Journal of Business Ethics (2011) 102:357378
DOI 10.1007/s10551-011-0818-9
Stakeholder Salience Revisited:
Refining, Redefining, and Refueling
an Underdeveloped Conceptual Tool
ABSTRACT. This article revisits and further develops
Mitchell et al.s (Acad Manag Rev 22(4):853886, 1997)
theory of stakeholder identification and salience. Stake-
holder salience holds considerable unrealized potential for
understanding how organizations may best manage mul-
tiple stakeholder relationships. While the salience frame-
work has been cited numerous times, attempts to develop
it further have been relatively limited. We begin by
reviewing the key contributions of other researchers. We
then identify and seek to resolve three residual weaknesses
in Mitchell et al.s (1997) framework, thereby strength-
ening its foundations for further development. We argue,
first, that urgency is not relevant for identifying stake-
holders; second, that it is primarily the moral legitimacy of
the stakeholders claim that applies to stakeholder salience;
and last, that the salience of stakeholders will vary as the
degrees of the attributes vary. These insights inform re-
vised definitions of stakeholder salience and legitimacy,
and necessitate a new theoretical underpinning for the
role of legitimacy. Finally, we present an extensive agenda
for future research with the objective of refueling research
in stakeholder salience.
KEY WORDS: legitimacy, stakeholder identification,
stakeholder salience, power, urgency
Introduction
One of the most substantial contributions in the
development of stakeholder research has been
Mitchell et al.s (1997) theory of stakeholder iden-
tification and salience. The ISI Web of Science
showed that, as of January 2011, their article has
been cited 622 times, including 121 times in the
Journal of Business Ethics. In their article, Mitchell
et al. (1997) considered the question of how man-
agers identify and prioritize the stakeholders of the
 Springer 2011
Benjamin A. Neville
Simon J. Bell
Gregory J. Whitwell
organization. After synthesizing a substantial body of
research arguing for various definitions of what it
means to be a stakeholder, they concluded that
stakeholders may be identified by their possession of
three attributes power, legitimacy, or urgency.
They went further, however, by arguing that these
attributes form the foundations of managerial pri-
oritization of stakeholder claims. Their theory of
stakeholder salience, defined as the degree to which
managers give priority to competing stakeholder
claims (Mitchell et al., 1997, p. 854), proposed that
stakeholders will be perceived by managers as
increasingly salient as they accumulate any combi-
nation of the three attributes. The theory has subse-
quently received empirical support by other
researchers (Agle et al., 1999; Eesley and Lenox,
2006; Knox and Gruar, 2007; Magness, 2008; Parent
and Deephouse, 2007).
Managers are constantly balancing the claims of
stakeholders against those of other stakeholders,
especially shareholders (Berman et al., 1999). This
requires an assessment of the validity of the claim and
of the effect that meeting the demand will have
upon shareholder returns. For managers with limited
resources, correctly identifying the organizations
stakeholder set and accurately prioritizing stake-
holder claims are key processes in the successful
management of organizations, the implications of
which are felt by shareholders as well as those
stakeholders directly affected by the organizations
actions (Jawahar and McLaughlin, 2001). Indeed,
the inaccurate assessment of stakeholder claims has
the potential to cause the organization considerable
financial and reputational harm. This was evidenced
by Royal Dutch Shells recent settling of a lawsuit in
which it was alleged that the company had colluded
358 Benjamin A. Neville et al.
with the military government of Nigeria against local
Ogoni tribesmen protesting against alleged human
rights and environmental abuses by the company.
While the company admitted no wrongdoing, their
incorrect assessment of the salience of the Ogoni
tribesmen resulted in their paying out $15.5 million
in compensation, as well as denting the reputation for
social and environmental responsibility they have
tried to nurture (Usborne, 2009).
In this article, we argue that salience research has
the potential to contribute much to the normative
understanding of how organizations may best man-
age multiple stakeholder relationships (Dunfee,
2008). Our article is therefore consistent with
Mitchell et al.s (1997, p. 854) intention to produce
a comprehensive typology of stakeholders based on
the normative assumption that these variables define
the field of stakeholders: those entities to whom
managers should pay attention. However, we also
argue that the potential of salience research has yet to
be realized. Indeed, Mitchell et al. (1997, p. 881)
acknowledged that we have necessarily made
sweeping assumptions [that] must be revisited and
assessed [to] enrich the theory and add to its
usefulness. Despite the widespread acceptance of
the framework, efforts to further develop it or
question its core assumptions have been relatively
limited (for notable exceptions, see Driscoll and
Starik, 2004; Eesley and Lenox, 2006; Jones et al.,
2007; Neville and Menguc, 2006; Parent and
Deephouse, 2007; Pfarrer et al., 2008; Phillips,
2003). In addition, these further developments are
rarely recognized and integrated, resulting in
researchers who refer to the stakeholder salience
concept commonly only referencing the original
conceptualization (e.g., Lotila, 2010; Menguc et al.,
2010; OHiggins, 2010).
We argue that it is time to take stock of stake-
holder salience research and provide a new bench-
mark, including up to date definitions and theory.
We begin by reviewing this recent research and
presenting the key contributions within an orga-
nized framework. Our main contributions, how-
ever, seek to refuel stakeholder salience research by
(1) identifying three residual weaknesses in the core
assumptions of the theory, and (2) providing a new
theoretical lens through which we can understand
stakeholder salience, leading to (3) refined defini-
tions of the legitimacy attribute and of stakeholder
salience itself.
Specifically, our contributions involve an exami-
nation and revision of three residual weaknesses in
the theory weaknesses that continue to be taken for
granted in subsequent research. We first suggest that
the distinction between the identification of stake-
holders and their subsequent prioritization requires
clarification. We argue that the urgency attribute,
while an important component of prioritization in the
theory of stakeholder salience, is not relevant to the
identification of stakeholders. Second, of the three
attributes in the salience framework, the role of
legitimacy appears particularly vague and in need
of reassessment. We further develop the argument of
Jones et al. (2007) and Phillips (2003) that legitimacy
should be interpreted morally, by distinguishing
between the roles of moral and pragmatic legitimacy.
We also build on Eesley and Lenoxs (2006) distinc-
tion between evaluations of the stakeholder and of the
claim, to argue that it is only the moral legitimacy of
the claim that is relevant to stakeholder salience. This
leads us to revise the legitimacy definition and provide
an alternative theoretical underpinning for the rela-
tionship between moral legitimacy and stakeholder
salience. Last, Mitchell et al. (1997) recognized that
the attributes are not dichotomous, but variables
operating upon continua. Despite this, it remains true
that their stakeholder typology, their definition of
stakeholder salience, the subsequent empirical testing
by Agle et al. (1999), and the many subsequent
applications in the literature consider only the simple
absence or presence of the attributes. We outline the
implications of this residual weakness, leading to our
refinement of the definition of stakeholder salience.1
In assessing the three residual weaknesses of the
stakeholder salience framework, and in suggesting
how these weaknesses could be overcome, our
objective is not only to strengthen the foundations of
the stakeholder salience framework but to also pro-
vide an extensive research agenda. Future research,
we suggest, should focus upon reassessing the indi-
vidual attributes, their antecedents, their interactions,
decisional thresholds, managerial perceptions, and
organizational responses to stakeholder salience.
Overall, our refinements, redefinitions, and refueling
of stakeholder salience research have two normative
objectives: (1) to refine researchers use and empirical
 Stakeholder Salience Revisited
testing when using the framework in their studies; and
(2) to the extent to which the stakeholder salience
framework is used by managers and consultants,
provide for more effective managerial decision
making.
Stakeholder salience revisited
As we have suggested, further development of
Mitchell et al.s (1997) study has been relatively
limited. Nevertheless, some important contributions
should be recognized. Researchers have proffered
new attributes (Driscoll and Starik, 2004), provided
deeper understandings of the original attributes
(Driscoll and Starik, 2004; Eesley and Lenox, 2006),
and explored their relationship with salience (Parent
and Deephouse, 2007) and their theoretical under-
pinning (Driscoll and Starik, 2004; Neville and
Menguc, 2006; Pajunen, 2006). Other researchers
have observed that salience may be more appropri-
ately measured in terms of coalitions of stakeholders
(Neville and Menguc, 2006), that the salience of the
stakeholder should be distinguished from that of the
claim (Eesley and Lenox, 2006), and that salience
will be moderated by factors affecting managers
perceptions (Agle et al., 1999; Buysse and Verbeke,
2003; Harvey and Schaefer, 2001; Henriques and
Sadorsky, 1999; Jones et al., 2007; Parent and
Deephouse, 2007) and other external factors (Jawa-
har and McLaughlin, 2001; Pfarrer et al., 2008).
