Stakeholders in the political marketing context

• Published date: 01 November 2017
• Date: 01 November 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1671

ACADEMIC PAPER

Stakeholders in the political marketing context

Robert P. Ormrod

Department of Management, Aarhus BSS,

Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Correspondence

Robert P. Ormrod, Department of

Management, Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University,

Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark.

Email: rormrod@mgmt.au.dk

Stakeholders influence the ability of organisations to achieve their aims, but little work has been

carried out into understanding the stakeholder concept as applied to political actors. This paper

first discusses the contextual nature of stakeholders using normative and strategic, and broad

and narrow dimensions, integrating these 2 dimensions with power asymmetries and reciprocity.

This paper then argues that a broad stakeholder concept for the political marketing context

reconciles strategic and normative issues, as whilst successful interactions with specific

stakeholders are necessary to achieve completed political exchanges of value, all stakeholders

that exist in democratic societies have some form of moral claim to representation. As each

political exchange of value consists of 3 consecutive interactions, the direct stakeholders in 1

interaction become indirect stakeholders in subsequent interactions. As each interaction

occurs within a “marketplace”context, interactions in previous marketplace(s) together with

expectations of the impact on future marketplace(s) influence current decision‐making. Finally,

it is proposed that in the political marketing context, the stakeholder concept can be defined as

“context‐specific agents that directly or indirectly influence or are influenced by the political

actor.”

1|INTRODUCTION

Various groups impact on the ability of political actors (e.g., parties,

elected politicians, and candidates) to compete successfully in political

marketplaces (Henneberg & Ormrod, 2013). These groups can be

voters (e.g., Henneberg, 2002; Hughes & Dann, 2009), the mass

media (e.g., Quinn, 2012; Strömbäck & Van Aelst, 2013), competitors

(e.g., Bowler & Farrell, 1992; Cwalina & Falkowski, 2015), lobby/

interest groups (e.g., Andrews, 1996; Gilens & Page, 2014; Harris &

McGrath, 2012), public sector workers (Dean & Croft, 2001; Hughes

& Dann, 2009), and even terrorist groups (Baines & O0Shaughnessy,

2014). Collectively, these groups can be labelled as stakeholders, but

what does the term “stakeholder”mean in the political marketing

context?

The aim of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the

stakeholder concept in the political marketing context, as few organi-

sations can affect society as political actors do (Ormrod & Savigny,

2012). This aim is motivated by a need to expand recent work into

the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of political marketing

(Ormrod, Henneberg, & O0Shaughnessy, 2013). In this paper, the term

“political actor”will be used as a label for the focal organisation or

individual, whilst the term “stakeholder”will be used as a label for

the individuals and organisations with which the political actor has a

relationship with. This paper begins with a discussion of the nature

of the stakeholder concept, after which the stakeholder concept is

applied to the political marketing context. Subsequently, a definition

of the stakeholder concept for the political marketing context is

proposed.

2|WHAT—OR WHO—IS A STAKEHOLDER?

Which stakeholders are relevant to an organisation depends on how

the concept of a “stakeholder”is defined (Friedman & Miles, 2006).

Whilst there have been many alternative definitions of the stakeholder

concept, research has tended to coalesce around Freeman0s (1984)

influential definition of a stakeholder and accompanying conceptual

model, principally due to the conceptual model0s visual nature, wide-

spread managerial adoption (Fassin, 2009; Friedman & Miles, 2006),

and that it “…can still be seen as a good approximation to reality”

(Fassin, 2008: 886).

Freeman (1984, 2004) qualifies his understanding of the

stakeholder concept by specifying a priori stakeholders in his

model. However, the stakeholders that are included may not be

suitable for all organisations, and a graphical representation may not

necessarily be able to capture nuances such as relative power and

influence, reciprocal recognition, and the organisation as the central

actor (Fassin, 2008, 2012). Including interactions between

stakeholders that occur independently of the focal organisation

(Phillips, 2003) and network‐based models (Key, 1999; Rowley, 1997)

Received: 3 July 2016 Revised: 10 March 2017 Accepted: 16 July 2017

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1671

J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1671.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1671

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of9