Alliance Experience and Stakeholder Orientation

Stakeholder theory emphasizes the importance of a relational model of the firm to establish cooperative relationships between firms and their stakeholders for joint value and social welfare creation. Less is known how firms can develop relational routines and capabilities that help them managing a variety of stakeholders in a cooperative way and balancing their interests to the common benefit of all; this is what prior literature labels stakeholder orientation. This paper maintains that firms’ alliance experience can predispose them for developing stakeholder orientation, suggesting a positive effect of firms’ alliance experience on their stakeholder orientation. We also maintain that alliance experience related to partner multiplicity and goal diversity positively contributes to stakeholder orientation. Furthermore, we propose that governance mechanisms that favor board diversity strengthen the positive impact of alliance experience on stakeholder orientation. Our analysis on a sample of 112 public North American firms in the energy industry with 774 firm-year observations between 2008-2014 supports our expectations about the direct effects of alliance experience generally, and partner multiplicity and goal diversity, specifically on stakeholder orientation, but refutes those concerning the moderating effect of board diversity because of a negative and significant effect.