These articles we see as representing three key
themes or areas of contribution: (1) the nature of
attributes as they relate to stakeholder salience; (2)
the epistemological assumptions underpinning the
framework; and (3) the contextual variables that may
affect the models generalizability (see Table I).
Stakeholder attributes
Some have questioned the exhaustiveness of
Mitchell et al.s (1997) original attributes. Driscoll
and Starik (2004), for example, argued that stake-
holder salience is determined by a fourth attribute:
proximity. This attribute incorporates the near and
the far, the short- and the long-term, and the actual
and the potential (p. 61). They suggested that more
proximate stakeholders near, short-term and
actual will be more salient to managers.
359
Researchers have also provided a deeper under-
standing of the original attributes. Driscoll and Starik
(2004) suggested that urgency will be partly driven
by the probability that the content of the claim will
actually occur. Thus, when a claim is time sensitive,
critical, and has a high probability of occurring,
managers will perceive the claim with greater sal-
ience. Eesley and Lenox (2006) further developed
the understanding of the power attribute by recog-
nizing that the exercise of power can be personally
costly, and is thus partly dependent upon access to
resources that may allow the stakeholder to sustain
the action. For example, during the course of a
strike, employees power will be derived in part
from their access to financial resources to sustain
their living expenses (e.g., trade union support).
A final area of research has been aimed at
achieving a deeper understanding of the relative
contributions of the attributes and of their compo-
nent parts to stakeholder salience. In their case study
analysis of the organizing committees for two
mega sporting events, Parent and Deephouse
(2007) found that power was the most influential
attribute determining managers perceptions of sal-
ience, followed by urgency and legitimacy. They
also distinguished between the three types of power
described by Etzioni (1964) coercive, utilitarian,
and normative and found that, similar to the sal-
ience attributes, as a stakeholder accumulated more
of the three types of power the more salient it be-
came. They also found that, of the three types,
utilitarian power had the most effect upon salience.
Epistemological assumptions
Mitchell et al. (1997) explained the role of power
in stakeholder salience by referring to resource
dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). A
number of researchers further developed the theo-
retical underpinning of the power attribute (Driscoll
and Starik, 2004; Neville and Menguc, 2006;
Pajunen, 2006), suggesting that stakeholder power
may also be explained by social network theory (cf.
Wasserman and Galaskiewicz, 1994). As network
density increases, organizations are subjected to in-
creased attention from multiple stakeholders. Alter-
natively, as a stakeholders relative centrality (or
proximity; Driscoll and Starik, 2004) within the

Themes and contributions of researchers post-Mitchell et al. (1997)
Theme Contribution
Stakeholder attributes New attribute
Deeper understanding
of attributes
Relative contributions
of attributes and
component parts
Epistemological Theoretical
assumptions underpinning of
power
Unit of analysis
The importance of Role of managers
context perceptions
External factors
TABLE I
Authors
Driscoll and Starik (2004)
Driscoll and Starik (2004)
Eesley and Lenox (2006)
Parent and Deephouse (2007)
Driscoll and Starik (2004),
Neville and Menguc (2006)
and Pajunen (2006)
Neville and Menguc (2006)
Phillips (2003)
Eesley and Lenox (2006)
Agle et al. (1999)
Parent and Deephouse (2007)
Harvey and Schaefer (2001)
Henriques and Sadorsky (1999)
and Buysse and Verbeke (2003)
Jones et al. (2007)
Jawahar and McLaughlin (2001)
Pfarrer et al. (2008)
360
Specific contribution
Stakeholder salience also affected by proximity of
stakeholders
Urgency also driven by probability claim will occur
Exercise of power also driven by resource access
Power was the most influential attribute, followed by
urgency
Salience increased with the accumulation of three
types of power, of which utilitarian power had the
most effect upon salience
Stakeholder power may also be explained by social
network theory
May need to assess salience of coalitions of stakeholders
Legitimacy can be derived from potential to affect
others
Managers should prioritize normative over derivative
stakeholders
Distinguish salience of claim and stakeholder. Relevant
are stakeholder power, legitimacy of claim and
Benjamin A. Neville et al.
stakeholder, and urgency of claim
No effect of managers values
Managers role and hierarchical level affected
stakeholder identification and the attributesalience
relationship
Managers intuition affected assessments of salience
Environmental proactiveness affected stakeholder
identification
Stakeholder culture affects assessments of attributes
and salience
Stage of the organizational life cycle will affect
assessments of salience
Type of transgression at heart of claim will affect
salience
Stage of resolution of the crisis will affect salience
 Stakeholder Salience Revisited
network increases, it gains increased access to others
within the network and is able to provide or with-
hold access to others within the network (Rowley,
1997).
Mitchell et al. (1997) also presented the unit of
analysis as individual stakeholders. Although stake-
holders may often contend independently for man-
agerial attention and resources, they will also
interact, cooperate and form alliances or coalitions
with other stakeholders (Frooman, 1999). Thus,
Neville and Menguc (2006) argued that salience may
be more appropriately measured in terms of coali-
tions of stakeholders who align around issues or
organizational fields (Hoffman, 1999; Wolfe and
Putler, 2002). Phillips (2003) provided a moral
argument for attending to powerful but illegitimate
stakeholders, arguing that they are derivatively
legitimate due to their potential to affect normatively
legitimate stakeholders. Eesley and Lenox (2006)
pointed to the importance of discerning between the
attributes of the claim and those of the stakeholder.
This has implications for the legitimacy and urgency
attributes, in particular. For example, Eesley and
Lenox (2006) argued that stakeholder salience will
be separately affected by the legitimacy of the con-
tent of the claim (e.g., calling for action on global
warming) and the legitimacy of the stakeholder (e.g.,
Greenpeace), with significant interaction effects
between these two assessments (e.g., skeptical claims
about greenhouse effects being made by the oil and
coal industries). Eesley and Lenox (2006) also argued
that it is only the urgency of the claim, not of the
stakeholder, that is relevant. They argued that the
stakeholders urgency is characterized by the stake-
holders willingness to exercise their power, and thus
stakeholder urgency is subsumed within the power
attribute.
The importance of context
A number of researchers have recognized that
stakeholder salience will vary with changes in con-
text. Indeed, Mitchell et al. (1997) suggested that
variability in managers perceptions will moderate
the attributesalience relationship. Agle et al. (1999),
however, found no effect from managers personal
values. Nevertheless, Parent and Deephouse (2007)
found that managers role and hierarchical level af-
361
fected both the number of stakeholders they iden-
tified and the attributesalience relationship. Harvey
and Schaefer (2001) observed the important role that
managers intuition played in assessing the salience of
green stakeholders. Both Henriques and Sadorsky
(1999) and Buysse and Verbeke (2003) found that
more environmentally proactive firms perceive
increasing numbers of stakeholders as salient. Jones
et al. (2007) discussed the role of the organizations
ethical culture, which they termed stakeholder
culture, in assessments of the attributes and of sal-
ience. They argued that power will have a greater
influence on salience in more self-regarding stake-
holder cultures (i.e., which exhibit concern for the
organization and its own interests), while moral
legitimacy will have a greater influence on salience
in more other-regarding stakeholder cultures (i.e.,
which exhibit concern for others and their interests).
Beyond the effect of managerial perceptions,
other researchers have focused upon moderators of
salience. Jawahar and McLaughlin (2001) argued that
salience will vary depending upon the stage of the
organizational life cycle. For example, investors are
crucial at start-up and customers are at their most
salient at the mature stage. Pfarrer et al. (2008) ar-
gued that salience will vary depending upon the type
of organizational transgression at the heart of stake-
holders claims. They suggested, for example, that
activist groups and the local community increase in
salience during environmental crises. Similar to
Jawahar and McLaughlin (2001), Pfarrer et al. (2008)
also argued that salience will vary depending upon
the stage of reintegration, or resolution of the
organizational crisis. For example, they suggested
that the media will be more salient when a trans-
gression is first discovered.
