Ethically Driven Stakeholder Management: A Structured Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

The discipline of business ethics is moving fast to the forefront of stakeholder management research. On the one hand, scholars are studying management's behaviour and the promotion of ethical behaviour in stakeholders. On the other hand, a complex interplay exists among ethics, the maximization of shareholder value, and meeting stakeholder claims. The aim is to build on and update in a systematic fashion a previous literature review on stakeholder management theory (SMT) which did not bring ethics to the forefront. Following a strict protocol, this structured literature review examines 108 articles, covering 61 journals from 1989 to 2021. It highlights citation classics and their research impact through total citation and citation-per-year analysis. Content analysis focuses on the findings of quantitative, qualitative, and conceptual articles. Coder triangulation ensures the reliability of the findings, which analyse location and sector, stakeholder type, research methods, research question, conceptual lenses, and foci of articles under review. A specific section outlines directions for future research and provides suggestions for the development of a future research agenda on a topical issue.