A Stakeholder Perspective of Entrepreneurial Activity: Beyond Normative Theory

Abstract

Arguing that the entrepreneurial process is ameans of reducing value anomalies that exist among stakeholders in his 2000work, S. Venkataraman offers a primarily normative defense of entrepreneurshipas a stakeholder equilibrating process.His normative defense fails torecognize that the stakeholder view of entrepreneurship is also useful as adescriptive tool in a much broader context than simply equilibration. Specifically, the stakeholder model attempts to describe businesses andgroups of businesses as they really function; it serves, in other words, as aflexible, practical tool for describing all stages of the entrepreneurialprocess.Furthermore, from a resource-based perspective, stakeholdertheory can point researchers to the factors that influence entrepreneurialperformance by helping them build models of the socially complex configurationsof stakeholders that entrepreneurial ventures create.Finally, stakeholdertheory is a tool for researchers wishing to study the ways stakeholder networksare organized, as well as the various decisions made by entrepreneurs withregard to stakeholder relationships. (SAA)

Keywords: Equilibration, Stakeholder networks, Resource model, Stakeholder theory, Stakeholders, Research methods, Social structures, Social networks, Equilibrium