The preceding review highlights three areas in
which researchers have further developed the ori-
ginal stakeholder salience framework. These three
areas have implications that inform both the next
section which refines and develops the framework,
and the final section which provides an agenda for
future research. First, research that proffers new
attributes or further develops the understanding of
the attributes, their component parts, and their
relationship to stakeholder salience highlights the
fact that Mitchell et al. (1997) did not provide the
defining statement on the attributes something in
fact that Mitchell et al. (1997) recognized. The
362 Benjamin A. Neville et al.
research reviewed here, therefore, justifies casting a
more critical eye over stakeholder attributes. Sec-
ond, study that has questioned and provided new
observations of the epistemological assumptions of
the stakeholder salience framework underscores the
need to revisit some of the core tenets underlying
the model. Third, while it is certainly worthwhile
pursuing a broad-based definition of stakeholder
salience, we need to remember that much of the
nuance and effectiveness of the model will depend
upon the circumstances in which managers find
themselves. This implication informs in particular
our section on future research areas.
Refining and redefining stakeholder
salience
Having reviewed the contributions of others, we
argue that some residual weaknesses remain within
the stakeholder salience framework, which require
addressing. In this section, we build upon and fur-
ther develop the study of Mitchell et al. (1997) and
other researchers by revisiting three key issues: the
role of urgency in the identification and prioritiza-
tion of stakeholders and their claims; the role of
legitimacy in stakeholder salience and its theoretical
underpinning; and the variability of the attributes. As
a consequence, we are able to present a more
accurate definition of stakeholder salience, and thus
providing for more accurate research and more
effective managerial decision making.
Revisiting stakeholder identification: the role of urgency
We begin by discerning more clearly between the
two processes or questions addressed by Mitchell
et al. (1997): the identification of the organizations
stakeholder set and the prioritization of stakeholder
claims based upon the salience of each claim. We
argue that the separate processes are dependent upon
different sets of attributes. In addition, we adopt
Eesley and Lenoxs (2006) view throughout the
remainder of our theory section that there is a dis-
tinction between the stakeholder and the claim.
The identification of the organizations stake-
holder set, a process akin to defining the term
stakeholder, is a dichotomous question: an individual
or group is either a stakeholder of the organization,
or it is not. The salience framework proposes that
possessing just one attribute power, legitimacy, or
urgency will confer stakeholder status upon that
individual or group. This was represented by
Mitchell et al. (1997) in their typology of stake-
holder classes. The typology is a function of
the various combinations of the attributes present
within a claim (i.e., one, two, or three attributes
present). While a stakeholder claim possessing all
three attributes is labeled a definitive stakeholder,
possessing none of the attributes relegates a claim to
non-stakeholder status. We agree that power and
legitimacy help to define/identify stakeholders.2 We
argue, however, that possessing urgency alone is not
sufficient to grant stakeholder status to any claimant.
The urgency attribute provides a dynamic dimension
to the salience framework, helpful and relevant in
the prioritization of stakeholder claims, but irrele-
vant in the identification of stakeholders.
Mitchell et al. (1997) labeled those claims that
possess only urgency as demanding stakeholders.
They colorfully illustrated a demanding stakeholder
as a lone millenarian picketer who marches outside
the headquarters with a sign that says, The end of
the world is coming! Acme chemical is the cause!
(1997, p. 876). They described these claimants as
irksome but not dangerous, bothersome but not
warranting more than passing management atten-
tion, if any at all (1997, p. 875). We suggest that
this passing attention is the minimal amount of
attention granted to anyone making a claim upon
the organization, sufficient only for managers to
assess whether the claimant is worthy of further
attention as a stakeholder of the organization. If the
claimant does not have the power to affect the
organization or a legitimate claim upon the organi-
zation, then managers will not grant stakeholder
status. Indeed, this was the finding of Parent and
Deephouse (2007), who found that no managers of
the organizing committees of two large-scale sport-
ing events considered that claimants possessing only
urgency were salient.
Some may argue that, despite these urgent
claimants lack of power or legitimacy, they may
have potential, unrealized power or legitimacy, and
so will remain within managers consideration set.
Certainly, these claimants will actively seek power
and/or legitimacy pressing their case to others
 Stakeholder Salience Revisited
Power
Legitimacy
1
1. Legend:Dormant
stakeholder
3
2. Discretionary stakeholder
4 3. Dominant stakeholder
6 2 4. Dangerous stakeholder
5. Dependent stakeholder
5
8
6. Definitive stakeholder
7. Non-stakeholder
8. Excluded from our model:
Urgency 7 Demanding stakeholder
Figure 1. Revised typology of stakeholder classes.
within the organizations network, attempting to
access other resources, and so on to be included
within managers consideration set. Indeed, Mitchell
et al. (1997) were explicit that their typology in-
cludes potential relationships.3 The question is
then whether the potential to access power or
legitimacy should be categorized together with the
actual possession of power or legitimacy. For
example, should an urgent claimant with the
potential to access power be considered a
demanding or a dangerous stakeholder? On this charity, etc.) is what is being assessed and it is the
point, we argue that potential power is dangerous.
We, therefore, agree with Parent and Deephouse
(2007) who defined power as the (potential) ability
of stakeholders to impose their will (p. 2).
Urgency alone, therefore, is not a sufficient
attribute for identification as a stakeholder of the
organization. Managers identify stakeholders by their
possession of a legitimate claim upon the organiza-
tion and/or the power to affect the organization.
Figure 1, which is based on Mitchell et al.s (1997)
typology of stakeholder classes, captures our sug-
gested revision. It can be seen that we reclassify
demanding stakeholders as non-stakeholders. The
dotted line highlights our view that the role of ur-
gency does not provide a basis for identifying
stakeholders.
Revisiting legitimacy: moral and pragmatic
We suggest that the role of legitimacy in the stake-
holder salience framework remains troublesome and,
of the three stakeholder salience attributes, the role
of legitimacy is in most need of reassessment.
Legitimacy has been variously described as vague,
363
problematic, malleable, and multifaceted (Bannerjee,
2001; Driscoll and Starik, 2004; Hybels, 1995;
Phillips, 2003; Suchman, 1995). We suggest that this
stems from Mitchell et al.s (1997) adoption of
Suchmans (1995) composite definition of legitimacy
(1995), which combined the characteristics of more
finely grained forms of the legitimacy attribute.
We identify two problems with Mitchell et al.s
(1997) use of Suchmans (1995) composite definition
within their stakeholder salience framework. The
first is a lack of distinction between the legitimacy of
the stakeholder and that of the claim (Eesley and
Lenox, 2006). Eesley and Lenox (2006) argued that,
while distinct, both are relevant to stakeholder sal-
ience, and they found empirical evidence supporting
this. As a further development of their study, how-
ever, we argue that despite the relevance of both in a
descriptive model of stakeholder salience (i.e., what
managers do), in a normative model of stakeholder
salience (i.e., what managers should do) it is the
legitimacy of the claim that should be the exclusive
focus of managers assessments. The content of the
claim (e.g., stop polluting, raise wages, donate to
claim to which managers will form a response if it is
considered sufficiently salient.
We suggest that the legitimacy of the stakeholder
is of a secondary nature, possibly enhancing or
reducing assessments of the legitimacy of the claim.
As Eesley and Lenox (2006) identified, a significant
driver of assessments of the legitimacy of the stake-
holder is the tactics they use (e.g., lawsuits, boycotts,
and letter writing). For example, for some observers
the confrontational tactics of Greenpeace reduce
their legitimacy, which in turn negatively affects the
legitimacy of their claims. We argue, however, that
if the claim is morally legitimate, but the stakeholder
is not (e.g., due to violent or confrontational means
of communicating their claim), then the claim will
still endure and should be attended to by managers.
For example, downplaying the legitimacy of a
Greenpeace claim due to their communication tac-
tics does not affect the science behind climate change
or the intrinsic rights (or not) of whales or the worth
of other claims they make. A morally legitimate
claim should be attended to because it is the right
thing to do and because other stakeholders are likely
to take up the cause and pressure the organization if
it is not addressed. As such, we argue that it is only
364 Benjamin A. Neville et al.
the legitimacy of the claim that is directly relevant to
a normative theory of stakeholder salience. In our
conceptual development and in our refined defini-
tions of legitimacy and stakeholder salience, there-
fore, we are careful to acknowledge this distinction
and the primary role of the stakeholders claim.
The second, and the most important, problem
with Mitchell et al.s (1997) use of Suchmans (1995)
composite definition is a problem of clarity;
researchers have employed a multi-faceted definition
of legitimacy when they should have emphasized
only one particular facet moral legitimacy in
building their conceptual model. To illustrate this
problem, we first return to Suchmans (1995) con-
ceptualization of legitimacy.
