Enacting Stakeholder Responsibility: Insights From a Structured Healthcare Program

Companies have traditionally been called upon to be responsible for their impact on stakeholders. However, little attention has been given to stakeholders' responsibility toward organizations and other stakeholders. While it is essential to hold firms accountable for the impact of their activities and for their role in the value creation process, neglecting the role of stakeholder responsibility results in a partial and potentially misleading view of how value is created. To contribute to this discussion and better understand how stakeholder responsibility is enacted in practice, we conducted an in‐depth empirical study of a structured program in a healthcare organization. Drawing on case‐based research, we found that stakeholder responsibility is enacted through specific organizational practices that support the dimensions of reciprocity, interdependence, and accountability. Building on this foundation, we extend existing theory and advance the concept of stakeholder responsibility by proposing a fourth dimension: shared commitment to a common purpose. Our study contributes to narrowing the gap between normative and empirical approaches in stakeholder theory and emphasizes the importance of incorporating multiple stakeholders' perspectives to better understand how value is created in organizational settings.