Article
Boundary spanning: moving towards strategic stakeholder engagement
To address complex issues..., companies have to let go of crisis-driven quick fixes and move towards...embedding strategic stakeholder engagement (SSE) into business practice. Companies...can reach out to non-corporate stakeholders to seek help in devising sustainable solutions to sourcing and production challenges...SSE is a practical way to forge issue-based, learning-oriented partnerships with key stakeholders and work together to create shared value. Non-corporate stakeholders can solve old problems in innovative ways, providing “out-of-the-box” solutions and tailoring them to a specific socio-political context...For engagement to be fruitful, corporate understanding of its theory and practice needs to undergo a major overhaul, from ‘necessary nuisance’ to be handled with minimum cost and as little effort as possible to SSE, a tool that helps companies operate in line with the UNGPs and tackle multifaceted challenges. [refers to China National Petroleum Corporation]