The roles of moral and pragmatic legitimacy
Suchman (1995) sought to bring order to the dispa-
rate research on organizational legitimacy, presenting
a composite definition comprising three forms of
legitimacy: moral, pragmatic, and cognitive. The
moral form of legitimacy results from a favorable,
normative evaluation of the organization. Pragmatic
legitimacy results from instrumental, or self-inter-
ested, evaluations by an organization. Cognitive
legitimacy, by contrast, results from the diffusion of
particular beliefs, or knowledge, such that the beliefs
are taken for granted (Aldrich and Fiol, 1994). In
their explanation of the role of legitimacy in evalu-
ating stakeholder salience, Mitchell et al. (1997)
utilized Suchmans (1995) composite definition:
Legitimacy is a generalized perception or assump-
tion that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper,
or appropriate within some socially constructed sys-
tem of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions. In so
doing, however, they obscured Suchmans (1995)
efforts to bring clarity to the concept of legitimacy.
The main weakness of a composite definition is that
it hides the fact that there have been divergent ap-
proaches to legitimacy, with some seeing it as a social
construct based upon ethical criteria and some
emphasizing its instrumental role as a necessary re-
source of the organization (Scott, 2001).
Recent references to stakeholder salience have
directly quoted Suchmans (1995) composite defi-
nition (e.g., Deephouse and Heugens, 2008; Parent
and Deephouse, 2007). Driscoll and Starik (2004)
claim that most research on stakeholder legitimacy
emphasizes the pragmatic form over the moral form,
while others argued that most stakeholder research-
ers view stakeholder legitimacy from a moral per-
spective (Jones et al., 2007; Magness, 2008, Phillips,
2003). Clearly, there is confusion about how legit-
imacy should be conceptualized in the stakeholder
salience framework. The use of a composite defini-
tion of legitimacy therefore represents a residual
weakness in the stakeholder salience framework.
Our position is that the role of legitimacy in the
theory of stakeholder identification and salience
should be restricted to Suchmans (1995) concept of
moral legitimacy and should exclude pragmatic and
cognitive legitimacy. First, cognitive legitimacy does
not refer to how an evaluation is made, but to the
extent of cognition or deliberation required to arrive
at a judgment, and is thus not relevant for our
purpose. Indeed, recent reflection on Suchmans
(1995) and similar typologies in institutional theory
have questioned the inclusion of cognitive legiti-
macy/institutions in these typologies due to its
fundamental difference to the other forms of legiti-
macy/institution (see Phillips and Malhotra, 2008).
Second, we suggest that pragmatic legitimacy is
also not a relevant form of legitimacy, given the
purpose of the legitimacy attribute in the stakeholder
salience framework. In the context of stakeholder
salience, managers will grant pragmatic legitimacy to
the stakeholders claim if the stakeholder provides
exchange benefits or is somehow supportive of the
organizations interests (Suchman, 1995). For
example, the claims of employees will be considered
pragmatically legitimate if the nature of the claims is
in some way beneficial to the organization, either
increasing employee involvement or mollifying
employees who might be in a position to affect the
organization detrimentally if the claims are not met.
Pragmatic legitimacy is therefore related to the
organizations dependence upon the particular
stakeholder.
A major reason in support of our argument is that
conceptually it is difficult to disentangle the granting
of stakeholder status based on pragmatic legitimacy
from granting it based on the possession of power.
The pragmatic legitimacy of a stakeholders claim
will be related to the stakeholders ability to instru-
mentally affect the organization. It is thus related to
the organizations dependence upon the particular
 Stakeholder Salience Revisited
stakeholder for resources and support, such as
financing from shareholders and lenders, revenue
from customers, and the social license to operate
from communities and governments, and so on. It is
from this perspective that legitimacy can be viewed
as a resource that provides access to other resources
(Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Suchman, 1995;
Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002).
Considering a stakeholders ability to confer or
withdraw resources as pragmatic legitimacy is akin to
recognizing the power of a stakeholder to exercise
inducements or sanctions over an organization
(Etzioni, 1964). Indeed, viewing pragmatic legiti-
macy through the lens of resource dependence
theory (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978) blurs the differ-
ence between pragmatic legitimacy of the stake-
holder and the stakeholders exercise of power,
which in turn underlines the vagueness of the
legitimacy attribute. The potential to exercise power
underpins the granting of pragmatic legitimacy. For
example, Greenpeaces organized campaigns from
the consumer boycott against Shells proposed dis-
posal of the Brent Spar oil rig in the late 1990s to
their recent YouTube campaign against Nestles use
of palm oil in its Fairtrade KitKat demonstrate that
they are a stakeholder that managers should attend
to. Interpreting the success of these campaigns as
demonstrating Greenpeaces power to affect the fo-
cal organizations, or as demonstrating the possible
organizational consequences for not complying with
their claim, amounts to the same thing. Accordingly,
we suggest that pragmatic legitimacy should be ex-
cluded from an overall measure of stakeholder sal-
ience as it represents double-counting.4 This is not
to discount pragmatic legitimacy arguments for
stakeholder status. Rather, it is simply to say that the
contribution of pragmatic legitimacy to the total
measure for stakeholder salience will already have
been captured by the various measures of the attri-
bute of power.
Another reason why we suggest that the role of
legitimacy should exclude pragmatic legitimacy and
be restricted to moral legitimacy is because of the
moral arguments presented by those researchers
using a legitimacy perspective to define organiza-
tional stakeholders (Jones et al., 2007; Phillips,
2003). Mitchell et al. (1997) argued that these
researchers were seeking to establish a normative
core for stakeholder theory. To achieve this, these
365
researchers applied various arguments to emphasize
the claims legitimacy based on contract, exchange,
legal title, legal right, moral right, at-risk status, or
moral interest in the harms and benefits generated by
company actions (Mitchell et al., 1997, p. 862). We
suggest that these arguments utilize normative or
ethical criteria for evaluating the legitimacy of a
claim.5 Indeed, when setting out their case for the
relevance of the salience attributes, Mitchell et al.
(1997, p. 866) stated that legitimacy is loosely
referring to socially accepted and expected structures
or behaviors. In saying this, they are acknowledg-
ing that legitimacys role in stakeholder salience is
moral or normative, not instrumental or pragmatic.
For these reasons, we argue that stakeholder legit-
imacy should be viewed solely in terms of the moral
legitimacy of the claim. In the context of stakeholder
salience, it suggests that managers will grant moral
legitimacy because the stakeholders claim has been
evaluated as intrinsically right and proper.
Beyond restricting the attribute of legitimacy to
its moral form, we suggest that a definition of moral
legitimacy in the stakeholder salience context re-
quires a further refinement. Suchmans (1995) defi-
nition of legitimacy states that legitimacy assessments
are made within some socially constructed system
of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions. In the
context of managers assessments of the moral
legitimacy of stakeholder claims, however, managers
will also draw upon personal and organizational
influences. Research on managerial ethical decision
making has modeled these influences. These models
generally feature four stages: recognizing a moral
issue, making a moral judgment, establishing moral
intent, and engaging in moral behavior (Jones, 1991;
Rest, 1979). How managers move through each
stage may be affected by a number of individual
and situational factors (Crane and Matten, 2007;
Jones, 1991; Loe et al., 2000). Individual factors refer
to the innate characteristics of individual managers
(e.g., age, gender, and nationality), psychological
factors (e.g., personal values, integrity, and locus of
control), and experiential factors (e.g., education and
employment experience). Situational factors com-
prise those that relate to the organizational context
(e.g., reward systems, work roles, and the organi-
zational culture) and those that relate to the partic-
ular issue (e.g., the moral intensity of the issue and
how it is framed) (Crane and Matten, 2007). Thus,
366 Benjamin A. Neville et al.
managers moral legitimacy assessments will take
place within a personally, organizationally, and
socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs,
and definitions.
The role of ethical theory in evaluations
of moral legitimacy
Our argument that legitimacy should be viewed
morally brings into question the theoretical under-
pinning of the role of legitimacy in the stakeholder
salience framework. We suggest that the appropriate
theoretical underpinning arises from moral philoso-
phy and ethical decision making. In contrast, Mitchell
et al. (1997) suggested that the relationship of legiti-
macy to stakeholder salience was supported by pop-
ulation ecology and institutional theory. Quite apart
from their limits on strategic choice (which would
seem essential to a managerial framework such as
stakeholder salience), these theories also do not focus
upon what is morally right and proper. Rather they
focus on the self-interested consequences of a legiti-
mate claim upon organizational success and survival.
