Stakeholder engagement as communication design practice

• Date: 01 May 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1569
• Published date: 01 May 2015

■Special Issue Paper

Stakeholder engagement as

communication design practice

Mark Aakhus

1

*and Michael Bzdak

1,2

1

School of Communication & Information, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick,

New Jersey USA

2

Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, New Jersey USA

Stakeholder engagement competence is here framed as an ongoing matter of communication design—that is, profes-

sionals and organizations of all sorts are challenged to invent forms of engagement with organizational stakeholders

making communication possible that may otherwise be difficult, impossible, or unimagined. An original framework

for articulating logics of communication design that addresses extant shortcomings in understanding stakeholder en-

gagement competence is introduced. The framework draws into relief how communication for stakeholder engage-

ment is conceptualized and valued by professionals and organizations. The communication design practice

framework provides a path for opening up the black box of stakeholder engagement to advance communication com-

petence in professional practice and organizational communication. The framework is illustrated by reconstructing,

from current corporate social responsibility practice, two competing communication design logics for constructing di-

alogue and stakeholder engagement. One logic, grounded in the shared value framework, reprises a common theme

about business that points to constructing communication to maintain the primacy of shareholders in stakeholder net-

works and to seek profitability in social, environmental, and economic problems. The other logic introduces an alter-

native communication design logic grounded in commitments to collaborative governance and open innovation. This

logic is for stakeholder networks to generate and manage multiple values that address matters of social, cultural, en-

vironmental, and economic concerns. We then consider some key implications for engagement practice and compe-

tency for inventing forms of dialogue and stakeholder engagement to create value in the new globalized, mediated

context. Communication design practice opens new ways of thinking about stakeholder engagement that has impli-

cations for cultivating professional practice and improving organizational decision-making about investing in com-

munication resources and infrastructure. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

COMMUNICATION DESIGN LOGICS FOR

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

The publication of Freeman’sStrategic Management:

A Stakeholder Approach (Freeman, 1984) highlighted

and reframed fundamental questions about value

creation through business. Companies could no lon-

ger be seen as black boxes with no obligations out-

side of efficient production but instead were more

clearly defined as entities designed for engaging in

multiple relationships for conducting business

within society (Donaldson & Preston, 1995). The en-

suing 30 years of business practice and research

shows that all functions of a business, from strategic

management to marketing to accounting, are af-

fected by stakeholders’pursuit and definition of

value creation (Parmar et al., 2010). Stakeholder en-

gagement is thus a complex competency to be de-

veloped by organizations and the professionals

that run them. The initial insights of stakeholder

theory highlight that organizations have positive

and negative consequences in which many kinds

of actors have a stake. The competence imperative

is for management to figure out a company’s obli-

gations and what role or influence stakeholders

*Correspondence to: Mark Aakhus, School of Communication &

Information, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New

Brunswick, NJ, USA.

E-mail: aakhus@rutgers.edu

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 2 pp 188–200 (2015)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1569

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.