Humanizing Stakeholders by Rethinking Business

Katinka J P Quintelier; Joeri van Hugten; Bidhan L Parmar; Inge M Brokerhof

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.687067

Humanizing Stakeholders by Rethinking Business

Front Psychol. 2021 Sep 22:12:687067. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.687067. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Katinka J P Quintelier¹, Joeri van Hugten¹, Bidhan L Parmar², Inge M Brokerhof³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Management & Organization, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
² The Darden School of Business, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States.
³ Faculty of Management Studies, The Open University of The Netherlands, Heerlen, Netherlands.

Abstract

Can business humanize its stakeholders? And if so, how does this relate to moral consideration for stakeholders? In this paper we compare two business orientations that are relevant for current business theory and practice: a stakeholder orientation and a profit orientation. We empirically investigate the causal relationships between business orientation, humanization, and moral consideration. We report the results of six experiments, making use of different operationalizations of a stakeholder and profit orientation, different stakeholders (employees, suppliers, labor unions), and different participant samples. Our findings support the prediction that individual stakeholders observing a stakeholder-oriented firm see the firm's other stakeholders as more human than individual stakeholders observing a profit-oriented firm. This humanization, in turn, increases individual stakeholders' moral consideration for the firm's other stakeholders. Our findings underscore the importance of humanization for stakeholders' moral consideration for each other. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the firm as a moral community of stakeholders. Specifically, we move away from a focus on managers, and how they can make business more moral. Instead we direct attention to (other) stakeholders, and how business can make these stakeholders more moral.

Keywords: business orientation; humanization; mind attributions; moral consideration; moral legitimacy; profit orientation; stakeholder orientation; stakeholders.