Accordingly, we argue that these theories must be
reassessed as foundational explanations for the legiti-
macy attribute. Specifically, population ecology
(Carroll and Hannan, 1989) focuses upon the effects
of the environment on the survival and obsolescence
of organizational forms, while institutional theory
(DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer and Rowan,
1977) argues that organizational survival and effec-
tiveness may also depend upon the legitimacy ac-
quired from conformance to what is considered to be
legitimate in society. As such, these theories focus
upon the self-interested impact of legitimacy upon
the organization. Managers seeking to assess whether
a stakeholders claim is morally legitimate, however,
will focus upon whether the content of the claim is
intrinsically right and proper, and not on whether it
will affect organizational effectiveness and survival.
To understand how managers should assess the
moral legitimacy of stakeholder claims, we may again
look to managerial ethical decision making models
(Crane and Matten, 2007; Jones, 1991; Loe et al.,
2000; Rest, 1979). Stage two of the ethical decision
making model is concerned with how managers de-
cide if a stakeholders claim is intrinsically right and
proper, and is therefore of most relevance for
understanding the role of moral legitimacy in stake-
holder salience. Palazzo and Scherer (2006, p. 73)
stated that managers use conscious moral judg-
ments, while Hybels (1995, p. 243) argued that
managers refer to established beliefs. The latter are
discussed within ethics and moral philosophy and may
include utilitarianism, rights, justice, or Kantian per-
spectives, among others. Writers on ethical theory
and moral philosophy have suggested many different
approaches to determining moral legitimacy. While
applying these theories to the business context is often
problematic (Beauchamp and Bowie, 1997; Phillips,
2003), business ethicists have tailored many of the
traditional theories to the modern organization con-
text. For example, Bowie (1994) applied the Kantian
perspective, and Wicks et al. (1994) used the feminist
approach, while Carroll (1979), Clarkson (1995), and
Donaldson and Preston (1995) all utilized property
rights. More recently, Phillips (2003) argued that
stakeholder claims should be assessed utilizing Rawls
(1971) doctrine of obligation and fairness, while van
Oosterhout et al. (2006) argued that moral dilemmas
should be navigated via the integrative social contract
theory of Donaldson and Dunfee (1994, 1999).
Traditional ethical theories, however, have been
criticized for their lack of descriptive accuracy
regarding managers construction of moral legiti-
macy. These insights have informed normative
prescriptions. For example, some business ethicists
have drawn upon postmodern ethics (e.g., Bau-
mann, 1993) to argue that managers should respond
to their moral impulse, despite the negating effect
that the rules and bureaucracy of the organization
may have on this impulse (Gustafson, 2000; ten Bos,
1997). More recently, a number of researchers have
argued for a more pragmatic approach, suggesting
that managers should assess the morality of a claim or
situation from the multitude of potential perspec-
tives, both for ethical and strategic reasons (e.g.,
Crane and Matten, 2007; Rosenthal and Buchholz,
2000; ten Bos and Willmott, 2001).
In summary, given our argument that it is the
moral form that is relevant for legitimacys role in
the stakeholder salience framework, we depart from
Mitchell et al.s (1997) assertion that the relationship
between legitimacy and salience is best explained by
population ecology and institutional theory. In
contrast, we argue that the appropriate theories to
explain how managers should assess the moral
legitimacy of stakeholders claims are to be found in
traditional and modern moral philosophy and ethical
 Stakeholder Salience Revisited
decision making as they apply in the organizational
context. Morally legitimate claims warrant manage-
rial attention because of the managers perceptions
and considerations of the net benefits, rights or
justice, and so on implicit within the claim, and not
because of the impact upon the organization. Fur-
ther, managers ethical assessments are made within
the context of personal, organizational, and social
influences. We intend to incorporate these insights
within a revised definition of the legitimacy attri-
bute. Before we do this, however, there is an
additional issue to address: the variable nature of the
attributes.
Redefining and reconfiguring stakeholder salience:
the degree of possession of the attributes
The third residual weakness in the stakeholder sal-
ience framework relates to the dichotomous repre-
sentation of the attributes of power, legitimacy, and
urgency. The theory of stakeholder salience (Mitchell
et al., 1997, p. 873) posited that it was the cumula-
tive number of the three attributes that determines
salience. As previously mentioned, Mitchell et al.
(1997) extended this view to form their typology of
stakeholder classes resulting from the various com-
binations of the presence or absence of the attributes.
They posited that stakeholders possessing only one
attribute will be the least important and termed these
latent stakeholders. Those stakeholders who pos-
sess two attributes will achieve moderate importance,
and were termed expectant, while those who
possess all three attributes definitive stakeholders
have the highest importance. This dichotomous
representation, in which attributes were either pres-
ent or absent, was then utilized in the empirical testing
of the salience framework by Agle et al. (1999)6
and repeated in many subsequent applications in
the literature (e.g., Jones et al., 2007; Parent and
Deephouse, 2007).
We argue that the continued definition of salience
in terms of the accumulation of dichotomous attri-
butes, whether for reasons of theoretical abstraction,
empirical simplification, or oversight, is inaccurate
and potentially harmful. In fact, Mitchell et al.
(1997, p. 881) recognized that their typology con-
siders each attribute as present or absent, when it
is clear that each operates on a continuum or series
367
of continua. Their definition and typology, how-
ever, are not able to capture varying levels or degrees
of the attributes.7 The theoretical and managerial
implications of this residual weakness are potentially
significant. All else being equal, an increase or
decrease in the degree of possession of any of the
attributes will affect the salience of a claim. For
example, the typology does not distinguish between
very powerful stakeholders and those with less
power, classifying both within the same group. In-
deed, a very powerful latent or expectant
stakeholder may be more salient than a definitive
stakeholder with only marginal degrees of each of
the attributes. For example, crises such as the deaths
caused by the tampering of Tylenol medicine cap-
sules will dominate managers attention. Yet, they
are caused by expectant stakeholders who are very
powerful and urgent, and very morally illegitimate.8
The managerial implications of this residual weak-
ness are therefore profound. Given the managerial
context of finite resources, managers should use a
finely tuned assessment of stakeholder salience to
prioritize resource allocation appropriately. More
importantly, considering only the dichotomous
possession of the attributes may result in an inap-
propriate response by the organization, with corre-
sponding harm to the organization, the stakeholder,
and others affected.
We suggest that while representations of power
and urgency as continua may be readily acceptable,
recent study suggests that there may be some resis-
tance to the idea that legitimacy is continuous. For
example, in their recent review of the legitimacy
literature, Deephouse and Suchman (2008) argued
that legitimacy is dichotomous as it denotes mem-
bership of a population (i.e., of legitimate stake-
holders). Similarly, Zimmerman and Zeitz (2002)
suggested that researchers have traditionally treated
the legitimacy concept as dichotomous (e.g., Scott,
2001). Meanwhile, Deephouse and Carter (2005,
p. 332) cited a number of studies that presented
legitimacy as binary or dichotomous. They also
identified studies, however, that presented legiti-
macy as fine-grained or variable. Nasi et al. (1997,
p. 300), for example, stated that legitimacy varies in
degrees, ranging from highly legitimate to highly
illegitimate. Zimmerman and Zeitz (2002) explic-
itly argued that legitimacy should be viewed as a
continuous variable, pointing to the example of
368 Benjamin A. Neville et al.
board member prestige, where each new prestigious
board member increases the degree of legitimacy of
the organization. They also argued that, while
continuous, a threshold exists whereby organiza-
tions above the threshold are considered legitimate
and those below illegitimate.
We agree with this perspective, arguing that
legitimacy consists of a threshold nested within a
continuum: it is both dichotomous and variable.
Furthermore, the variability within legitimacy may
have practical outcomes in terms of the right to act
or gain access to resources. Bansal and Clelland
(2004), for example, found evidence that firms
with higher corporate environmental legitimacy will
experience lower unsystematic risk. Similarly, vari-
ability within political opinion polls and elections
provide mandates of varying strengths a varying
right to act for those in political power.
There has also been much debate within the
stakeholder literature on the prioritization of stake-
holders based upon their degree of ethicality or
moral legitimacy. For instance, many normative
stakeholder theorists have argued that the interests of
all the stakeholders of an organization, not just
shareholders, are of intrinsic value (e.g., Donald-
son and Preston, 1995; Evan and Freeman, 1993).
