participator)' mode of inquiry as the inner frame of this investigation. Two research questions are addressed: What is the nature of responsiveness? What is the relation between dialogue and responsiveness?