Firm–Stakeholder Dialogue and the Media: The Evolution of Stakeholder Evaluations in Different Informational Environments

Abstract

We propose that the informational environment in which firm–stakeholder interactions are embedded shapes the effect of firm–stakeholder dialogue on a stakeholder’s evaluation of a firm. How much stakeholders know about a firm ( information availability ), what stakeholders know about a firm ( information content ), and how much they trust the media that informs them ( information reliability ) vary across countries, firms, and time. We theorize and assess how these three dimensions of the informational environment shape the effects of firm–stakeholder dialogue on the evolution of a stakeholder’s evaluation of a firm. We illustrate our arguments with insights from field interviews conducted to understand stakeholders’ evaluations of the Rosia Montana gold mine in Romania, and we analyze them using original, manually coded stakeholder-level data that capture 2,454 stakeholders’ evaluations of 26 gold-mining operations around the world.