These theorists have taken issue with the prioriti-
zation of stakeholders based upon their instrumental
ability to affect the organization. In addition, a
common though incorrect inference of the stake-
holder literature is that all stakeholders must be
treated equally and that organizations should try to
balance stakeholder claims (Gioia, 1999; Mar-
coux, 2000; Phillips, 2003). The issue of the pre-
scribed equality of stakeholders, however, has been
largely ignored in the stakeholder literature (see
Phillips, 2003, for an exception). Thus, some
ambiguity may remain regarding whether the attri-
bute of moral legitimacy is perceived in degrees.
Nevertheless, in addition to the accuracy and
managerial explanations introduced above, we argue
that managers should look for differing degrees of
moral legitimacy for the following reason. Evalua-
tions of what is right and proper are dependent upon
the degrees of ethicality in terms of motivations,
procedures or consequences of the particular issue
or claim. For example, a stakeholders claim that the
products of an organization are poisoning thousands
of people will be more legitimately salient than an-
other stakeholders claim that a new factory site will
impair the sea views of a few local residents. While
both claims may pass the requisite threshold to be
identified as morally legitimate (Zimmerman and
Zeitz, 2002), the former claim can be expected to be
more highly prioritized in the perceptions of man-
agers, all else being equal. In response, the poisoning
crisis is likely to invoke more time, attention,
financial, and other resources than the factory site
choice issue.
Moral intensity
Degrees of ethicality are represented by Jones
(1991) concept of moral intensity, the notion by
which degrees of moral legitimacy are assessed. Jones
(1991) focused upon the crucial role of the nature of
the issue (e.g., the destruction of the natural envi-
ronment due to an operational accident) in deter-
mining what is ethical, defining moral intensity as
the extent of issue-related moral imperative in a
situation (p. 372). Drawing upon Fiske and Taylor
(1984), Jones (1991) observed that moral issues of
high intensity [e.g., product poisoning] will be more
salient than those of low intensity [e.g., factory site
choice]. (p. 380). He argued that as the moral
intensity of the issue increases, managers are more
likely to recognize the morality of the issue, arrive at
a moral judgment, and so on. Jones (1991) proposed
that moral intensity is a function of the magnitude of
consequences, probability of effect, concentration of
effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and social
consensus.
While Jones (1991) chose to explicate the effect of
moral intensity upon moral judgments through
Kohlbergs (1969) cognitive moral development, we
argued above that the appropriate theories to explain
managers assessment of the moral legitimacy of
stakeholders claims are to be found in moral phi-
losophy and ethical decision making. Thus, manag-
ers should compare the net benefits, rights, fairness,
and so on, of competing stakeholder claims. Moral
intensity is intrinsic to utilitarianism, for example, in
that its components (e.g., the magnitude of conse-
quences, the probability of effect, and so on) con-
tribute data to the costbenefit equation central to
the philosophy. We suggest that moral intensity will
play a similar role in prioritizing rights, in comparing
needs, contributions and abilities when assessing
fairness, and so on. In summary, the concept of
 Stakeholder Salience Revisited 369

moral intensity illustrates the manner in which eth- spectives. We therefore suggest that researchers stress
ical issues, and thus moral legitimacy, are assessed in only the moral perspective. For example:
degrees.
The claims of this particular stakeholder group were
viewed by our management team as morally legitimate
Defining moral legitimacy (definition; desirable or appropriate).
Before addressing how the definition of stakeholder
salience should be refined given our arguments, we
Refining the definition of stakeholder salience
firstly revisit the definition of the legitimacy attri-
We have argued that power, moral legitimacy, and
bute. Given our argument that it is the moral form
urgency are evaluated by managers on a continuum
that is relevant for legitimacys role in the stake-
of degrees and not as dichotomous variables.
holder salience framework, we depart from Mitchell
Mitchell et al.s (1997) definition of stakeholder
et al.s (1997) assertion that the relationship between
salience, which refers only to the dichotomous
legitimacy and salience is best explained by popula-
accumulation of the attributes, therefore requires
tion ecology and institutional theory. In contrast, we
refinement. We have also argued that legitimacy
argue that the appropriate theories to explain man-
should be considered in terms of its moral dimen-
agers assessment of the intrinsic moral legitimacy of
sion, which is represented as a variable by the con-
stakeholders claims are to be found in traditional
cept of moral intensity. Finally, we refined the
and modern moral philosophy and ethical decision
distinction by Eesley and Lenox (2006) between the
making as they apply in the organizational context.
evaluations of stakeholders claims and of the stake-
Legitimate claims warrant managerial attention be-
holders themselves. This refinement suggests that
cause of the managers perceptions and consider-
stakeholder salience is affected by the power of the
ations of the net benefits, rights or justice, and so on
stakeholder and the legitimacy and urgency of the
implicit within the claim, and not because of the
claim. Therefore, we present a more complete and
impact upon the organization. Further, managers
accurate definition of stakeholder salience; one
ethical assessments are made within the context of
which incorporates the variability of the attributes,
personal, organizational, and social influences. We
the moral character of legitimacy, and the distinction
intend to incorporate these insights within a revised
of the stakeholder and the claim:
definition of the legitimacy attribute:
Stakeholder salience is the prioritization of stakeholder
The moral legitimacy of a stakeholders claim is an claims by managers based on their perception of the
assessment by managers of the degree to which a claim degree of power of the stakeholder and the degree of
exceeds a threshold of desirability or appropriateness moral legitimacy and urgency of the claim.
within some personally, organizationally, and socially
constructed system of ethical norms, values, beliefs and
definitions.

Our revised definition has implications for its

future empirical use. We suggest that researchers
incorporate this refinement within their research
design. For example, Agle et al.s (1999) empirical
testing of the salience framework utilized three very
similar items represented by the following:
The claims of this particular stakeholder group were
viewed by our management team as legitimate (defi-
nition; proper or appropriate). (p. 525)
This item is vague regarding a precise definition
of legitimacy, which, as Suchman (1995) points out,
may include pragmatic, moral, and cognitive per-
Discussion: an agenda for future research
Our contributions seek to refuel salience research
in the belief that it holds the potential to contrib-
ute much to the descriptive and normative under-
standing of how organizations may best manage their
stakeholder relationships. Successful stakeholder
management relies upon the accurate identification
of stakeholders and the assessment of stakeholder
salience to correctly prioritize competing stake-
holder claims. The inaccurate assessment of salience,
and of its contributing attributes, is likely to result in
370 Benjamin A. Neville et al.
the mismanagement of stakeholders and public
issues, potentially causing the organization consid-
erable financial and reputational harm, in addition to
the harm caused to the stakeholder. This was
exemplified in Nikes inaccurate assessment of the
salience of protests against the sweatshop wages
and conditions in their supply chain. Nike under-
estimated the moral legitimacy of the claims, and its
strategic denials and structural intransigence had a
negative effect upon its financial performance
and reputation to the extent that it became the
global poster child for corporate ethical feckless-
ness (Zadek, 2004, p. 125). While some may sug-
gest that the development of a scientifically precise
tool for the measurement of stakeholder salience is
neither possible nor desirable, the development of a
more accurate and fine-grained theoretical under-
standing of how managers can and should identify
and prioritize stakeholders will assist managers and
provide a valuable contribution to organizations and
society.
Further developing salience research also holds
the potential for better understanding the subsequent
managerial problem of how best to allocate resources
among competing stakeholder demands, oftentimes
couched as the contest between single and multiple
objective functions (e.g., Hsieh, 2007; Jensen, 2002,
2008). We agree with Dunfee (2008) that the sal-
ience framework is the best available framework for
navigating this problem, but while helpful in a
general sense, is nonetheless very coarse-grained
(p. 357). Revisiting and further developing the sal-
ience framework is therefore required. The prime
objection to a multiple objective function by
opponents of stakeholder management (e.g., Jensen,
2002, 2008; Sundaram and Inkpen, 2004a, b) is the
lack of precise generic formulas and the resulting
lack of managerial accountability, despite arguments
that managers have the capabilities to deal with this
lack of precision (e.g., Hsieh, 2007). A more finely
tuned salience framework may therefore provide
opponents of the stakeholder view of the firm with
the certainty that they require.
For the theory of stakeholder identification and
salience to realize its academic and managerial
potential, however, other ambiguities remain that
require further research. Following on from our
contributions, we now present an extensive agenda
for future research to further the understanding of
the individual attributes of salience, their interac-
tions, and decisional thresholds. We also suggest
some areas of future research not directly associated
with our contributions, but that are nonetheless
important, including understanding attribute ante-
cedents, managerial misperceptions, and organiza-
tional responses to stakeholder salience.
Urgency
Despite our argument that urgency plays no direct
role in stakeholder identification, it will nonetheless
have a bearing on how powerful and legitimate
claims are made. Mitchell et al. (1997) proposed that
urgency is comprised of time sensitivity and criti-
cality, but further understanding of the role of
urgency is needed (e.g., Driscoll and Starik, 2004).
Insights into the criticality of resources may be found
in resource dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik,
1978), such as the explication of mutual dependence
and power imbalance by Casciaro and Piskorski
(2005). Also, the concept of criticality of resources
and capabilities has been well explicated in the
resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991;
Peteraf, 1993; Wernerfelt, 1984). Temporal issues
have recently been explored by various researchers.
For example, Mosakowski and Earley (2000)
examined the subjectivity of managers perceptions
of time. Varying conceptions of time may explain
managerial errors in evaluating salience. Driscoll and
Starik (2004), for example, suggested that the
short-termism of managers is of particularly rele-
vance for stakeholder salience. Stakeholder salience
researchers should consider integrating relevant in-
sights from these researchers to further the under-
standing of how urgency interacts with power and
legitimacy in managers assessment of stakeholder
salience.
Legitimacy
While legitimacy has attracted increasing attention in
the general literature (e.g. Deephouse and Carter,
2005; Deephouse and Suchman, 2008; Hoffman,
1999; Phillips, 2003; Ruef and Scott, 1998; Suchman,
1995), we have pointed to the different application of
the legitimacy concept in the stakeholder salience
 Stakeholder Salience Revisited
context. Further to this, we suggest that there are
three key aspects of the role of legitimacy in stake-
holder salience that need to be explored. The first is
that Suchmans (1995) definition focuses on the social
construction of legitimacy, but does not discern the
relevant publics for the claim. The definition refers
simply to some group of observers (Suchman,
1995, p. 574). Many stakeholder claims will have
relevance only to a small group of stakeholders close
to the organization, and will be of no relevance to
members of the wider society (see Deephouse and
Suchman, 2008; Ruef and Scott, 1998, for reviews of
this issue within the legitimacy literature). The wider
society, however, is a latent public who may become
interested in, and opinionated about, a claim if it
reaches public issue status. The wider society may
then act upon their assessment of the public issue by
withholding various resources from the organization
(Frooman, 1999), therefore warranting the attention
of managers. This process is demonstrated in the
public issues life cycle (Lawrence et al., 2005). The
question then arises: should managers attempt to
perceive or formally measure the generalized per-
ception regarding the claim within the whole of
society, or only those directly related to the issue?
Devinney (2009) has explored this and other com-
plexities around the notion of who is sanctioning
whom?, but formalized definitions are required.
The second aspect of legitimacy that requires
attention is at what point does a claim become so-
cially constructed in the Suchman (1995) sense? At
some point, Suchman (1995, p. 574) notes, some
group of observers, as a whole, accepts or supports
the stakeholders claim, granting it legitimacy. Pfar-
rer et al. (2008) have similarly suggested that a level
of consensus will be reached about organizational
transgressions. However, does this imply that if a
simple majority of the relevant social group considers
that a stakeholders claim is desirable, proper, or
appropriate that it should be considered as achieving
social consensus? This notion is, more or less, the
accepted process in democratic political systems
dominated by two parties. Eesley and Lenox (2006)
drew upon this perspective when operationalizing
legitimacy by drawing upon public opinion surveys.
Yet the process of legitimation is informal and sig-
nificantly more complex and variable. For example,
it may be heavily swayed by opinion leaders and the
role of the media. Scott (2001) pointed to the role of
371
empowered authorities for conferring legitimacy.
Similarly, gestures of legitimation from independent
third parties may be more influential than the
compliance of the claim to social norms (Hybels,
1995). Research in the area of institutional entre-
preneurship may provide insights into these issues
(e.g., Fligstein, 1997; Maguire et al., 2005).
The third aspect of legitimacy that requires atten-
tion is the distinction and relevance of the legitimacy
of the claim and that of the stakeholder. We argued
that it is the legitimacy of the claim that is directly
relevant to stakeholder salience, and that the legiti-
macy of the stakeholder operates indirectly through
the legitimacy of the claim. Further theoretical
exploration of this relationship is needed, but it would
also benefit from empirical testing. Eesley and Lenox
(2006) results were somewhat ambiguous. They
argued that their results were complicated by mea-
surement issues and the complex relations between
different stakeholder groups and the effectiveness/
salience of tactics they usually employ. Following our
positioning of the legitimacy of claims as primary and
that of stakeholders as secondary, we would suggest
that future researchers might test for moderation or
mediation effects.
Interactions
It may also be simplistic and thus inaccurate to the-
orize and measure each of the attributes as if they have
an independent, direct impact upon stakeholder sal-
ience (e.g., Agle et al., 1999; Winn and Keller, 2001).
We suggest that the interactions and relationships of
the three attributes with each other, and thus to total
stakeholder salience, may actually be more complex.
Mitchell et al. (1997) recognized this issue when
considering future research directions. They asked:
are there models of interrelationships among the
variables identified herethat reveal more subtle, but
perhaps more basic, systematics? (Mitchell et al.,
1997, p. 881). A response to this question might begin
by noting that the different attributes may be
weighted differently in terms of their contribution to
total salience (Parent and Deephouse, 2007). For in-
stance, even if they possess a high degree of legiti-
macy, it may have little impact upon the total salience
of the claim if legitimacy is given a low weight relative
to the other attributes (Jones et al., 2007).
372 Benjamin A. Neville et al.
Further, the interaction between power and
moral legitimacy and the resulting effect upon
stakeholder salience needs to be better understood.
For instance, the interaction effect could be sub-
suming (i.e., where moral legitimacy is evaluated in
terms of its generation of power), negating (i.e.,
where power and legitimacy overlap), additive (i.e.,
where they build upon each other) or synergistic
(i.e., where power and legitimacy result in more
than the sum of their individual levels). Mitchell
et al. (1997) argued that where power and legitimacy
overlap they will form authority. This effect, how-
ever, requires further exploration and explanation.
In some instances, the exercise of power may reduce
the moral legitimacy of the claim, such as in the case
of violent anti-globalization protesters. In other
cases, there is moral legitimacy in being powerless,
with the potential to mobilize other stakeholders in
support of the claim. Indeed, it is stakeholder ac-
tions, motivated by moral judgments, which drive
the business case for corporate social responsibility
(Freeman, 1984; Frooman, 1999; Orlitzky et al.,
2003). In this instance, it may be difficult to disen-
tangle the motivations and processes of managers for
attending to stakeholder claims; that is, whether
based only on assessments of the moral legitimacy of
the claim, or only on the potential power that may
be enacted due to the moral legitimacy of the claim,
or both (e.g., a winwin outcome). Reference to
the political economy literature may assist the the-
oretical understanding of this interaction effect (e.g.,
Etzioni, 1964; French and Raven, 1959; Parsons,
1960; Weber, 1947).
Further understanding of the power-legitimacy
interaction may be garnered through Suchmans
(1995) insights into the interactions between
pragmatic and moral legitimacy. For example, he
suggested that pragmatic legitimacy may be pur-
chased by providing self-interested inducements to
the relevant audience. Such practices, however, may
also contravene social rules, thereby having a nega-
tive impact on moral legitimacy, and resulting in a
net negative effect upon the salience of the claim
(e.g., bribery). Ashforth and Gibbs (1990) presented
a similar argument, suggesting that conscious efforts
by organizations to increase their pragmatic legiti-
macy may be viewed cynically by stakeholders,
resulting in a net negative effect. Methods of pur-
chasing pragmatic legitimacy without negating
moral legitimacy, therefore, would be of particu-
lar interest to stakeholders. Similarly, in the last
decade, anti-globalization protesters utilizing their
coercive power through vandalism have negated
the moral legitimacy of their claim, yet they also
achieved their goal of media exposure and brought
into question the cognitive legitimacy, or taken-
for-grantedness, of western corporate hegemony.
Suchman (1995) generalized about this legitimacy
contest, arguing that frictions between the different
forms of legitimacy appear to arise when there is
poor communication between large social institu-
tions or when they are undergoing historical
transition.
Thresholds
We have argued that stakeholder claims will vary in
the degrees of each attribute, and that this will have
an impact on their prioritization by managers. Yet
there will be a cut-off point (a decisional thresh-
old) where the claim will be deemed by managers
to be satisfactorily legitimate, powerful, or urgent,
relative to the resources available for satisfying
stakeholder demands. The threshold perspective
integrates a dichotomous aspect within the contin-
uous variable perspective. Zimmerman and Zeitz
(2002), for example, argued that organizations must
reach a threshold level of legitimacy to receive
support from their external audience. This should
also be true for the roles of power and urgency.
The identification of degree thresholds is impor-
tant as the difference in salience that leads to a
stakeholders claim being accepted or declined may
be slight. For example, philanthropic ventures and
the hiring of employees usually require selecting
from a field of candidates. While some candidates
may qualify clearly, others may only just succeed in
qualifying and others may only just fail to qualify. In
the absence of academic precedent, Agle et al.
(1999), in their empirical testing of the theory of
stakeholder salience, assigned threshold values from
the mean values in their sample. Further research,
however, is necessary to determine a deeper
understanding of these thresholds for each of the
attributes and for stakeholder salience. Crucially,
it is likely that the availability of organizational re-
sources will affect the threshold (e.g., Jawahar and
 Stakeholder Salience Revisited
McLaughlin, 2001; Waddock and Graves, 1997),
which in turn suggests that a demand and supply
model may provide some guidance (e.g., McWil-
liams and Siegel, 2001).
Antecedents, misperceptions, and responses
The preceding areas of future research relate directly
to our contributions. We also suggest three other
important areas of research that could benefit the
understanding of stakeholder identification and pri-
oritization: attribute antecedents, managerial mis-
perceptions, and organizational responses. First, a
useful avenue for further research would be digging
deeper into the antecedents of the three attributes.
For example, Driscoll and Starik (2004) added
probability to the antecedents of urgency. Similarly,
Eesley and Lenox (2006) identified that access to
resources will affect the ability and willingness of
stakeholders to leverage any power advantage they
hold. Rowley and Moldoveanu (2003), however,
argued that, even when their power is weak,
stakeholders may be motivated to act to create a
feeling of solidarity with their stakeholder group.
Further understanding of moral legitimacy may be
drawn from Suchmans (1995) even more finely
grained distinctions of this attribute, including con-
sequential, procedural, structural, and personal
characteristics.
We also suggest that further research adopt a more
realistic or critical perspective of stakeholder sal-
ience. While we have adopted Mitchell et al.s
(1997) normative approach, a descriptive under-
standing of how managers actually do prioritize
stakeholder claims is called for. For example,
researchers might explore managerial misperceptions
of stakeholder attributes and salience. Mitchell et al.
(1997, p. 868) were explicit that stakeholder salience
is a matter of multiple perceptions and is a
constructed reality rather than an objective one.
The accuracy of managers assessments of the attri-
butes and total salience is therefore likely to be a
significant contributor to the success of stakeholder
management. One issue that arises directly from our
contributions here is the relationship between
assessments of the moral legitimacy of the stake-
holder and that of the claim. We argued that man-
agers should seek to assess the moral merits of the
373
claim only, yet the temptation for managers to
allow assessments of the stakeholder to color assess-
ments of the claim will be hard to ignore, especially
given limited temporal and informational resources.
Understanding how managers may misperceive
stakeholder claims and developing tools to reduce
such misperceptions, therefore, would be valuable
contributions to organizations and their stakeholders.
A final area of future research is that of organi-
zational responses to stakeholder salience (Roloff,
2008). Once they have arrived at a hierarchical
ranking of their stakeholders claims, how do orga-
nizations respond, and how should they respond?
Given resource constraints, how do they determine
whether claimants should receive all that they
claimed, only part, or none of what they have
claimed (e.g., Jawahar and McLaughlin, 2001)? The
resource availability constraint is complicated by
instrumental stakeholder theory (Donaldson and
Preston, 1995; Freeman, 1984), which contends that
satisfying the claims of various stakeholders is not
mutually exclusive, but may result in a winwin sit-
uation for all stakeholders. In addition, organiza-
tional responses may be driven less by aggregate
assessments of stakeholder salience and more by the
particular combination of the attributes or other
idiosyncratic drivers (Dunfee, 2008). There is some
potential guidance from the literature for incorpo-
rating strategic responses within the theory of
stakeholder salience (e.g., Carroll, 1979; Oliver,
1991; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Sethi, 1979). In
particular, Savage et al. (1991) presented a matrix of
strategic responses based upon the prior assessment
of stakeholder claims.
To conclude, we agree with Mitchell et al.s belief
(1997, p. 880) that, stakeholder theory holds the
key to more effective management and to a more
useful, comprehensive theory of the firm in society.
Furthermore, we support their view that the theory
of stakeholder identification and salience has the
potential to improve upon current academic
understanding and managerial practice in the man-
agement of stakeholders. Inaccurate identification of
stakeholders and prioritization of stakeholder claims
based upon their definition of salience has the po-
tential to cause the organization considerable finan-
cial and reputational harm, along with the attendant
harms caused to stakeholders. The further develop-
ment of a more accurate theoretical understanding of
374 Benjamin A. Neville et al.
the identification of stakeholders and the assessment
of stakeholder salience will assist managers and
provide a valuable contribution to organizations and
society.
Notes
1
We accept that the insights we offer may not be
particularly novel to some stakeholder researchers.
However, we point to the continued repeating of the
residual weaknesses that we observe in the present liter-
ature. The redefinitions we provide are intended to
salve these weaknesses and place stakeholder salience re-
search on more sure footing.
2
We recognize here that Driscoll and Starik (2004)
have suggested that proximity be included as a fourth
attribute. While the role of proximity is an important
insight, we suggest that proximitys influence upon
stakeholder salience is subsumed within the power attri-
bute through network position (discussed below) and
within the legitimacy attribute through its role in moral
intensity (Jones, 1991: discussed later in this article). It
would, therefore, not constitute a fourth attribute, but
an important component of both power and legitimacy.
3
Including potential stakeholders widens the stake-
holder field considerably to include innumerable other
organizations and individuals that may interact with the
organization at any time in the future. Nevertheless,
recognizing potential stakeholders before they make a
claim upon the organization is managerially important
(Almazan et al., 2009; Gadenne et al., 2009; King,
2008), and may be an important component of manage-
rial competence. Potential stakeholders may be foresee-
able (e.g., future generations affected by environmental
performance; users of the firms products that contain
some known risk) or not. Potentiality is thus an impor-
tant, but underexplored aspect of stakeholder salience.
We thank one of our anonymous reviewers for this
observation.
4
In response to a suggestion by a reviewer, we
looked in the literature for empirical measures of prag-
matic legitimacy to compare these with measures of
power. An analysis of the face, convergent, discrimi-
nant, and nomological validity of items and measures
might provide further support for our contention. We
did not, however, find a measure of pragmatic legiti-
macy. This represents a gap in the literature which
future research might seek to fill.
5
Asserting that legitimacy based upon exchange is a
moral conception and not pragmatic or self-interested,
may cause some consternation. However, Donaldson
and Preston (1995), for example, drew upon property
rights to argue that other stakeholders as well as share-
holders rightfully deserve returns for their particular ex-
change relationship with the organization. For example,
they argued that it is right and proper to provide fair
return (thereby ascribing stakeholder status) to employ-
ees in exchange for their contribution of effort to the
organization.
6
Agle et al. (1999) initially captured the variability
of the attributes on scales ranging from 0 to 3, but
then modified the data to present the attributes in a
dichotomous form by calculating the mean response for
each attribute, and assigning presence or absence
depending on whether the response was greater or less
than the mean.
7
Mitchell et al. (1997) made much of the dynamism
of their model. For example, they stated that, Legiti-
macy, like power, is a variable rather than a steady state
a dynamic attribute of the stakeholder-manager rela-
tionship. It may be present or absent (p. 869). Their
focus, however, was that stakeholders possession of the
attributes could change over time (i.e., from powerful
to powerless, and so forth). Parent and Deephouse
(2007) showed how this may occur in their case study
research.
8
Phillips (2003) argued that these stakeholders derive
their legitimacy from the effects of their actions upon
morally legitimate stakeholders. Nevertheless, this does
not affect assessments of salience.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank an anonymous reviewer for his valu-
able suggestion. The authors would like to thank Nel-
son Phillips, Paul Tracey, and the anonymous reviewers
and participants at two Academy of Management con-
ferences for their helpful reviews and comments on ear-
lier versions of this article.
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